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The age of technological revolution is 100 years dead
Simon Jenkins, Guardian
Dazzled by neophiliacs, we have lost the power of scepticism – the new is grotesquely oversold, the tried and tested neglected
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I rise each morning, shave with soap and razor, don clothes of cotton and wool, read a paper, drink a coffee heated by gas or electricity and go to work with the aid of petrol and an internal combustion engine. At a centrally heated office I type on a Qwerty keyboard; I might later visit a pub or theatre. Most people I know do likewise.
Not one of these activities has altered qualitatively over the past century, while in the previous hundred years they altered beyond recognition. We do not live in the age of technological revolution. We live in the age of technological stasis, but do not realise it. We watch the future and have stopped watching the present.
When I finish reading most books, they hang around on shelves, prop up tables or go to friends. David Edgerton’s The Shock of the Old is a book I can use. I can take it in two hands and bash it over the heads of every techno-nerd, computer geek and neophiliac futurologist I meet. Edgerton is a historian of science at Imperial College in London and must be a brave man. He has taken each one of his colleagues’ vested interests and stamped on it with hobnailed boots.
No, research and development do not equate with economic progress. No, the computer is not a stunning technological advance, just an extension of electronic communication as known for over a century. No, the internet has not transformed most people’s lives, just helped them do faster what they did before. No, weapons technology has not transformed warfare, merely wasted stupefying sums of money while soldiers win or lose by firing rifles.
Technological innovation is always hyped by those lobbying for money, usually from government. But, says Edgerton, if we only attended to ends rather than means we would waste less and get more right.
(24 Jan 2007)
Overstated? Probably. But I wonder if the appeal of scientific innovation will wane as the price becomes steeper. In a world of peak oil, would space exploration arouse excitement as it once did? -BA
Infected by affluenza
Oliver James, Guardian
Blair’s encouragement of free market capitalism has boosted spiralling levels of British mental illness
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…I have discovered that citizens of English-speaking nations are twice as likely to suffer mental illness as ones from mainland western Europe.
Specifically, my analysis reveals that over a 12-month period nearly one-quarter (23%) of English speakers suffered, compared with 11.5% of mainland western Europeans.
…The US is by some margin the most mentally ill nation, with 26.4% having suffered in those 12 months. This is six times the prevalence of Shanghai or Nigeria, a huge discrepancy. Again, genes do not explain it – studies show that when Nigerians move to America, within a few generations they develop American prevalences.
…It is selfish capitalism which largely explains the greater prevalence among English-speaking nations. By this I mean a form of political economy that has four core characteristics: judging a business’s success almost exclusively by share price; privatisation of public utilities; minimal regulation of business, suppression of unions and very low taxation for the rich, resulting in massive economic inequality; the ideology that consumption and market forces can meet human needs of almost every kind. America is the apotheosis of selfish capitalism, Denmark of the unselfish variety.
Selfish capitalism causes mental illness by spawning materialism, or, as I put it, the affluenza virus – placing a high value on money, possessions, appearances (social and physical) and fame. English-speaking nations are more infected with the virus than mainland western European ones. Studies in many nations prove that people who strongly subscribe to virus values are at significantly greater risk of depression, anxiety, substance abuse and personality disorder.
Oliver James’s book “Affluenza – How to Be Successful and Stay Sane” is published today.
(24 Jan 2007)
The study sounds a wee bit polemical, perhaps more tract than science. On the other hand, there does seem to be evidence that increasing levels of consumerism do not lead to happiness, in fact the reverse. We’ve posted links to some of these studies in the past. -BA
Wealth top priority for today’s youth
Associated Press
CHICAGO (AP) – Melissa Greenwood sees it every day at her high school – the hyper-focus on designer labels, the must-have trendy cell phones, the classmates driving SUVs.
You could say it’s just teens being teens. But new polls show that the obsession with material things is growing – and that being rich is more important to today’s young people than in the past.
UCLA’s annual survey of college freshman, released last Friday, found that nearly three-quarters of those surveyed in 2006 thought it was essential or very important to be “very well-off financially.” That compares with 62.5 percent who said the same in 1980 and 42 percent in 1966, the first year the survey was done.
Another recent poll from the Pew Research Center found that about 80 percent of 18- to 25-year-olds in this country see getting rich as a top life goal for their generation.
“It bothers me because I would like to think I am the opposite,” says Greenwood, a 16-year-old high school junior from Arlington Heights, a well-off suburb outside Chicago. She tries to keep her own spending in check under the watchful eye of her parents.
But even she sometimes finds it difficult to avoid the urge to fit in.
“Let’s face it,” she says. “Honestly, what teenage girl doesn’t want to look cute and have the latest accessories?”
Young Americans’ obsession with material things recently caused talk show host Oprah Winfrey to vent her frustrations, when asked why she chose to build a school in South Africa instead of this country.
(23 Jan 2007)
On the flip side, this from RanPrieur.com:
January 17. Great news! We hear all the time how people are getting stupider, but I suspect we’re also getting smarter in ways that are harder to measure. Here’s part of an article Carol found in an employment agency newsletter:
Human resource development experts believe that employers are finding it harder to relate to younger workers, especially when it comes to motivating them. Novations/J. Howard President and CEO Mike Hyter says, “The latest generation to enter the work force is singularly disengaged and getting them motivated is now one of management’s most urgent challenges.”
Hyter says that traditional motivators like money or authority don’t seem to appeal to younger workers the way they did to previous generations. And many younger workers have no interest in establishing a lifetime career. He says the younger generation seems to drop a job and leave at the first sign of discomfort, and that they seem to be seeking happiness, and don’t have much interest in self-sacrifice.
Hyter believers that these characteristics could be the result of watching their boomer generation parents get used up and thrown away by corporations, and this generation’s not going to have any of it.
-AF
Saving The Planet: Empty gestures
Nigel Pollitt, The Independent
Do you recycle – and then fly to New York for the weekend? It’s the inconsistency of our attempts to save the planet that really bugs Nigel Pollitt
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…This month, the EU’s environment commissioner, Stavros Dimas, called the struggle to halt climate change a “world war”. The Tories are pitching for an 80 per cent cut in UK carbon emissions by 2050. Even the Confederation of British Industry has a task force on it.
But we, in our homes and on holiday, go on as before. The friend who raved about the Al Gore film whacks up the heat and wears a T-shirt indoors. I bang on about halogen downlights but do nothing about the picturesque but colossally leaky wooden sash windows in my picturesque but colossally leaky Victorian house. If my 1880s stained glass was under threat, I’d get a handgun. What’s going on?
“People see it as such a big, difficult problem. They ask how on Earth can they influence it in their day-to-day behaviour,” says Nick Pidgeon, a professor of applied psychology at Cardiff University, and the co-author of several studies on attitudes to climate change. “They say overwhelmingly that the Government or international community should be responsible for action, but are not changing their own behaviour because it all seems too much.”
It’s also about connecting, he says. “We understand the consequences of climate change, but there’s a disconnect with our actions. People don’t think about climate change when they get in the car. And when taking a risk [of damaging the climate] has personal benefits, there’s much less pressure to change behaviour. Getting in the car has an immediate benefit.”
(25 Jan 2007)
Cross-posted at Common Ground.
