X-Message-Number: 20841
From: "Mark Plus" <>
Subject: Progress fatigue
Date: Sun, 12 Jan 2003 09:31:11 -0800

Yvan does raise a good question about the fate of progress.

When Alvin Toffler popularized the phrase "future shock" circa 1970, he was 
describing the discomfiture of Americans and people in other developed 
countries who had grown up before the second world war and who found 
themselves in middle or old age in an environment by the late 1960's that 
they didn't recognize.

For example, my father was born in 1927 (the year Charles Lindbergh flew 
across the Atlantic -- a Really Big Deal at the time) and grew up before 
nuclear power, antibiotics, oral contraceptives, jet travel, computers and 
many other technologies entered the material culture. He didn't see his 
first television broadcast until he was well into his 20's. So by 1970 he 
could plausibly have been experiencing some discomfort about his 
environment.

I, by contrast, was born in 1959, and all these technologies have been part 
of my environment as far back as I can remember. The world I'm seeing in my 
40's hasn't really changed all that much since my teens, although a lot of 
the gadgets are cooler. I can even remember a hoax about the birth of a 
human clone in the late 1970's. And the prospect of oil shortages with the 
coming war for control of Southwest Asia seems vaguely familiar somehow.

So where is this approaching "singularity" I keep reading about, when I 
don't even feel a mild case of "future shock"?

I'm also struck by how our society now seems to emphasize hedonistic goods 
over survival goods. We always seem to come up with the money to produce 
mountains of junk food, pop music CD's, novels about bible prophecy and 
similar useless things; while at the same time we've let our border 
protection, education, public health, physical infrastructure and other 
boring but necessary things fall apart from lack of funds and diligence. A 
lot of the nation's weaknesses after 9-11 are inter-related by our 
short-sighted hedonism, yet I'm still amazed by President Bush's 
recommendation after 9-11 that we could help the nation by going shopping.

So, yes, I think you could make the case that real progress is in trouble, 
even without the work of the luddites, repugners & relinquishers. Around 30 
years ago molecular biologist Gunther Stent predicted something like this in 
his book _The Coming of the Golden Age_, where he argued that the people who 
grow up in comfortable conditions will lose the "Faustian" drive that 
motivated their ancestors to build, accumulate capital and push the 
frontiers of science & technology.

Mark Plus
It's not "religious" or "science fictional" if you can do it.

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