I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. -- John 12:46
photo by sebastian unrau on unsplash
When I graduated from college, I decided to reward myself with a really nice sound system. It wasn’t top of the line, but it was very nice, up-to-the-minute technology -- the best I could afford. I was never a real ‘techie’, but did become intrigued with splicing and editing audio, very excited about the new possibilities of transferring all my LP vinyl albums to conveniently portable cassette tapes.
The pace of technological change had not yet become fully apparent, because it was still happening rather slowly. Any new invention, such as the cassette tape would become gradually accepted, established and then last for a good while. It was still easy to fall into the mindset that the latest new invention was the grand culmination of everything that had been developed before it, and would be the standard from then on. There must be something in the human mindset that makes us think this way. I've heard it said that the U.S. Patent Office director at the turn of the 20th century suggested that the Patent Office might soon need to be disbanded, ‘since everything that could be invented had already been invented.’ The. Beginning. Of. The. 20th.Century! Anyway, my new sound system set me up with one of the best available Dual turntables, a quality Sony cassette deck and a very nice power amp and speaker system. I invested more than I would usually spend, justifying it by knowing how well I would take care of it, and that it would last me pretty much ‘from now on’. I had no idea that Intel had just developed its famous microprocessor and that within 10 years a full-blown digital revolution would be underway making Compact Discs the standard audio technology. It is now 45 years later, and CDs have almost totally been replaced by direct digital audio file and streaming technology. The wonders of digital technology are spinning out like clouds from a category 5 hurricane and we are on the verge of tsunamis from more new technologies such as biometrics, quantum computing and nanotechnology. These will hit younger generations the same way technological changes in my lifetime have hit me. Now, here’s the interesting thing. Alvin Toffler’s book, Future Shock came out in 1970, the same year I graduated from high school. The title grabbed my attention and the book fascinated me. His thesis was that every new invention spawned several other new inventions, and each wave of new inventions was happening in less time than the ones before them. Technology was developing exponentially, and because of this, humans would have an increasingly difficult time absorbing and adjusting to the new technology before newer technologies were on the scene for them to have to deal with. Therefore the culture would begin to experience a kind of ‘shock’ effect which would manifest in distressing ways. I had read the book. It made sense to me. We were already in the midst of this accelerating change, and yet I was very slow to really ‘see’ it and adjust to it. This is called ‘normalcy bias’ -- the fact that we all want what we are familiar with to continue, and therefore we tend to be change-resistant. When I think about what has transpired in my own lifespan, it includes: Television, color television, many stages of camera and film types up to digital image technology, interstate highways and vastly wider car ownership (it was common for families to have only one), air travel superseding train and bus travel and moving from propeller driven to jet flight, orbiting satellites, human space travel, moon landing, typewriting to word processing, yucky, messy mimeograph machine printing to Xerox copying, faxes and inkjet printers, land-line corded phones to cordless and cell phones, personal computers, laptops, smartphones and tablets and the whole Internet phenomenon. This is a very condensed list that could be greatly expanded. By extension, I heard first-hand about some of my parents’ and grandparents’ memories of technological development in their lifetimes. My grandfather’s birth coincided with the invention of the airplane and the first affordable automobile. My dad was in the Army Air Corps which is what existed before the U.S. Air Force was even an idea. I knew them. It couldn’t have been that long ago. It is said that Erasmus was the last man who was able to master all of the knowledge of Western Civilization before it became too much for any one man to know. Since that time there has been a very slow but steady increase in knowledge until the exponential nature of the growth curve began to become obvious in the mid-20th century. There is both a positive and negative side to this expansion of knowledge. But aside from what elements of it are good or bad, Toffler’s observations are helpful to reflect upon in terms of how our lives are impacted by the volume and velocity of change, let alone its content. I’ve written these thoughts just to give you a window into the changes I have encountered in my life and help you feel them if you let yourself reflect just a bit on how life must have been before each change and what it was like for people to assimilate these changes in their own lives. Even though the world I have described to you sounds bizarre and you take the digital world as a given, I suspect you are already noticing how the world you have become used to is changing right under your feet. I wonder what would be on a list of changes you have already noticed happening?
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