Our faith in technology is close to absolute. Almost without exception, we embrace almost every technological innovation without reflection. To the extent we are aware of the consequences of technology, we accept them as necessary ones. Whoever raises questions about the impact of technology on society and culture will not command a significant audience.
Our latest embrace of technology - going back about thirty-five years, one could say - has to do with the benefits and convenience of personal computing and communications, but even from the very beginnings of industry, the benefits of industrial technology and capacity have always outweighed considerations of the costs. Even today, the voices of concern about economies based on production and consumption are scattered.
We may be proceeding headlong towards - or have even passed - an environmental and technological point of no return, yet our day-to-day concern is not yet visceral, far from it. This lack of urgency is in contrast to the fantastic predictions of doom that preoccupy popular culture and stem from a seeming fear of the eventual impact of environmental degradation and the ever-expanding reach of technology (forces that can barely induce a shrug in present-day real life). The permanent degradation of the human condition, brought on by the very same technology and consumerism which have become the principal elements of today's secular religion, has become one of Hollywood's favorite themes. This may just be a way of projecting onto the future our concern for the present. By foretelling disaster in our popular literature, films and many video games, we obliquely assuage our guilt over our present lack of resolve in the face of trends that, in obviously a very real way, really do threaten the life most of us take for granted.
When I was young there were also disaster films. But they were generally not about environmental cataclysms and technology run amok. In most cases they were about one-time events beyond human control: earthquakes, air and sea disasters, fires. They also dealt with the aftermath of nuclear war - again, a one-time event, though obviously of human origin. The "dystopian" scenarios envisioned in many of today's films, on the other hand, have to do with the demise of civilization over a long period of environmental or social decline. Technology, while not as often the main subject of dystopian cinema, is often portrayed as a malevolent force employed to keep humans under strict surveillance and control.
Complacency would seem to explain our unwillingness to contemplate the consequences of our unceasing development, except in fiction. But it might be more precise to describe it as displaced fear. As it is too awful to look seriously at the real signs pointing to what our eventual fate might be, it is much easier to imagine the future implications of our present inaction and leave things at that.
Our latest embrace of technology - going back about thirty-five years, one could say - has to do with the benefits and convenience of personal computing and communications, but even from the very beginnings of industry, the benefits of industrial technology and capacity have always outweighed considerations of the costs. Even today, the voices of concern about economies based on production and consumption are scattered.
We may be proceeding headlong towards - or have even passed - an environmental and technological point of no return, yet our day-to-day concern is not yet visceral, far from it. This lack of urgency is in contrast to the fantastic predictions of doom that preoccupy popular culture and stem from a seeming fear of the eventual impact of environmental degradation and the ever-expanding reach of technology (forces that can barely induce a shrug in present-day real life). The permanent degradation of the human condition, brought on by the very same technology and consumerism which have become the principal elements of today's secular religion, has become one of Hollywood's favorite themes. This may just be a way of projecting onto the future our concern for the present. By foretelling disaster in our popular literature, films and many video games, we obliquely assuage our guilt over our present lack of resolve in the face of trends that, in obviously a very real way, really do threaten the life most of us take for granted.
When I was young there were also disaster films. But they were generally not about environmental cataclysms and technology run amok. In most cases they were about one-time events beyond human control: earthquakes, air and sea disasters, fires. They also dealt with the aftermath of nuclear war - again, a one-time event, though obviously of human origin. The "dystopian" scenarios envisioned in many of today's films, on the other hand, have to do with the demise of civilization over a long period of environmental or social decline. Technology, while not as often the main subject of dystopian cinema, is often portrayed as a malevolent force employed to keep humans under strict surveillance and control.
Complacency would seem to explain our unwillingness to contemplate the consequences of our unceasing development, except in fiction. But it might be more precise to describe it as displaced fear. As it is too awful to look seriously at the real signs pointing to what our eventual fate might be, it is much easier to imagine the future implications of our present inaction and leave things at that.
No comments:
Post a Comment