Jan 29, 2018:
Technology and Culture, an examination of the period from the mid-19th century through the first quarter of the 20th century, paying attention to disruptive technologies. These disruptive technologies would forever shift the authority governing people’s lives from the natural world to man-made rules. I can’t imagine life without these disruptive technologies and the technologies that superseded them. No one alive in the Western world today can fully envision life without them. I’m including the Amish.
The first examples of disruptive technology were the railroad and telegraph in the mid-1800s. The two were inseparable, expanding side-by-side across the country. The railroad provided rapid, relatively comfortable travel, and the telegraph allowed instantaneous communications across great distances. Both must have seemed like magic, shrinking time and space. In addition to passenger travel, eventually the railroad would transport produce via ice-refrigerated railcars to markets not familiar with such variety year-round. Today we demand what was once seen as a miracle.
Probably the most lasting influence of the early railroads was the creation of standardized time zones around 1883. Before standard time zones, synching one’s clock or watch to the sound of a local bell or the sight of a ball dropping at noon would have been commonplace. One of the only contemporary vestiges of a time-synch ball drop now occurs at New Year’s Eve in Times Square. Some say the late Dick Clark, witnessing the demise of the time-synchronizing ball-drop in every city, vowed to preserve the tradition. Rock on, Mr. Clark.
Electricity, electric light in particular, was another disruptive technology. Electric light allowed the length of a productive working day to be gauged by the clock on the wall instead of the sun in the sky. Shortly following this newfound potential for productivity came the concept of scientific management, pioneered by F.W. Taylor. Man’s rules replaced nature’s. I can’t imagine not being ruled by time.
Photography and recorded sound were also revolutionary. Both instantaneously captured and preserved the essence of a person or event in ways no medium ever had before. Every bit as much as the railroad changed the perception of time and distance, recorded images and sound re-wired the human memory. Stop-action photography, a predecessor to motion picture technology, allowed the detailed examination of motion too fast to resolve with human senses. Today, charge-coupled devices have supplanted film, making photography instant and virtually free.
History is fascinating, especially when focused on technology. My problem is I’m not backwards-compatible. For what change (thus far) has cost in terms of generations of mental and physiological stress, I believe it was worth it on balance to arrive in the present. The more I learn of the past, the less inclined I am to desire a time machine. Satisfied to study it from here, thank you.
Jan 31, 2018:
Read The Shallows, by Nicholas Carr. Thought-provoking book, chilling in many places. I don’t believe younger generations can identify with it as completely, as they’ve grown up in the information age. On an intellectual level I’m sure they grasp it, though. Maybe.
Carr’s words were like thoughts I had yet to form, but I’d like to think given time I would have. Look at how we bow and pray to the neon god we’ve made. Earbuds in, thumbs tapping away. People talkin’ without speakin’, people hearing without listening (Paul Simon, 1964). There’s no going back, I’m afraid. The stresses of constant change shall continue. No generation since the Industrial Revolution has been exempt yet. Class discussion was cut short due to illness.