Greg Detre
Saturday, May 10, 2003
"All our inventions are but improved means to an unimproved end." - Thoreau
"One should, each day, try to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it is possible, speak a few reasonable word" - Goethe
"We have met the enemy, and he is us" - Pogo, cartoon of Walt Kelley
The thesis is that technological change is always a Faustian bargain. It brings improvement but always at a price, and sometimes that price may not be worth it. The people who suffer at the moment are the people whose privacy, sense of comprehension about the world around them and probably livelihoods are threatened by mechanisation and (as he focuses upon it) the information dissemination explosion that computers add to the printing press. Cites some interesting stats about the volume of information in terms of billboards and newspapers, and the rapidity of adoption of the printing press.
I suspect strongly that he's religious, and mourns the current spiritual vacuum that he blames in part on this reliance upon science rather than religion as authority. The difference is that religious decrees were more comprehensible and coherent to the common man. He almost seems to be placing a premium on existential intelligibility, over actual truth (a problematic notion itself, of course).
See comments scribbled re computers at least heralding change, potentially.