High-Tech Nothing

[Valin]

PJ Media:

Victor Davis Hanson

2/24/12

 

Faster or Smarter, Neither, Both?

 

I am not a Luddite who wants to destroy looms. The modern age has made life comfortable in ways unimaginable just twenty years ago. I live in a house that my great-great-grandmother built over 140 years ago — and cannot imagine doing so, as she did Hesiod-like, without running water, electricity, or a phone, not to mention some Zantac and Zyrtec in the cupboard.

 

But we should remember what technology is — a delivery system, a pump — not our essence, not water itself. Human nature remains constant and predictable while the ever-changing rate of technological growth obscures this insight. That I can talk to Argentina with a four-second dial, or find out how to treat leprosy on the Internet in ten seconds, or be constantly directed by a soothing female voice how to navigate through downtown L.A. does not thereby mean I have any more to say to an Argentinian than my great-great-grandmother might have, or that thereby I would be necessarily more or less willing to drop historic prejudices against lepers, or that I would have any more business in L.A. than did my grandfather with his nine-farmer open party-line, strung along the road with vineyard wire on eucalyptus poles. I could, of course, but that fact would hinge on considerations that might outweigh the speed or ease of my knowledge and decision-making.

 

I bring all this up because in the last two weeks I heard and read some strange things about how technological changes have transformed our very politics and way of life. Here is a sample: the ubiquity of ultrasound scans has turned public opinion against abortion; drones have revolutionized our ability to conduct asymmetrical wars; cell-phone cameras have outraged the world about Bashar al-Assad’s butchery in Syria in a way that was not true during the news blackout over Hafez al-Assad’s earlier liquidation of Hama; social networking and the Internet have created new sorts of communities and networks; and the Internet has kept politicians honest, since now we have instant recall of everything they’ve said or written.

 

(Snip)

 

 

 

What has been will be again,

what has been done will be done again;

there is nothing new under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 1:9

niv

[Pepper]

@Valin

 

Excellent article. Good closing line.

[Valin]

You can't go wrong with VDH. He's the one who really turned me on to ancient history.

[nickydog]

Lots to think about with this one.