| Subject: The Empire has fallen! |
Author:
Betty
|
[
Next Thread |
Previous Thread |
Next Message |
Previous Message
]
Date Posted: 10:51:24 11/03/04 Wed
In reply to:
Betty Pearl
's message, "The Empire has fallen!" on 10:35:49 11/03/04 Wed
Everyone will have his opinion about the election, which is officially undecided but looks like it will reinforce the status quo--not only in the White House but in Congress. While thousands of opinions will be aired over the coming weeks about the economy, the war, and that odd grab-bag of emotional responses that pollsters identified as "moral values," it is legitimate here to ask how the election will affect technological innovation.
I am afraid that the status quo will have a profoundly negative effect on innovation. This is not an issue of issues. It's an issue of attitude.
The current administration is marked by two key traits: rigidity and the suppression of information flow. Both of these herald trouble for technology. The "intelligence failure" that led to a false basis for the war against Iraq is a model for the multiple intelligence failures that are likely to come up again and again. And these won't be limited to what the regime in Washington does; they will affect the larger society.
Civil society thrives on information and debate. To promote change, people need knowledge. Such knowledge may concern statistics about the race of people stopped by police. It may concern notification of where hazardous materials are stored. It may simply concern urban planning.
But all these things are being suppressed by a government that is also busy cutting down the sharing of key intelligence information with Congress, that is kicking technical experts off of advisory committees on ideological grounds, that is refusing to comply with the Freedom of Information Act, and that is suppressing the flow of information in a hundred other subtle ways. The information is simply removed from public fora and denied to people requesting it.
Hardly ever does this trend get reported in the mainstream media--another intelligence failure.
During the election, the candidates had little to say about technology and even less to say about their differences. And these aren't superficially that much, aside from the area of embryonic stem cell research--where benefits are speculative and far off--and possible investments in sustainable energy.
The Bush record is modestly positive in the area of technology: he announced money for hydrogen fuel cell research, raising many eyebrows, and has made vague references to promoting broadband networking, which has played out in a small way in FCC regulatory changes.
But innovation is fundamentally neither law nor policy. Innovation is a willingness to explore new things fearlessly. And recent innovations in computing and the Internet illustrate the social aspect of technological change.
The World Wide Web got over the hump of initial adoption through amateurs experimenting with all sorts of strange uses, including the installation of cameras in private apartments and the spouting of unconventional political propaganda. Wifi was first the province of idealistic community activists with the doctrine that any kind of connectivity was good, no matter who used it for what. Gaming pushes forward the boundaries of multimedia support and real-time computing, even though it risks addictive behavior and often involves imagery that doesn't appeal to the squeamish.
All these important technological innovations are more than technology. They're examples of social change aided by technology.
America is famous for tolerating fringe activities such as these. But we are suffering from a creeping intolerance of new ideas. Fear will suppress experimentation. The risk of looking strange and attracting negative attention--as one artist did, when he was arrested because his art materials looked to investigators like terrorist materials--will spread throughout the arts, throughout political discourse, and ultimately throughout science.
These areas, when they are flourishing, all support one another. When dampened down, they inhibit one another. This is what we can learn from such social/technological innovations as the Web, Wifi, and gaming.
The closeness of the election shows that many among the U.S. citizenry are opposed to the current trend, or at least to certain specific policies. But the vote for Bush was an intelligence failure on a massive scale. I'm not using "intelligence" here in the sense of who's smart; it's a matter of knowing what you're doing. People said they wanted a strong leader or one who they invested with that odd phrase of the pollsters, moral values. They didn't even realize that they were voting for things that most U.S. citizens say they oppose: further degradation of the environment, further suppression of civil liberties, further ripping away of the safety net for people unable to pay for basic needs.
When one examines the issues with a magnifying glass--what Kerry would do in the war, what he would do to save jobs, etc.--the differences between the candidates are not that big. But I think there's a profound difference in attitude. Assuming the results end up putting Bush back in the saddle, we are left with fewer and fewer options: with leaders who know who to destroy countries but not how to develop them, with energy specialists who can respond to oil shortages only by drilling for a few drops more, with an approach to science and technology that must placate religious fanaticism above all.
Perhaps the vital forces still thriving in American society will buck the trend and continue to provide technological leadership. Or perhaps the world will benefit from some other region of the world picking up the torch. But we are severely hampered by the bonds we scarcely see.
[
Next Thread |
Previous Thread |
Next Message |
Previous Message
]
| |
Feedback: 