If a time comes when government
wishes people to choose one thing over another, then the proper method
would be to offer an incentive. The history of the last 25 years is
full of situations where the government offered some incentive to
people and the officials were amazed at the huge response which
resulted from the incentive. My personal opinion on the economic
consequences of government incentives is that the government had to
learn to more carefully measure the incentive in order to get a
carefully measured reaction to each incentive.
In the 1970s, the economy of
the United States got horribly out of balance, and we went through a
wild period of widely fluctuating economic cycles. Since 1980, the
people in charge have been able to largely damp out the wild
fluctuations and create an environment of slow but stable growth in the
economy as a whole. It would appear to me that people are more
comfortable with that economic model, as virtually all of the current
crop of politicians in Washington heaps praise upon the official most
identified with this state of affairs, Alan Greenspan.
I refuse to believe people
would seek more change in their lives than they could digest from a
psychological perspective. The sense of disorientation which they would
feel in their lives would automatically act as a damper or regulator on
such acts. In a free market, there will never be more change than the
mass of the people will voluntarily accept. The danger, then, is when
government or some other outside force acts to impose change by fiat,
such as the forthcoming HDTV conversion. Changes of that sort have the
clear potential for disruption to society.47
In conclusion, I would assert
that the history of the last 25 years clearly shows me that the trends
of that period have been largely in the opposite direction, towards
more permanence as opposed to less. Furthermore, it is one of the goals
of the new technology now on the horizon to create even MORE
of this permanence in the lives of our people. In the "brave new world"
of the telecommunications revolution, I can sit in my home permanently,
if I desire, and still maintain electronic contact with whomever I
please, without regard to where they happen to be in the world. My gut
tells me that the citizens of that world will have increased permanence
with the "things, places, people, organizations, and ideas" in their
lives. They can change jobs without moving, or move without changing
jobs. Family and friends are a push of a button away. I can contact any
place with which I need to feel some relationship, and do it whenever
or wherever I wish.
It is that vision of the
electronic age which is unfolding ahead of us which motivates me to
assert that Toffler's thesis of the "man of the future" living in a
world of increased transience is fundamentally flawed. People do seek
permanence in their lives. The challenge, then, is to have a rapidly
flowing economy which can still give that sense of permanence to its
citizens. The history of the last 25 years shows progress in that
general direction, and the most realistic proposals for the future
will, on balance, lead to an increased permanence in a technological
society.
By increasing the range of
choices which an individual has, we do make it more likely that
individuals will choose less permanence in their lives. But we also
give them the freedom to choose more permanence, thus ameliorating any
psychological distress which might otherwise result from "future shock."
We must also deal with our own
perceptions of what relationships are. If we view a relationship as
only existing during a period of physical presence, then the
availability of electronic relationships will seem illusionary or
ephemeral. But if electronic contact is viewed as extending a
relationship across distances, then electronic means becomes the method
of maintaining a relationship which would otherwise dissolve. The
relationship does not disappear when I hang up a telephone, or in the
future, cause my audio and video link to terminate. Virtually by
definition, you cannot have an electronic "relationship" which lasts
only during a single contact. Most people do not consider casual
contacts to constitute a "relationship," so too we must not consider
single electronic contacts to be a "relationship." It is only repetition that makes a relationship.
And when a relationship is important, such as with family members or
long term friends, the electronic connection of the present or the
future allows that relationship to exist where it could not before
because it allows repeated contacts at virtually any time from
virtually any place.
Thus, the people of the future
should tend to move less than before, and thereby keep their
relationships with neighbors and things around them, because they will
have the freedom to change jobs without moving. Also, electronic
contacts in the future will allow people to maintain relationships
which would otherwise have dissolved due to the natural centrifugal
forces of a rapidly moving economy.
With many more choices
available, the people of the future will have exactly as much
transience or permanence as they desire, balanced perfectly to the
psychological needs of each person by the free choices which each
person voluntarily makes. People will choose to maintain or
change their relationships as they desire, when they desire them. This
is not a prescription for "future shock," but should instead be a
prescription for a happier and more fully satisfying life experience.
Finally, I should note that
the basis of the investigation of Toffler was a perceived disorder in
our society, which Toffler attempted to attribute to "future shock"
syndrome. My assertion would be that this disorder actually comes from
"The Decline of the West," as noted by Spengler.
It is neither technology nor
the future which is the enemy of mankind. It never has been and never
will be, because these are things which have no meaning without mankind
to give them meaning. Instead, it is mankind itself which is our enemy.
We are on a downward sloping hill to oblivion which was plotted out for
us the moment when we first put down roots and began to farm. It is the
natural consequence of being mankind in the middle phase of our
development.
The challenge, then, is to
move mankind into a third phase of development before our society
disintegrates under our feet. In essence, that is the true subject of
this book. My digression with Toffler was mostly to refute the
Luddite-like vision which he presents. We must seek the true roots of
our problems if we desire to solve them. Our troubles at present are by
no means new; we can see the patterns in the end times of most (if not
all) Civilizations. It was a clear enough pattern for Spengler to write
his brilliant work. It has progressed through the intervening decades
in ways which only confirm his pessimistic forecast.
But the thing which Spengler
did not consider was the phenomenon which Toffler noted: we are
undergoing the second great divide in human history, with the first
great divide being the beginnings of agriculture some ten to thirty
millennia ago. It is the force from this underlying upward thrust of
technological change which gives me hope for a final termination of the
cyclical rise and fall of Civilization, which has troubled mankind for
the last few millennia. But, as we seek to find our way out of the
troubles in which we are now embroiled, we must not forget either
Toffler or Spengler, and we must choose our course according to the
preferable paths which are at least possible, given the current state of mankind as a whole.
47 But it should be noted that there are many political pressure groups who are poised to scream and protest at any proposed government action which will injure too many people. When the outside forces are about to impose their will, a free society will tolerate protest; and if the protest is substantial, the changes can be prevented. Just ask the people who designed "New Coke."
