The Old Philosopher – John M. Miller
(Lifelong Learning Hilton Head Island – March 3, 2016)
The early 19th century in Britain, as in many other European countries and in America, was a period of rapid industrialization. Eventually historians began to call this period the Industrial Revolution.
There can be no doubt that the changes brought on by industrialization were indeed revolutionary. Theretofore much of the necessary labor in making anything was tedious, difficult, and often back-breaking. That was as true for weaving cloth or fashioning teaspoons as for manufacturing swords, rifles, or cannons.
Machines were invented which eliminated much of the unavoidable tedium which pre-industrial manufacturing inevitably required. The cotton gin, for example, greatly enhanced the lives of agricultural workers in the American South. No longer were they forced to endure the slow and exacting process of trying to separate the raw cotton from the pod in which the cotton had grown. Now a machine did it, and did it far faster.
A system of interchangeable parts also made the manufacture of almost anything much quicker and more profitable. Instead of making one item at a time, making hundreds or thousands of the parts necessary for that item enabled individuals or corporations to create hundreds or thousands of manufactured goods in a relatively short time span.
Not everyone was thrilled with all this progress, however. In late 18th century England, for example, a group of workers in the textile industry furtively and then boldly began to destroy the machines they thought would take away their jobs. They conspired to sabotage the mechanical devices they knew produced cloth more quickly and at a much cheaper cost, but they also assumed they eventually would lose their employment as a result of the amazing technological devices which revolutionized the textile business. In the end they were correct in their assumption.
Some of the people engaging in this industrial sabotage were called Luddites. The origin of the term is uncertain, but it may have come from an English youth named Ned Ludd. In 1779 he smashed some stocking frames which enabled stockings to be woven much more swiftly and cheaply than was possible without the frames. Presumably Ned was employed as a stocking maker, and he wanted to continue making stockings without the offending frame interfering with his income. He thought the frame would put him in the unemployment line, if there was one, which there wasn’t.
At the time they were busily engaged in their anarchistic endeavors, the Luddites created a considerable economic and political stir. They were radical union organizers before there were labor unions, and perhaps pre-Marx Marxists before Mr. Marx began to rail about the purported evils of capitalism. In short, the Luddites feared the loss of their jobs, and they attacked the machines they believed would snatch their livelihood from them.
Ever since, those who oppose certain kinds of technological advances may still be called Luddites. Those who resisted flush toilets (of whom I suspect there were not legions) were Luddites of sorts. Those who opposed the evolution of the telephone were Luddite-like. Those who thought that radio or television were the inventions of the devil were perceived to be latter-day Luddites. A Luddite has been defined by the dictionary as “a small-minded person resisting progress.” That may be a valid definition, but it depends largely on what anyone means by the word “progress.”
Broadly speaking, the industrial revolution has enormously increased the standard of living for nearly everyone in every industrialized state everywhere in the world. It would be foolhardy, even Ludditely, to deny that.
However, there is one aspect of life in the contemporary developed world that definitely needs some further thought and discussion. It has to do with the sophistication of communication devices. But its ultimate genesis is the result of the invention of the computer.
Computers, or at least computer chips, are enhancing and controlling more and more of everything that happens in our daily lives. Televisions, television remote controls, desktops, laptops, smart phones and smart watches, cordless phones, cell phones, microwave ovens, ordinary ovens, cars, planes, trains, many household pets and little children all have computer chips in them. These chips enable them to do certain things, and they may also determine that they shall do certain other things.
The Cyber Revolution surely is as revolutionary as the Industrial Revolution, if not more so. There is hardly a business enterprise anywhere that is totally removed from computers. Computers have transformed the way most businesses do business. Without them, many businesses would rapidly slide into oblivion.
If a group of truly nasty anarchistic hackers should figure out a way permanently to disengage every computer anywhere in the world and to render it dysfunctional, the world would be in an unimaginable colossal mess instantaneously. Truly, the results would be horrendous. That, however, is not a concern about which this complaint is being registered. That is for another screed at another time.
What has prompted this particular techno-Luddite to protest is the way in which all of us are constantly being urged to upgrade our techno-stuff. Do you have a digital camera from 2009? Well, you need one from 2016! And in 2017 you will need one from 2017! Is your cell phone a Luddite, the kind that isn’t smart at all, but nevertheless it pulls an invisible wave of some sort straight out of the ethereal air, and you can flip it open to talk to your spouse or child or parent or the lady in the flower shop without having to resort to a smartphone? Why get a new phone if the old one works? “But it doesn’t cost any more to get a new smartphone!” they say. “And besides,” they say, “new ones work better!” The phone itself may be “free,” but the cost of using it each month will increase considerably; of that you may be certain. (As a similar proposition, think about how cheap digital printers are and how expensive the ink is to enable them to print. They’re all out to get us, they are!)
I use an old-fashioned under-the-desk computer --- not a laptop, or notebook, or iPad, mind you, but a really old-fashioned, plugged-in, no-bells-or-whistles Dell. The keyboard is the thing that sits on the desk. The system under which my Dell operates (if that is the correct terminology, which it might not be) is Microsoft Office Word 2007. I now know that because I figured out which button to press to tell me that, since I never remember in what year my Microsoft Office Word software was concocted. I used to have older software versions, but my computer guru, a genuinely kind and supportive friend who rescues me periodically from my numerous goofs and gaffes, has installed newer versions for me as the years have gone on. I never paid for the upgrades, and I don’t think he did either, having cadged them from other people who were upgrading their stuff and they gave their old stuff to him, but he thought I needed them because, he said, Microsoft no longer services the old varieties, whatever that might mean. (If I have betrayed my friend by telling you this, and he or I have done something immoral or illegal, and somebody from Microsoft comes after me, I will go to jail before I divulge his name. You’re safe, Blzng Flrnlkyr!)
The only reason I have Microsoft 2007 is because my guru told me I should get it. I had to upgrade, he said. Otherwise I might still be ignorantly happy with my old 2003 or 1999 or 1992 or 1776 version; what do Luddites know about such stuff, anyway?
But here’s the thing that really irritates me. No, “irritates” is too tame a word; “infuriates” me, “enrages” me, “quite strongly peeves” me: those are more accurate terms. Why do I need to upgrade anything when it doesn’t need to be upgraded? Why must I purchase a new techno-product to do what my old techno-product did perfectly well? Intended obsolescence is obscene! Having to discard slightly aged technology on behalf of the newest technology is immoral, because the newest technology will no longer be the newest the moment it is purchased; something even newer will be just weeks or months down the line.
I fiercely want to downgrade any corporation or product which forces me to upgrade on a conspiratorially-designed schedule. It may be claimed that these upgrades are good for the corporation (which without question they are), and for the economy (which they possibly might be), but is it good for society? Does it make individual or social life truly better?
Furthermore, is the growing amount of time spent each day by the possessors of techno-whiz equipment adding to the measurable productivity of their lives? Are those who spend five to ten hours a day tapping away on or reading techno-gizmos while the terrestrial Rome burns all around them accomplishing anything that is truly important? It might be important, but is it? Is it?
If it has not happened already, soon there will be an epidemic of seven-year-olds who will have contracted carpal tunnel syndrome from having worked their thumbs into digital catatonia by touching numbers, letters, or icons millions of times on the smartphones they carry with them every moment of every day. There must be multitudes of older humanoids whose wrist nerves and muscles have turned into ragged ribbons of mutilated flesh from whacking away for hours every day upon their computerized electronic whizbangs.
If confession is good for the soul, and if this is the confession of a techno-Luddite, then I must make a confession. I spend several hours of most weekdays using my handy-dandy word processor. Since I started processing words (what an odd term!) on a computer in 1988 or so, I have discovered that writing has been rendered ever so much easier than it was pre-processing. I can type much faster (with my two index fingers) on a keyboard than I could on my really old Royal typewriter, and I can edit what I have written much better and much more quickly than pre-1988. I know there are still professional writers who write everything in cursive longhand (Cursive! Imagine!). Some folks would call them Unregenerate Luddites. I would call them unique-personalities-of-a-quaint-and-interesting-sort, and let it go at that. But three cheers for that small section of my computer which is the word processor. The rest of the computer, I am not afraid to admit but also not sad to say, I almost never use, unless it is to Google something to find a quote of which I know only a snippet, and my well-used Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations doesn’t list or I can’t find the listing I am looking for. As for apps, I have decided that I want few apps to apply to me. Contemporary Luddites are like that.
Millions of people who work in offices have been blessed by computers when the computers do what they are supposed to do. When they don’t, that is another story, but that also is not my beef here. I accept the deficiencies of computers along with my deficiencies and those of everyone and everything else. After all, this is an imperfect world.
My beef here is the growing wave of imperious attitudes which denigrate those of us who are admitted techno-Luddites and who refuse to become addicted to every electronic techno-fad which comes down the digital pike. It is truly astonishing that anyone should malign anyone for not buying the latest whatever. (Coincidentally, I tried to think of a synonym for “denigrate,” and I could not come up with one which suited my linguistic quirks. Therefore I had to turn to my trusty printed thesaurus, since my Microsoft Office Word 2007 does not have a thesaurus function as my old Microsoft Whatever had, or if it does, my guru did not hook it up for me, and I was loath to ask him to do so, his having helped my so many times in years gone by. But it would have been keen, had I still had my computerized thesaurus; one look at one place on the screen, and two clicks, and Presto! There they would be, a host of alternative choices for a single dangling word. “Malign;” excellent similarity. “Denigrate;” good start. But my hard-copy thesaurus worked as well, and also as rapidly, since it is always right beside me at my dandy desktop desk.)
As I was saying, there are people who are constantly trying to convince those of us who have only grudgingly entered into Cyberworld to become bona fide cyberwhizzes, utilizing every expensive gadget thrust upon a gullible society by Silicon Valley, Seattle, or Wall Street. Some resist the sales pitch because they don’t want to spend money on something they don’t want, some because they are genetically frugal (I, for instance), some because they know themselves to be inept at technology (ditto), and some because they just don’t like to be hounded to do something they know they don’t want to do.
A friend sent me an email she thought I would like to see. It superbly characterizes the world of cyberwhizzes. It is called The New Generation, and it begins with a daughter sending her father an email. The daughter said, “Daddy, I am coming home to get married. Take out your checkbook. I’m in love with a boy who is far away from me. I’m in California, and he is in New York. We met on a dating website, became friends on Facebook, had long chats on Whatsapp, he proposed to me on Skype, and now we’ve had two months of relationship through Viper. Dad, I need your blessings, good wishes, and a big wedding.” The father quickly responded by email, “Wow! Really? Then get married on Twitter, have fun on Tango, buy your kids on Amazon, and pay through Pay Pal. And if you get fed up with your husband, sell him on Ebay.”
I am familiar with some of those terms, but not all of them, although I can probably guess correctly what they mean, as can you. I suspect this correspondence never actually was written by anyone, but it certainly might have been. And to that I say: Good going, Dad! A plague on all their apps!
Does anybody disparage anybody who refuses to have a telephone, the old kind that is connected to a cord and plug somewhere in the house? Most certainly they do not. If they were going to capitulate to Mr. Bell’s by-now ancient whizbang, they would have done so decades ago. Does anyone make fun of those who conscientiously have avoided allowing a television set to invade the sanctity of their quiet abode? Probably not.
Then why do people keep telling us techno-Luddites that we must get with the program and upgrade to the latest, newest, most amazing improvements in communications or cybernetic technology? It is because it is relatively still so new, and the entire society has not yet figured out, like Goldilocks, how much is too much technology, how little is too little, and what amount is just right.
If you are one of the countless numbers of world citizens who have wedded yourself to every facet of the Cyber Revolution, you need to be aware of this: Not everyone Skypes. Not everyone tweets. Not everyone texts. Not everyone Facebooks or Blackberries or even – God forbid – emails. Many of those who don’t could, but they won’t, maybe ever. Put that in your Skype and smoke it.
Why must you attempt to lure us out of our Ludditity? Because you are enthralled with this stuff, must everyone else be equally enthralled? Why do you keep trying to convert us? We may be utterly unconvertible!
What is the harm in allowing Luddites to continue in their strange, quaint ways? Are we hurting anyone by holding out? Are we a grave threat to the future of American enterprise? Is being somewhat old-fashioned unethical or immoral?
It is absurd than anyone should be judged inadequate or antiquated because he or she does not take the option to purchase the newest products of communications technology. It is, after all, an option. No one is required to purchase any modern technology, unless their employer demands it. Nearly all of us do use several forms of modern technology, but some of us conscientiously repudiate using other forms which we consider to be personally invasive or which cost money we do not wish to spend.
For techno-enthusiasts, however, the issue seems to be not what one Skypes, but that one Skypes, not what one tweets, but that one tweets. Why should we be shamed into doing what you do? If we jog three miles a day, do we try to coerce you into jogging three miles a day? If we read Russian novels, do we insist you read Russian novels? If we like Mozart, do we try to shove Mozart into your resisting auditory canals? Then why do you keep at us about using the technology you use?
Techno-Zealots: They are the ones who drive Techno-Luddites to the raw edges of either fury or despair! Cease and desist! Stop! Relent! Leave us alone!
There. I feel ever so much better. And thank you, Microsoft Office Word 2007. I couldn’t have gotten this off my chest without you.
The Old Philosopher, John M. Miller, is a still-active clergyman who has been preaching for more than fifty years. He lives on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.
Copyrighted by John M. Miller