Paying Attention

It's daunting to look at the little video below--to see those changes happening so quickly and on so large a scale--and to see them in the light of the ongoing global economic crisis, which some are seeing as causing major shifts in the U.S. (as well as being potentially dangerous to the U.S.). There are even some who feel that this--especially as it may dovetail with accelerating effects from the Climate Crisis--signals the end of our civilization's forward momentum (if that's what it is), with decades of serious retrenchment to come.

I don't know what to make of this, especially since I pretty much got out of the parade as the digital age (computers, Internet, blogs) became the network age (Iphones, MySpace), and I'm up here in an isolation zone on the North Coast. But I do know a few things about the future, and I do have some specific worries.

One of those worries is that things are moving too fast and are getting too big for our ability to respond thoughtfully as a polity and a global society. Think of all the changes that got us into this economic mess, and they were mostly the result of decisions by a relatively few people in a few isolated networks, with no rules applied for the larger good, and no sense of responsibility to the larger society. The more we're learning about it, the more it seems it was built on networked delusions and individual's lies.

We're also seeing that even with this lightning-fast passage of the recovery package, we're seriously hampered by fossilized thinking and stubborn and selfish political and economic interests. This is even clearer in California, where the state is seriously imperiled by delusional but stubborn politicans whose power is multiplied because of the complexity and interconnections of things. Even people who think destroying government is the solution may contribute to redressing balances, but things are happening too fast on too big a scale for that now. We may not be able to afford those people holding power, just as we really can't afford Climate Crisis Deniers with influence, yet there goes George Will, repeating falsehoods that have been proven false over and over again. There really isn't a solution, except for the media and the public to wise up faster, so it's a worry.

As for the ship of state, we're finding that it takes awhile to turn it around. Meanwhile, things are changing fast, and big.

The other worry is related. Things are happening faster and bigger, and the network age is selecting for massive social contact, with the danger of intense groupthink and conformity, as well as much less stepping back and evaluating what's going on. My specific worry is too much dependence and not enough redundancy. We're unbelievably dependent on cell phones and microwave technology, on satellites and the Internet. Those are all vulnerable systems, and nobody seems to be thinking about that.

People--as well as entire economies--are becoming dependent on new technologies much faster than ever before. For some, there are no replacements or redundancies if something goes wrong. For others, the new technologies are destroying the old much faster than ever before. Sometimes that's got aesthetic consequences mostly--like imperfect digital photography destroying film, a better quality medium for still photography. But the consequences could be greater and worse--look at all the people who don't have a landline phone, or who are ready to give up the infrastructure of newspapers etc. for the still pretty hinky Internet.

The economy and other changes are also likely to demonstrate vulnerabilities we aren't ready for. Some folks online are positively gloating that newspapers and magazines are endangered. But it has to be something like 80 or 90% of the news and political information on the Internet that originates from newspapers and magazines. The Internet just isn't paying very many people to gather and report news, or to do much else. That isn't a system that's ready to replace newspapers. It couldn't even replace television news, which is really frightening.

If this meltdown gets bad enough, everything we depend on is endangered--everything from Google searches and Wikipedia to fresh fruit and fish in the grocery. In some ways, we are more protected that folks in the 1930s, but in other ways we're probably even more vulnerable, because we're so dependent on stuff from a distance.

That said, there's also strength in size and speed, so there's a decent chance we'll get out of this if we don't lose our heads, and don't withdraw too much from participating in the economy, especially the local one. But the dependence and lack of redundancy bothers me, especially because I don't see anyone else worrying about it.