libertybelle diaries

“Hang on to your hat.  Hang on to your hope.  And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.”

-E.B. White 

With last week’s cell phone outage in America, I mentioned ordering a free state road map online. Friday the road map and the Georgia 2024 Official State Travel Guide arrived in the mail. Since most states try to attract tourists, it’s likely many other states offer free road maps. It took only a minute or two to fill out the online request form and submit it. Having an up-to-date paper road map in my car won’t take up much space and while having a road map in case GPS stops working isn’t as vital as having a spare tire in case of a flat, it felt like a good thing to have in my car. Here in southeast GA, we don’t get freezing temps often, but I still keep an ice scraper in my car too and have used it on occasion. The ice-scraper is like a road map – doesn’t take up much space and can be an invaluable tool in certain circumstances.

My father worked in highway construction for many years and he taught me how to read road maps when I was a kid. He explained the US interstate highway numbering system and taught me to pay attention to mile markers on the interstate. Mile markers on north-south interstates begin the mile count on the south side of the state. Mile markers on east-west interstates start the mile count on the west side of the state. Road maps contain a legend, a box with information about the symbol meanings and a scale in miles. Using that scale you can easily figure out distances, which can be useful if there’s no GPS or internet map apps available.

We also had geography classes in elementary school when I was a kid (1960s) and many kids learned map reading and navigation skills in scouting. Despite my non-existent sense of direction, having a map and paying attention to mile markers, signs and landmarks has helped me find my way many times.

Modern technology has led to great comforts and conveniences in our daily life. It’s also permeated almost every nook and cranny of how our society functions and created dependency on new technologies. There are some diehards, who for various reasons cling to old-fashioned ways or decide to abandon modern life and seek a lifestyle that’s off-grid, but most people embrace new technology without any deep-thinking or concerns. If new gadgets and gizmos hit the market, most of us go with the trends. Asking serious questions about new technologies and discussions about downsides usually come long after a new technology has become deeply entwined in our daily lives and become a normal part of our culture – and much harder to change or abandon.

I’m not an innovative or creative thinker and I certainly am not someone with a pulse on the cutting edge of technology and social change. The late Alvin Toffler was a futurist who wrote about the technology and information revolution that we’re still in the midst of and he wrote several popular books, Future Shock, Powershift and The Third Wave. His opening paragraphs in his introduction of The Third Wave, published in 1980, sounds like he’s writing about today:

“In a time when terrorists play death-games with hostages, as currencies careen amid rumors of a third World War, as embassies flame and storm troopers lace up their boots in many lands, we stare in horror at the headlines. The price of gold– that sensitive barometer of fear–breaks all records. Banks tremble. Inflation rages out of control. And the governments of the world are reduced to paralysis or imbecility.

Faced with all this, a massed chorus of Cassandras fills the air with doom-song. The proverbial man in the street says the world has “gone mad,” while the expert points to all the trends leading to catastrophe.

This book offers a sharply different view.”

The Third Wave, by Alvin Toffler, page 1

In The Third Wave Toffler broke civilization into three main waves, agricultural, which lasted thousands of years, then the industrial wave, which lasted hundreds of years. Toffler predicted we’re in the midst of the Third Wave, a technological/information wave that will fundamentally change every aspect of human life.

Most of us don’t look at the world in such big picture terms as Toffler did and I know I don’t think like this. Toffler wasn’t trying to predict the future, but to explain the changes he studied throughout history and then use that information to formulate a framework for how the future might evolve.

On Hoopla I recently listened to an audiobook, The Chaos Imperative: How Chance And Disruption Increase Innovation, Effectiveness and Success by Ori Brafman. He is an innovative thinker, who specializes in organizational culture and leadership. In his book he makes the case that during the Dark Ages, the large number of deaths in Europe from the plague, created chaos, but also gaps in institutions, like the Catholic church, which allowed what he termed unlikely suspects, to enter and make dramatic changes. He asserted that those gaps allowed new ideas and new ways of thinking to gain traction inside institutions – leading to The Renaissance. Brafman also argues that those gaps (what he terms white space)- allow for pockets of unstructured discussions and interactions among individuals from different areas (and levels) of a company or institution, who ordinarily don’t interact. Those interactions can lead to innovation and positive changes or help find solutions to problems within an organization. Brafman contends chaos can be the catalyst for creating gaps for some innovative advancements to breakthrough rigid hierarchal structures.

Last week my oldest sister, who is 71, was talking to me on the phone about seeing a news story about the liberal political bias in AI and said perhaps we should go back to having encyclopedias and reference books (I never got rid of those in my home). Her comments surprised me, because she embraced computer technology years earlier than I did and she’s one of those annoying, loyal Mac computer people, who reminds us constantly about Mac’s superiority.

Why don’t we ask more questions before we adopt new technologies?

For years I kept asking more tech-savvy family and friends why computer gaming systems, cell phones and other high-tech consumer goods require purchasing a totally new product, so often, while, for instance, I could use the same telephone for decades? They never had any satisfactory answers and I settled on it’s a big, money-making game these companies are playing on consumers. The same tech experts who drive pop culture and normalized this disposable high-tech culture are the same people now preaching to us about sustainability, conserving resources, and in recent years there’s been a pop culture craze on pushing minimalism. I never had a drawer filling up with old telephone equipment with my landline phone, like I do with cell phones.

A steady stream of fearmongering swirls about the dangers of AI, but it’s actual real people who have been imposing their political biases into every aspect of our lives for many years. AI is an emerging technology, but the real people with power who impose their ideologies on us have been around for decades. The liberal PC censorship efforts have been more pervasive and effective than any angry, right-wing parents at school board meetings demanding sexually-explicit books be removed from school libraries could possibly be. Right-wing media power has grown as the right-wing media expanded its reach, but the liberal media still dominates in America. AI creates a vast new area in the technological realm and since the tech world is dominated by liberals, it seems to me this has been forming another front in the political information war.  AI will likely bring about vast positive changes too, so a throwing out the baby with the bathwater approach probably isn’t a wise course of action.

What’s an ordinary person to do?

The most important thing we can all do is not get worked up or worry. Rather than ditch the modern technology for the old ways, I continue to use both, but I’d rather spend my money on physical books than e-books. I don’t have confidence that purchasing an e-book, means I will have access to that e-book, in the same way as when I purchase a physical book and can have that book, free from alterations, for the rest of my life. At the same time, I do use Hoopla and Libby, which are free web and media streaming services available through my local library. I still use the e-books I purchased on my kindle.

I will continue to use map apps and GPS, but I am back to looking at physical maps too. I have thousands of links saved on my Pinterest, but I kept my cookbooks and craft/needlework books and patterns. I use both. As these new technologies change, rather than try to hide under a rock, in fear, perhaps the better course would be to weigh pros and cons, then pick how much or how little of these new technologies become a part of our daily lives. Our partisan news info war battleground is not a neutral or objective way to gather or assess information. The social media spaces echo and amplify the news media info war drama.  

Trying to learn more about these new technologies isn’t easy for many people who grew-up before the digital age and weren’t involved in technology, but we can read more and try to avoid reacting in fear constantly.  My kids were in middle school when the internet age exploded in the 1990s.  My grandchildren only know the digital world.  Keeping bridges between the two worlds, pre-digital and digital, seems vital as these technological changes accelerate.  The present becomes our past and the future becomes our present.  We can’t go backwards.  The idea that we’re going to somehow revert back to the “good old days” has never happened no matter how many old people sit around complaining. 

Trying to look for some of those “white spaces,” where we try to look at things from a different perspective or try to understand someone with a completely different perspective isn’t easy for me, but that’s what I’m working on.  I had heard of Alvin Toffler decades ago, but I never picked up any of his books until now.  This innovative thinker, Ori Brafman, is a leftie Berkeley professor, and definitely not someone I would have listened to 20 years ago.  His previous book, The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations, began circulating among the US military, as they were grappling with Al Qaeda (a non-hierarchal organization) and then ISIS.  That’s when I became aware of his book and read it.  It was fascinating and I learned a great deal.  Too many partisans in America spend more time trying to plug their ears to any viewpoints that don’t align with their own than trying to cultivate an open mind.  I used to be one of them.  Even if I disagree with 99% of someone’s views and ideas, that 1% where I do agree might be something important, that benefits me.

I believe we’re in the midst of some rapidly changing times and chaos does seem to be spreading, but we can still control our attitude and try to see the many good things all around us.