I write this in the name of The Counter-Point.
Years ago, a wise colleague alerted me to the dynamic of what she called “Point. Counter-Point.” The premise is that when there is extensive talk, adherence, or belief in ‘A Point’, there can be found an existing ‘Counter-Point’.
Of late, my information sources have been bombarded with ‘The Point’ side of the equation. These last few weeks in particular two papers championing ‘The Point’ caught my eye. First was The Future of Work 2020 issued by The Institute for the Future whereby 4 of their 6 identified drivers of change are technology-related: smart machines, a computational world, new media ecology, superstructed organizations powered by social technologies.Here is The Point, loud and clear.
‘The Point’ is: Technology. ‘The Point’ is that Technology is singularly the biggest force shaping our worlds, changing our days, altering our minds and bodies even.
I am pro-technology. Very. But I want to talk about The Counter-Point.
In the 1960s there was a counterculture movement, a lifestyle of peace, love and drugs, blossoming in California and co-existing with the birth of Silicon Valley. According to author Theodore Roszak in his book The Making of a Counter Culture, this movement was largely fueled by the divergent opinions of the Technophiles and the Reversionaries. The technophiles in general were driving powerful technological growth and development while the Reversionaries were dreaming of the days of the farm and the village. That’s an over-simplification but generally accurate for illustration purposes.
In 1992, technophile Vernor Vinge, Professor of Mathematics, Computer Scientist and Science Fiction Writer wrote The Technological Singularity, and originated the term “The Singularity”. His claim: “Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.” There are many invested in the Singularity. If it interests you, check out The Singularity Institute in California.
In 2011, The Institute for the Future released its technology-centric The Future of Work 2020 and IBM released its technology-centric The Next 5 in 5. Again, important reports you can access above.
The other corner is open. Perhaps awaiting The Counter-Point: Humanity
I have to go back a little further to find those involved in The Counter-Point conversation.
In 1992, Neil Postman wrote Technopoly. In it he defined technopoly as “a society in which technology is deified”. ”Technology in a time of Technopoly actively eliminates all other ‘thought-worlds’. Thus, it reduces human life to finding meaning in machines and technique.”
And then there is the man who most stimulates my own personal perspective on ‘The Counter-Point’: Mark Slouka. Slouka characterizes high tech as "an attack on reality as human beings have always known it." Most eloquently perhaps in his essay Dehumanized: When math and science rule the school. (Sept 2009), Slouka challenges “the victory of whatever can be quantified over everything that can’t.” Noting that: “in a horizontal world of “information” readily convertible to product, the verticality of wisdom has no place.”
“The humanities, done right, teach us, incrementally, endlessly, not what to do but how to be.” “… they complicate our vision, pull our most cherished notions out by the roots, flay our pieties. Because they grow uncertainty. Because they expand the reach of our understanding (and therefore our compassion), even as they force us to draw and redraw the borders of tolerance.”The Year is 2012. The ground is ripe for a new emergent counterculture. A Counter Point. One that encourages lively discussion and celebration of the things that make us human, the things that shape our humanity.
Things like thinking, feeling and relating. Things like art, aesthetics, poetry, philosophy, literature, film, and music. The things that make us touchable and soft as humans and the things that make our world beautiful and loving.
