Finding a Connection

When I was at Auburn, one of the courses i took as part of my requirements was The History of Technology. I had been there, done that with American and European History, and felt versed enough in ancient cultures to skip that branch. I wanted to dig into civilizational growth, utilize my love of industrialism to benefit my GPA.

I got what you expect from the course designed for engineering and architecture students. But what struck me is that at every turn, we have an interesting reaction to technology as humans in the industrial age. First, we delve right into anything new and shiny. Then when the shine wears off, we have a vocal minority who wish to go back to the way things were in a fit of nostalgia, while those who accept technology into daily life move on to the next shiny thing.

Here’s something I learned from the class (and subsequently researched to ensure I remembered correctly 20 years on.) The term Luddite comes from a movement in England against the industrialization of cloth making and the machinery taking their jobs. Making clothing was expensive before industrialization, and in a rage against technology that ruined a cottage industry, “King Ludd” headed a group who wished to prevent steam engines from running factories that spun cotton into cloth, and made clothing affordable for the masses and thus took away the profits of cottage industries which many of the people who spun cotton and wool at home used to survive.

The Luddites made their point but lost their conflict with technology. Their name became part of the common language to describe someone who rails against technology and is considered backward thinking in the face of what is the future. (This is a Kevin definition, not from any dictionary.)

History has a funny way of wrapping around time and again when it comes to humanity and technology. Naysayers decried the use of telegraph, telephone, radio, television, and Internet. Steve Ballmer of Microsoft fame decried the iPhone as expensive and limited in use. He made his money from PCs on desks and laps, and anything that was considered portable was a novelty to the software giant at the time.

I bet Steve Ballmer would love to be able to go back now and take back that particular statement. More than a dozen years on, the world finds itself in a similar spot. This time Microsoft is the one who is leading the way with their investment and incorporation of AI technology into various products, and Apple is betting on a headset.

Technology ebbs and flows like this over time as the various inventive humans among the species are good enough to grace the rest of us with new and shiny things that might or might not be beneficial. Plenty of late-night infomercials are replete with solutions looking for a problem. The Ronco rotisserie comes to mind.

Events then conspire to remind us of our connection to tech, and how much it matters to daily life.

I make my living off of the Internet, so when the connection to the network is suddenly cut due to a disaster of some kind or another, the reporting becomes difficult. Driving around on Tuesday night seeking a signal reminded me of this tenuous lifeline to the wider world we all rely on these days, and how easily it can be cut off without warning.

I eventually found a decent signal in the parking lot at Walmart and was able to post the news I had to share with the wider world in at least some form. Sadly, Cedartown lost a monument to a past age when clothing manufacturers seeking to be as close to cotton producers as possible set up shops in the south. The long-shuttered plant was being used as a flea market. It burned on Tuesday as hundreds watched, the flames wild and stretching across West Avenue.

The consequence of this was the cable and power lines in the area were impacted, and those were also connected to a cell tower not far down the road. Many will be thankful the fire took no lives and will be sad for the loss of a landmark. Yet they’ll also bemoan the “lost time” of not having this vital utility that we have come to rely on more and more daily for interaction, entertainment, commerce, and in some cases access to vital necessities like food or transport.

In the grand view of time, the Internet is still a technology in the early years of life. It goes through growth pains and baby steps like every technology absent, maybe harnessing fire or the slow evolution of the spear point over millennia. Yet our symbiotic reliance on the connection to the networks and the way it has changed us over the past three decades in so many ways is, well, unprecedented.

The arguments made on Monday in the Supreme Court over social media and whether it should face regulatory control by government is an old story. The Luddites versus the future all over again, with the wise old judges required to determine the fate of so much to come and how it will be shaped.

Experience has taught me that some areas of life are predictable and fall in regular cycles. I don’t pretend to be a prognosticator of any repute, but I’d bet a dollar against yours that technology will win out over the long run.

And when the technology stumbles, humanity adapts to survive and ultimately thrive. We might gripe about the cold, but we will do so while huddled around a fire.