history in the digital age

It seems to me that the digitisation of information over the last few decades throws up all sorts of interesting questions about the storing and accessibility of information into the future. The emergence of web 2.0 and participatory websites has meant an explosion of information on the internet – anyone with an internet connection can publish their views easily on the web. The internet is really a pretty transient place when you think about it.

I think the interesting question is, assuming this stuff is worth keeping, is it going to last?  Are all the statuses we post on facebook, and all the tweets, photos, and blog posts still going to be around in 10 or 20 years time? Are the websites we post on going to survive? Are the files we save to our computers going to be readible if we want to have a dig through our past? There won’t be a physical copy of this stuff to fall back on, no bundles of letters hidden away in the attic. Emails increasingly aren’t even stored on computers, but rather in some server farm in the United States. I should mention that it isn’t all doom and gloom though, there seems to be a bit of a movement to allow data freedom and downloadability from websites recently. You can even download your facebook! (Go to account settings, then click ‘download your information’.)

I don’t envy the historians who will try to write things about the 21st century in the future. They’re going to have to wade through mountains of information and sort the memes,  pictures of cats, and inane blog posts like this one from the stuff actually worth anything. Unless you’re doing some kind of sociological study of internet pop culture, most of the stuff people post on the internet is going to be junk. I wonder what they’ll think of us reading back through our tweets in the future – maybe they’ll be bemused by our weird fascination with Justin Beiber and vampires and vapid songs about how Saturday comes after Friday. Maybe they’ll wonder why so many young people in developed countries, wrapped up safely in privilege, didn’t care more about what was happening in the world. Perhaps they’ll wonder why everyone thought they had something valuble to say, and they’ll place more value on quality rather than quantity.

In all likelyhood, though, they’ll probably be living in a more extreme version of the present day with one million per cent more of everything. We’ll probably be notified within seconds anytime a celebrity gets caught smoking drugs on video, or messily breaks up with their boyfriend/girlfriend. Who knows?

There’s going to be a ‘poverty of riches’ all right, and that’s assuming they can even access our file formats that will have become obselete. I just hope they don’t judge us too harshly.

denial

It seems to me that all of us are in denial. We know climate change is almost certainly coming, and it’s going to be bad. Yet we continue to fly around in airplanes and can’t even conceive of a future in which air travel is prohibitively expensive and unethical. Some of us try to be as green as possible, but all that means in practice is turning off a light now and then. People say they recycle, they’ve changed their lightbulbs, but this sort of action is completely trivial in the face of what is needed if we are to avoid catastrophic climate change. I’m not sure why people even think doing such tiny things is an achievement, why isn’t it just the norm?

I think there’s an interesting parallel between illegal file sharing and climate change. We know file sharing is wrong, and probably harmful to the creators of the movies, TV shows and music we enjoy. Yet we keep on doing it with abandon. We know it’s wrong, but continue to do nothing to change our behaviour. It’s just too hard.

My generation and young people generally, have the most to lose from a continuation of the status quo – yet we continue to act like nothing is wrong. In our lifetimes, the world will get warmer, the seas will rise, millions of people will be displaced, the poor will be forced further into poverty. I realise that there are a number of extremely concerned, energetic and active youth activists who are working tirelessly to raise awareness about climate change, but why don’t the rest of us really care? Why aren’t we doing anything about it?

The veil of ignorance

I’m doing this pretty cool course on moral and political philosophy at the moment and we discussed John Rawls’ theory of justice. We did a thought experiment at the end of one lecture, which was pretty interesting so I’m going to share it with ya! It’s slightly difficult to explain, but stick with me.

Imagine you’re the ruler of a country and you must decide on a random distribution of money to give to each third of society.

lessons to be learnt

“…an important thing to understand about any institution or social system, whether it is a nation or a city, a corporation or a federal agency: it doesn’t move unless you give it a solid push. Not a mild push – a solid jolt. If the push is not administered by vigorous and purposeful leaders, it will be administered eventually by an aroused citizenry or by a crisis. Systematic inertia is characteristic of every human institution, but overwhelmingly true of this nation as a whole. Our system of checks and balances dilutes the thrust of positive action. The competition of interests inherent in our pluralism acts as a break on concerted action. The system grinds to a halt between crises…”

- John W. Gardner speaking to the National Press Club, December 9 1969.

I’ve been doing a history project recently on the environmental movement, and the lead up to the first Earth Day in the U.S. on April 22nd, 1970.  I thought this was a really interesting quote about institutional inertia in dealing with serious problems. He’s talking in the context of the environmental crisis back then, but his words could just as easily apply to environmental problems and the failure of politicians and leaders to tackle them today.

Today the American political system is seemingly incapable of combating climate change, despite the best efforts of the Obama administration. Back in the late sixties I think activists and ordinary people felt the same kind of frustration at the elite in Washington, unwilling or unable to do something about the pollution of the environment that those that care about climate change and a whole host of other issues feel today.

The lesson we can learn from the 1960s and 70s is that activism works.

The Gospel of Consumerism

I was reading this interesting article called ‘The Gospel of Consumption‘ by Jeffrey Kaplan and it raised a number of interesting points. In developed countries over the twentieth century, productivity and real wages have grown a huge amount. People’s work creates more value per hour, and hence they are usually paid more. Kaplan writes that in the United States, 2005 per capita household income was twelve times what it had been in 1929. If we were to go back to the standard of living that people in 1948 enjoyed, we would only have to work 2.7 hours per day.

The article raises the interesting question of whether we wouldn’t all be better off if we didn’t work so hard and enjoyed more leisure time. Instead of chasing after the next generation of TV or a fancier car or a new cellphone one could relax and read a book or spend some time with your family or something. Kaplan talks about an interesting and hugely popular pilot scheme that Kellogg (the cereal guy) ran in his factories where all his workers shifted to six hour days (30 hour weeks). It meant less pay for workers, but substituted the “mental income” of more leisure time instead. There was also the added bonus of more employment to go around. The workers loved it- it meant more time to spend with their family or gardening or playing ping pong. Imagine if as a society we decided to work less – we would certainly have to endure a drop in income, but would we be any less happy? I know for a lot of people who are struggling in poverty cutting back on hours is impractical, but for the majority of rich westerners it’s an interesting question.

Most of us equate happiness with the number of material possessions we have – we’ve got into this cycle of consumerism where we can never have enough. After a certain point, we just need to recognise that we’ve got enough material stuff, work less hours, enjoy more leisure time and ultimately be happier.

Image credit: mark sebastian (under CC license)