Too Good to be True

In James W. Carey’s Historical pragmatism and the internet he claims that social discussions regarding the internet, particularly in the 1990’s suffered from three fatal flaws. These are; it was not sufficiently grounded in the historical development of technology; it viewed the internet in isolation, failing to consider the wider technological context; and it failed to examine the internet in the view of the social, economic, religious and political circumstances of its users.

For this response I’d like to focus on Carey’s reference to Maynard Keynes’ The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1920). He writes that in the early 1900’s gentlemen in London were blessed with miraculous technologies that the previous generations of the 19^th century couldn’t have dreamed of; the railway, telegraph and underwater cable among others. In this way, he says they were so ignorant to the complex social, economic and political factors that such technologies relied on that no one expected that they could come crashing down at an instant. In fact this is what happened in the coming years as war and economic depression arrived. I very much agree with his comparison of the early 1900’s to the 21^st century. Today we take so much for granted, with an even more fragile and complex sector of technological advances. Yet the United States is more challenged than England ever was in the sense that from an infrastructural standpoint we have more ground to cover than most other nations on Earth. It may take some understanding from the “crappiest generation of spoiled idiots,” as comedian Louis C.K. alludes to in the attached clip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk

Published by: Mike Anderson