The pace of change ...

As everyone is scratching their heads wondering how we got here (The UK, a large economic power, leaving a single market and the US, the main superpower, having a president who would like to erect walls and impose tariffs) it may be useful to remember the following words.

'Nowhere has liberal philosophy failed so conspicuously as in its understanding of the problem of change. [Its] common sense attitude toward change was discarded in favor of a mystical readiness to accept the social consequences of economic improvement, whatever they might be. ... It should need no elaboration that a process of undirected change, the pace of which is deemed too fast, should be slowed down ... so as to safeguard the welfare of the community.'

'The rate of progress have turned the process itself into a degenerative instead of a constructive event. For upon this rate, mainly, depended whether the dispossessed could adjust themselves to changed conditions without fatally damaging their substance, human and economic, physical and moral.' (The Great Transformation, p.37ff)

Karl Polanyi wrote this in 1944. His words remind us of the destructive character of change if we do not mitigate its worst consequences on communities through governmental intervention. Whilst he wrote this about change that came in the wake of enclosures in England, it equally applies to today's transformation by immigration, globalised markets and rapid technological progress. The liberal case for unfettered change depends in large measure on tarnishing everyone who struggles with the speed of change as a reactionary, or worse a racist and xenophob. Karl Polanyi was none of that. But he did recognise that communities cannot survive unless the moral, social and economic fabric is altered gradually rather than being torn apart in the name of economic progress that only benefits a small professional elite.

From expert to user - progress through technology?

Growing up I remember to be fascinated by the question of how something works. You may call this the nerd instinct. Taking something apart and putting it back together has long been considered the ultimate domain of the male mind. We now know that there is nothing particularly masculine about it, nor that this curiosity is a specific feature of all human beings. In fact, I may have just grown up at the fag end of this 'attitude' of discovery. Here is why...

Technology has long exercised a special fascination on human beings and there are whole libraries filled with books that explain how something works. Whilst once these books straddled the space where the curious and the professional meet, now they fall into either of these categories, yet not both. Part of the reason is that technology is now infinitely more complex. I remember disassembling the engine of my motorbike in 1990 and re-assembling it again in two days, including the gear chamber and changing the pistons along the way. Now, you'd be pushed to find anybody lifting the bonnet of their car before calling a break down service.

The cause of the growing distance between man and machine however is not mechanical engineering, I think, but computers. An engine is still an engine, yet nowadays it is encumbered by a multitude of electronic gadgets measuring and protecting it like an impenetrable cocoon.

So, what is it that computers have what conventional engines do not? Mechanically, computers pose less of a threat, being animated by a low voltage power. Compared to the pain an out of control piston can do, computers surely fall into the class of harmless things. However, they did magnify an attitude towards machinery that has steadily grown over time. I would call it the 'black box phenomenon'.

The apple machine - simplicity lost? 

At the core of the 'black box phenomenon stands a role expectation that is characteristic of the new relationship between man and machine. Man has always had respect for engineering feats, but part of the respect was the expectation to be in control as well. This attitude grew out of the industrial revolution which strengthened the sense of ownership of man over the machine. Computers changed this radically. We are expecting computers to deliver a product, to provide us with something, no matter how. We have become users, instead of techies. The utility of computers trumps our sense of fascination with them. What falls by the wayside is  not just curiosity but also our understanding of how something works.

When the engine of my motorbike stuttered I usually took it apart. If my computer does not start up I take it to the Apple shop. I cannot help but feel I lost something along the way.