Think of the cowboy on the back of
his horse. The cowboy tells his horse what to do and the horse does it. This
working relationship between and his horse seems perfectly natural. Now imagine
the horse riding the cowboy. It not only seems unnatural, not to mention
ludicrous, but impossible. And yet today, social critics believe that is
exactly what has happened.
Emerson put the idea this way:
About 150 years later, it seems
that the “thing,” or technology or the Machine, is firmly in the saddle. This
view states that today the Machine is the predominant influence on human
thought and activity, in sum human culture. Furthermore, the Machine as a
totality has become autonomous since human beings have been so thoroughly
brought under its spell. Human beings may think they are free, but they are
not. “Neither nature nor culture now determines social structure,”[2]
Thomas Hughes tells us, because “technological systems have become the
determiner.”
Little Control
To see just how little control
people have today over the Machine (the author prefers the word Machine to other words such as technology or system because it conveys the idea of a unified, dynamic object or
system that the components of which have been organized to achieve specific,
desired ends, some simple, others complex. It comes in multiple forms, and may
be as large as a city such as New York or as small as an automobile or better
yet a smart phone that keeps humans on an electronic leash. Machines such as
these have taken control of people’s lives. Of course, they have beneficial
uses; otherwise, they would not have been built. However, their influence almost
always has harmful side effects. For decades the dominant concerned has been
the degradation of living environments.
For example, Los Angeles has an air
pollution problem that will cost 9.4 billion dollars this year in
health-related costs alone.[3]
That is a lot of money, but more important it reflects a lot of suffering,
especially among children. In addition, one hundred plant and animal species
are driven to extinction each year (1,000 time the prehistory rate.) Industrial
and chemical pollutants threaten to change the wealth (via the greenhouse
effect) and destroy the ozone which protects humans from dangerous ultraviolet
radiation that comes from the sun.[4]
The environment is being threaten on every front. This does not mean that
humans will destroy the environment, but they may change it so that it is no
longer conducive to human life. As Gregg Easterbrook puts it, “Nature doesn’t
care if the globe is populated by trilobites or thunder lizards or people or
six-eyed telepathic slugs.”[5]
Basis for Modern Society
But people generally do care. So
why don’t they, we, do something about these problems? One reason is that the
Machine is inherently a polluter and it is also the basis for modern society. We
have come to depend on it. To get rid of the Machine would be to throw the baby
out with the bath. Our situation is like air travelers who, 37,000 feet above
the Atlantic, decide they don’t want to fly. Another reason we can’t seem to
control the Machine is that our thinking has been so influenced by it that we
have forgotten how to think in non-Machine terms. Consequently, when the
Machine creates a problem, we usually turn to the Machine to solve it.
Furthermore, our values have become Machine-oriented. No one
today seems satisfied. And traditional sources of meaning—family, children
work, community, art, education, religion, etc.—compete poorly with going to
Mars or even with owning a Mercedes Benz automobile. Even the old technology
quickly becomes boring unless something new is introduced—or it becomes boring because something new is introduced.
Can't Say “No”
Thus we find ourselves on a wheel
of endless pursuit of satisfaction that we believe only the Machine can
provide. We have come to depend on the Machine as a source of meaning and in
doing so have given ourselves over to its control. We simply cannot say “no” to
the Machine. If the Machine says it is possible to build a Stealth bomber at
$530 million per plane, we build it. If the Machine says that we can go to
Mars, then, as the Time Magazine
headline exclaims, “It is the time for the U.S. to head for Mars.”[6]
Free time is an important indicator
of the amount of control we have over our lives. When free time becomes scarce,
there is a definite sense that forces greater than ourselves are in control of
our lives. It is like driving a car and discovering suddenly that the brakes
are gone. One moment we had complete control, and the next we find we can’t
stop at all. Having free time in our lives means being able to stop to look at
the scenery or to take a walk with our children. When we find there is less
time for such activities, then we know that we have given control over our
lives to something else.
More Work, Less Free
Time
One would think that as more
efficient and productive machines are built that people would be working less
and have more time for those many other interests that make well-rounded human
beings. But to think that the Machine creates free tome is to misunderstand the
nature and influence of the Machine. For example, consider the fact tht the
works f the two most technologically advanced nations of the 20th
century work more than twice as long as their prehistorical ancestors.
The Kung Bushmen, for example,
whose hunting and gathering cultures represents a way ofe that has existed for
40,000 years. Their workweek includes from 12 to 19 hours of labor. And though
their lives are materially poor compared our own, they are not empty. They
devote their free time to “such activities as visiting and entertaining friends
and relatives, and engaging in dances that put the participants into a trance.”[7]
Without the help of drugs such as Cocaine and Ecstasy because dancing itself is
enchanting. Placing oneself in a trance might seem primitively inconsistent
with modernity—the age of machines. Yet, the Machine (its communication
technologies) has become modernity’s pied piper.
In case the reader believes that
being placed in a trance has no place in modern society, he or she has to consider
that the average American family huddled around the mesmerizing glow of the TV.
Or not if the children are in their rooms playing video games or watching their
favorite shows on the computer. Being in a trance is compared to being in a
mental state induced by hypnosis. Yet, haven’t the various media of the Machine
had a hypnotic effect on modern societies? The Pied Pipers of the Machine
captures minds and lead the people under their thrall to an alternate,
artificial reality created by the Machine. They are like Dorothy and her dog
Toto who are swept away to the Land of Oz by a tornado. But Dorothy escapes
from Oz and returns to the real world, the Earthworld. That’s not so easy for
people living in a Machine world. Ponder the motorist who, with his head jerking
rhythmically up and down, turns and smiles at you uncomprehendingly. Or,
reflect on those ubiquitous joggers and walkers who tread intently onward in
sync with the hidden drumbeat of their portable music device or scanning their
smart phone.
Getting back to work, the point is
that technological advancement did not reduce the mount of work to be
performed. In fact, the workday first increased substantially with two
technological innovations that should have, one would have expected, reduced
the energy and time needed to grow food: the plow and the harness. These two
inventions, along with a few other minor inventions, such as the wheel, brought
into being agrarian society.[8]
Less Time for Dancing
With these inventions, people would
find that there would be even less time for dancing. Even today, the most
technologically advanced farmer in the world, the American farmer, has not seen
his workday shortened, though his standard of living has improved. One reason
for this is that technologies that make the American farmer the most productive
in the world are expensive, requiring more land and more work to pay for them.
Technological utopians, such as H.G. Wells and Karl Marx, thought the Machine
would ultimately free humans from work. About the influence of the Machine on
human labor, H.G. Wells says in his A
Modern Utopia (1905), “There are some foreshadowings of mechanical possibilities
in ‘New Atlantis’ [a utopian work written by Francis Bacon, published 1624],
but it is only in the 19th century that Utopias appeared in which
the fact is clearly recognized that the social fabric rests no longer upon
human labour.”[9]
As recently as 1969 this
expectation was expressed in “testimony before a Senate Subcommittee [which]
indicated that by 1985 people could be working just 22 hours a week or 27 weeks
a year or could retire at 38.”[10]
But these high-tech utopians did not understand the Machine. And as the reader
knows full well, their expectations turned out to be overly optimistic. To the
contrary, the amount of leisure time enjoyed by the average American has shrunk
37% since 1973, and the average workweek, including commuting time, has jumped
from under 41 hours to nearly 47 hours.[11]
Japanese workers have even less free time, working 360 hours more a year than
the average work in the United States.[12]
Why isn’t there more time? Because all the time-saving devices require more
time—to pay for, to keep up with, and to understand.
Machine Paradigm
The Machine not only requires more
work, but greater control over the worker. Almost all forms of work are
organized to some degree according to the Machine Paradigm (the idea that the
Machine is the ideal model of operation, each part of the operation performing
a specific function, under complete control of the mechanical system, having no
more value or importance otehr than the function it performs.) This method
analyzes work into a mechanistic, segmented process that structures the
worker’s activity into a predetermined and predictable pattern. The result from
the increasing specialization and control may be work alienation,
dissatisfaction with or indifference to the work being performed. Unalienating
work on the other hand, is often hard, dirty, long dangerous or low paying, but
it is also seen by the worker as having inherent value. Workers who operate
machines such as trucks, tractors, cranes, boats, etc. consider their work
meaningful not only because it requires skill, but because it gives workers a
sense of control, a sense of being free in their work.
Two Key Factors
There seem to be two keay factors
to worker satisfaction. The first is the worker’s relationship to his or her
work. The unalienated worker usually has greater control over a significantly
complex task. If the work, with the help of the Machine Paradigm, has been rationalized
into discrete segments of a continuing process (mail sorting, for example),
then the work becomes meaningless and seemingly in control of the worker.
Why isn’t there more time?
Because all the time-saving devices require more time
to pay for, to keep up with, and to understand.
Some companies, in order to reduced
turnover, have done way with the Machine Paradigm for certain tasks in order to
make tasks more meaningful for the worker. Indiana Bell Telephone , for
example, used to use an assembly-line method involving 21 steps. Turnover, a
sensitive measure of work morale, was reduced by 50%.[13]
The other factor is the relationship existing between and department or the
company. If workers believe that their only value to the organization is
functional or utilitarian (the organization being seen as a large, impersonal
Machine), workers will become alienated.
The factory was the first to use
the Machine Paradigm as an ideal model for organizing the work of its
employees. The assembly line broke the work into simple segment so that the
worker no longer had control of the entire job. Ultimately, worker lost control
over the quantity, quality, direction, and pace of the work.[14]
Lost Control
The result was workers became
alienated from their work, but no because it was hard, dirty, long, dangerous
or even low paying. Workers became alienated because they were no longer using
the Machine, but being used by it. They were simply cogs in a long, complicated
mechanical process. They might have control over a particular step of the
process, such as operating and arc welder or drill punch, but they had little
influence upon the process itself. Furthermore, because they no longer perform
complete job but only a single discrete step in the process, their work became
meaningless as it became trivial. For these workers, work had become an
impersonal activity which they could neither identify with nor control.
Henry Ford had used the Machine
Paradigm as the model for organizing labor into a continuing mechanical
process. The goal was to systematize and schedule all aspects of the working
operation, including sales, service, manufacturing and management. Most work
was no longer as hard, dirty, long, dangerous or low paying as it once was, but
the work had become mechanical and meaningless and the system had become
impersonal and threatening. Men like Henry [15]Ford
and Frederick Taylor (the father of scientific management) knew that in most
cases the Machine Paradigm degraded the work performed, but both men correctly
realized that systemization increased efficiency and productivity. Furthermore,
they believed, incorrectly, that the increasing rewards would compensate or any
loss of significance workers might experience.)
High Rate of Turnover
For example, 1914 Ford’s workers were
the highest paid in the automotive industry, an unprecedented $5 per day. And
yet, the high rate of employee turnover remained—380% in 1913 at the Highland
Park factory. For every hundred employees needed, the company would have to
hire 963. The wife of one worker wrote Ford the following: “The chain system
you have is a slave driver. My God! Mr. Ford. My husband has come home and
thrown himself down and won’t eat his supper—so done out! Can’t it be
remedied?... That $5 is a blessing—a bigger one than you know—but, oh they earn
it.”[16]
What this woman did not understand
was that from Ford’s point of view, which was that of the Machine Paradigm, the
worker’s only significance was is small role in the manufacturing operation.
Her point of view as the worker’s wife was different. Let’s call it organic and
human since it places the individual, her husband, at the center of concern. Furthermore,
she did not understand that Ford had created a system over which he no longer
had any control. The system demanded the type of work performed by the wife’s
husband. The system could be changed, of course, but any system based on the
Machine Paradigm, any system that is going to be optimally efficient and
productive, tends to dominate and exploit the worker.
In other words, it is the nature of
the Machine to exploit the worker in such a way as to make the worker more
productive and efficient.
Sometimes, changes in the Machine
actually do enhance the quality of work; riding a tractor is preferable to
walking behind a mule. However, such enhancements are secondary to the primary
principle of change in the workplace, which is to increase efficiency and
productivity. Of course, Machine efficiency may have to be sacrificed to minimize
other losses such as workers’ alienation and turnover.[17]
Mere Pawns
The major problem seems to be that
workers believe that they have little control over their lives as workers and
that they are merely pawns in the large Corporate Machine which uses them. Are
workers happier today in a Machine-oriented society? Apparently a large number
of them are not. Research published in a book titled The Cynical Americans: Living and working in the Age of Discontent and
Disillusion says that in 1983 43% of American worker were cynical about their
jobs and 16% are wary.[18]
In some groups it is even higher: blue collar workers, 54%; secretaries and
clerks, 48%; public utilities, 72%. Cynicism was lowest among professional
workers, 34%.[19]
As related to the worker, cynicism can be seen as an indicator of alienation.
The Machine is much kinder to
consumers. However, the high degree of control and influence exerted by the
Machine remain. When a job is alienating, it is up to management to convince
workers that the job really is meaningful and satisfying if only workers will
look beyond their specific task to the broader significance of the entire
operation. With consumers it is the job of advertising to convince consumers
that they need something that they in fact do not need. According to Montagu
and Matson, “Management of consumer demand is the manufacture of need and the
engineering of tastes.”[20]
The results of this engineering are that consumers are led further and further
from traditional values and drawn increasingly under the influence of the
Machine’s values.
In Alvin Toffler’s The Third Wave we are told: “The market,
which was subordinated to the social or religious-cultural goals of early
societies, came to set the goals of industrial society. Most people were sucked
into the money system. Commercial values became central.”[21]
Change in Values
Though one might hesitate to argue
that the Machine seeks to destroy traditional values, the Machine does seem to
have an inherent tendency to commercialize or replace them with values that
increase dependence upon the Machine. Older Americans, those who were adults
during World War II, are especially aware of the change in values that has been
an industrial society since 1870—when machine-based industry replaced agriculture
as he most important economic activity[22]—it
was not until the 1940s that the values of the average American began to change
dramatically.
It was about this time that America
began to shift from a work-oriented society to a consumer-oriented society, which
would eventually result in a radical decline of the importance of traditional
values. Thus we see a shift in the way Americans value children, the family,
the community, religion, and work, as well as the importance of secondary traditional
values such as art and education. It is not surprising that our greatest economic
competitor, Japan, is also becoming acutely aware of the threats to its
traditional values ever since the Machine became the dominant influence in
Japanese society.
The Machine has an inherent tendency
to commercialize traditional values
or replace them with values that increase
dependence on the Machine.
The increasing affluence that has
made many Japanese eager to adopt the American consumer-oriented way of life,
as the following editorial in an Asahi newspaper attests: “Japan has become the
richest country with money earned abroad—but only in bookkeeping... Living in
Japan, there no feeling of being rich.... It is high time to change the
Japanese way of thinking.”[23]
Other Japanese fear that the new way of life offered by the Machine will soon
destroy their traditional culture and its values. As one would expect, both
groups turn to America as their example.
Although older Americans are now
aware of the fact that the way of life that produced their values no longer
exists as the dominant influence in American society, they often are not aware
of the crucial role the Machine has played in causing the shift in the American
worldview and value system. It is tempting to blame the new generation for the
decline in traditional values, but this explanation is not very satisfactory
and perhaps unfair.
Our Changing Worldview
One of two things changes the traditional
worldview: either new ideas or new things. Some social critics like Alan Bloom (The Closing of the American Mind)
emphasize ideas. Bloom, being a philosopher, would probably tend to look to
ideas as the major source of influence. Nevertheless, new ideas have not had a
significant influence unless the material conditions of the society are conducive
to the acceptance of those ideas. For example, had the working classes of France
and Russia not been abused and exploited by selfish and uncompromising ruling
classes, revolutions implemented new social-political paradigms might not have
occurred.
Although the influence of ideas
remains relevant to the situation in modern America, the ideological explanation
does not sufficiently take into account the tremendous influence the Machine (technology)
has had on American society since World War II, such as the unprecedented
affluence of the middle class and (believe it or not) the introduction of
television into American society.
The Entertainment
Machine
Let’s take a closer look at the influence
of television and similar entertainment technologies. It is natural to blame
the decline of traditional values on the content of certain forms of
entertainment, such as rock music, television and motions pictures. It is is natural
because machines are thought to have neutral value: “Guns don’t kill people; people
kill people.” The motivating factor is the idea, not the thing. Yet, as true as
this is, it ignores the influence of
the gun.
Guns themselves embody an idea. In
handguns the only idea is to “kill people.” In America, where there is a
profusion of handguns in the homes, on television, in movies, and in stores,
the weapon has created its own mystique and mythology, thus having become a
dominant influence upon the American mind. In other words, things are not
neutral, but influence the way people think about their world and the way they
deal with it. Consider the ideas embodied in certain specialized environments,
such as a church, a playground, or a university. The ideas are those of
worshipping, playing, and learning. The objects of these environments express
various ways of perceiving and relating to and the world. They influence our perception
as well as our attitudes.
Now mentally walk into a gun store.
You would see something like this with handguns on the opposite wall:
One’s relationship to the world changes dramatically. The
idea is death, and too often the idea is acted upon. In the first week of May
1989,[24]
for example, 464 people were killed by guns in America.
Neutral Presence
People often take the same attitude
toward entertainment technologies as they do toward guns—assuming their
presence is neutral. Or, at best, they will attribute any influence to the
content of the various entertainment media. Recognizing this influence, as well
as the fact that the content itself often reflects consumer values created by
the Machine, it is also necessary to recognize that the media themselves are no
less influential. Consider, for example, the pervasiveness and accessibility of
the most popular form of the Entertainment Machine. Music is now available to
anyone, anyplace, anytime on radios, tapes, records, compact discs, personal
stereos, “boom boxes,” etc. Revision offers almost as many technological
variations, and is probably the overall winner since it is turned on an average
of eight hours a day in American homes. [TV has become a grandparent Machine surrounded
by a plethora of new audio-video Machines.] With the advent of home as an
entertainment center, video games and the VCR, the television is without a doubt
the most influential institution in American culture.
Little Time or
Learning
What is so impressive about this is
how entertainment technology has inundated society with so much entertainment, so
much that Americans spend 25 to 30 percent of their time being entertained by a
machine of one kind or another. Content aside, so much time devoted to the Entertainment
Machine is bound to have drastic consequences. Children who have spent 16,000
hours of their short childhood before the television set (in addition to the
time spent plugged into their pop music machines) simply cannot have much time
left over for learning activities.
The Machine has not only made entertainment
pervasive, it has made it easy. The might be characterized as a “dumbing down
effect,” meaning that the entertainment skills that people themselves once aspired
to acquire now been invested in the Machine. Simply put, the entertainment
Machine encourages passivity rather than activity. Skilled participators become
unskilled spectators.
The passive audience’s trance-like
state requires only the lowest level of cognitive operation. Unlike playing a musical instrument, painting
a picture, sewing a dress or even reading a book(which does improve literacy as
well as other thinking skills), there are no cognitive skills—beyond simple
consciousness—needed for most forms of entertainment provided by the Entertainment
Machine. It is not surprising that young people who spend most of thier time
being passively entertained find it much more difficult to engage themselves in
intellectually demanding tasks.
With the advent of the home
video games and the VCR, the
television has become the most
influential institution in
American culture.
The Obvious Threat
The threat to the Work Machine is
obvious. Preoccupation with passive form of entertainment produces
personalities and mind unsuited or the intellectual demands made upon them by
school and work in a technological society. The Work Machine is bound to suffer
more directly from the “dumbing-down effect” of the Entertainment Machine, as
well as from the loss of thousands of hours that every individual could have devoted
to intellectual development. The result is that the Entertainment Machine robs
its brother, the Work Machine, of intelligent workers capable of engaging in complex
tasks with intellectual skill.
A society that is saturated by entertainment
is bound to become entertainment-oriented. One of he results of the work-to-entertainment
paradigm shift is the decline of the work ethic (which basically says that work
is good if not always fun). There is an ever-widening gap between the world of
work and the world of entertainment, with the result that increasingly work is
seen as a necessary evil.
Preoccupation with
Entertainment
In addition, very little of the
content of pop music, television, and modern motion pictures applauds the value
of work (beer commercials being the most notable exception). The result of the
preoccupation with the Entertainment Machine is that work has lost much of its
status as a cultural value.
However, the Work Machine is better
at adapting than those poor unprepared young people who have been led to La La
Land by that pied piper the Entertainment Machine. When the Work Machine loses
a worker because of the “dumbing-down effect” of the Entertainment Machine, it
simply creates a smarter machine to do the job. Once the youngster awakens from
the Entertainment Machine induced reverie he might find himself barely making a
living at a low-paying service job or unemployed. The Machine, like nature, is
indifferent to the fate of the individual who chose to be entertained rather
than educated. And playing catch-up is difficult as an adult struggling to
survive in an intellectually demanding world. Many people never do catch up. And
the Machine does not care.
False Utopia
As the new generation comes under
the influence of the Machine, it is no wonder that the old generation often
does not recognize its own children. The Machine that was so lovingly created
by the old generation for all the new would radically change the values of he
new generation. The Machine was a gift from the parent generation that had
known the scarcity of the Great Depression and the sacrifice required by World
War II.
This was a generation that was
devoted to its children, to its community, and to its country. It was a
generation that, out of love, generosity, and a profound devotion to work,
created an affluent utopia for its children. For them, the Machine that made
the utopia possible was simply that, a machine. That it could transform the
American way of life and the American value system did not seem possible, and
was hardly a consideration when it was ostensibly the cause of such dramatic
improvement in the material quality of American life.
One recalls the transforming touch
of King Midas who loved three things more than anything else: first his
daughter, then his rose garden, and finally gold. Through the good deed of
saving a satyr he earned wish and he chose to be able to transform anything he
touched into gold. That seemed like a good idea in theory, but when he touched
the flowers of his garden they turned to gold, and when he touched his daughter
she too turned to gold. The effect of the machine was similarly pervasive. In less
than a century it had a transforming effect on every aspect of American life, upon
the workplace, the community, and the home. The older generation created a Machine
of extraordinary transformational power and bequeathed it to its children only
to discover that transformed them as well.
The new generation would soon lose
touch with the values of the Machine’s creators. The new way of life that the
younger generation would embrace would be that of consumerism; a life
preoccupied with the Machine and its endless diversions. They would revel in
their own Midas touch and disregard its control and corrupting influence. (In
Japan this new generation is call shinjinrui
or new human beings, the new breed of consumers.)[25]
As a result, the new generation’s
devotion to the old community, to the old religion and its ethical worldview,
to the old America, to its children, and even to its own parents, would
decrease or disappear whenever that devotion conflicted with the pursuit of the
newly-created wealth that flowed endlessly from the Machine that had been so loving
built. Today we live in a new world, a world that is materially far superior to
that of the old. Few Americans, young or old, would want to return to the old
pre-Machine world. And yet, Americans are becoming increasingly aware that a
good as the changes have been, they have exacted a price, not only from the
physical environment, but also from the cultural soul of the people. The old
way of life, to use the jargon of the car salesman, has served a the trade-in
for the new.
Americans are also beginning to
realize that such costs can ultimately destroy much, if not all, of the good
that has been accomplished. A nation that spends most of it leisure time
watching TV and adoring pop stars such s Roseanne Barr—“TV’s hottest star,”
says Time magazine,[26]
and Kevin Costner (described on the cover of Time as “The new American hero: Smart, Sexy and on a Roll”[27])—will
not long be able to sustain a culture that is either affluent or spiritually
meaningful.
Nor can a nation that is
quickly depleting its
resources and poisoning its
environment expect to
maintain or very long a
materially high quality of life.
Nor can a nation that is quickly
depleting its resources and poisoning its environment expect to maintain for
very long a materially high quality of life. Finally, a people that finds, for
whatever reason, that their work has become drudgery, will not only have lost
one of the most significant sources of meaning in life, but will no longer be
able to afford the affluence that has been made possible by those Americans who
loved to work even more than they loved to spend.
Show Some
Self-Control
If Americans want to keep the
technological gains that they have made and not totally abandoned the values of
the old world, then they are going to have to start thinking about just what it
is they want fro the Machine, as well as about what they do not want from it.
Then they must act upon their conclusions. They are going to have to show some
self-control as well as control over the vast Machine they have created.
As it stands, the influence of the Machine is supreme because Americans have failed to control their consumerist appetite. This appetite is typical of a society trying to fill the void created by the abandonment of traditional sources of meaning. If Americans, and the rest of the world, fail to control themselves, then things will remain in the saddle and continue to ride mankind. And as long as that situation prevails, the future America society, and that of humankind in general, will remain uncertain.
[1]
Abert Borgman, Technology and the
Character of Contemporary life. (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1984), p.
58.
[2]
Thomas Hughes, American Genesis: A
Century of Invention nd Technological Enthusiasm—1879-1970. (New York:
Viking, 1989), p. 58.
[3]
Alina Tugend, “Cost of Smog: $9.4 Billion a Year,” Los Angeles Herald Examiner, 7 July 1989, p.1.
[4]
“Planet of the Year: What on Earth Are We Doing?” (cover story), Time, 2 January 1989, pp. 26-73, 54.
[5]
Gregg Easterbrook, “Cleaning Up,” Newsweek,
24 July, 1989, p. 50.
[6]
“Michael Lemonick, “The Next Giant Leap for Mankind,” Time, 24 July 1989, p. 50.
[7]
Rudi Volti, Society and Technological
Change (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988), p.89.
[8]
Gerhard Lenski nd Jean Lenski, Human
Societies: An Introduction to Macrosociology, 5th ed., (New
York: McGraw Hill, 1987), p.164.
[9] H.G.
Wells, “A Modern Utopia,” The Quest for
Utopia, eds., Glenn Negley and J. Max Patrick (Garden City, New York:
Doubleday, Anchor Books, 1962), pl 234.
[10]
Nancy Gbbs, “How America Has Run Out of Time,” Time, 24 April, 1989, p 59.
[11]
Ibid., p. 58.
[12]
Karl Schoenberger, “Self-Denial Wears Thin for Japanese, ” Los Angeles Times, 7 July 1989, p. 11.
[13]
Lenski, p. 283.
[14]
Bernard Gendron, Technology and The Human
Condition (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977), p. 136.
[15]
Hughes, p. 219.
[16]
Ibid., p. 219.
[17]
Lenski, p. 283.
[18]
Donald Kanter and Philip Mirvis, Living and working in the Age of Discontent
and Disillusion (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1989), p. 10.
[19]
Ibid., pp. 170-173.
[20]
Ashley Montagu and Floyd Matson, The
Dehumanization of Man (New York: McGraw-Hill 1983), p. 114.
[21]
Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave (New
York: Bantam, 1982), p. 40.
[22] Lensky,
p. 237.
[23]
Schoenberger, p. 11.
[24] The
year this essay was written and published in Coleman College’s magazine Aim High was 1989. Has the gun situation
improved much since then? Not according to the BBC December 17, 2024 article “How
many US mass shootings have there been in 2024?”: “There have been more than
488 mass shootings [an incident in which four or more people are injured or
killed] across the US so far in 2024. For each of the last four years there
have been more than 600 mass shootings - almost two a day on average.” Or The Trace (Dec 31, 2024): “16,576 - The
number of firearm deaths, excluding suicides, in 2024.”
[25] Schoenberger,
p. 10.
[26] “Slightly
to the Left of Normal,” Time, 8 May
1989, p. 82.
[27] “Kevin
Costner: The New American Hero—Smart, Sexy and on a Roll,” (cover story), Time, 26June 1989, pp. 76-82.
