Has future technology abandoned the past?

‘A man at work, making something he feels will exist because he is working at it and wills it, is exercising the energies of his mind and soul as well as of his body.’ – William Morris

 I love science fiction, especially time travel stories. I write them in my spare time. If I could build a time machine, I would transport myself back to one of the more earthy eras before the Industrial Revolution, when virtually everything was made by hand using simple tools. I have always believed I would have been much more at home then. I would also find it irresistible to travel a few decades into the future to see what is in store for us as the twenty-first century unfolds.

In the course of the evolution of human society, it has only been in the last couple of hundred years that manufacturing the commodities we need or want have been dominated by machines. Now technology is developing at such a pace it seems every week we are bombarded with some new invention or use for an existing one. But don’t get me wrong, I am not a Luddite. I am not anti-machine or anti-technology. In fact, some of my best friends are machines (my bread-maker, sewing machine and vacuum cleaner for example) and products of new technologies (I certainly couldn’t live without my iPad or DVD recorder

Even in the face of their relative ease of use; labour-saving qualities and the ability of new technologies to bring the world closer together, there remains an intrinsic need in the human psyche for the satisfaction found from creating things by hand. Need that is often unmet in the course of our fast-paced twenty-first-century lives. I watch with joy as my granddaughter finds as much pleasure from molding things from play dough, glueing bits and pieces of paper and fabric together, as she does from watching the latest animated children’s movie. Yet educational institutions are so bent on fast tracking even their youngest students into the digital age they are often doing so at the expense of many fundamental hand skills. Many traditional trades like toolmaking and shoe-making are all but dying out. Where I believe the danger lies is not in the use of the new technologies as a means to an end but the idea that they might become ends in themselves.

If the technological advances we are watching develop at the moment are expected to solve global problems then clearly that isn’t happening. Millions of people are still starving around the world, or fighting in their streets and many mass manufacturing processes are being blamed for a range of health concerns among the world’s growing population as well as environmental damage. Mental health issues are on the rise and the economies of a growing number of countries are on a rapid downward trajectory.

It seems that the more civilisation advances, the more likely there is resistance to sudden change. Groups spring up in all sorts of places expressing a desire to get back to core values of life to ensure a more enriched and sustainable future: one relying on technology but one where buying local; recycling, repairing, making and growing some of the necessities of life also plays a major part.

I didn’t set out to portray all the negatives of technology and sound doom and gloom about the future. The Digital Age still has much to offer us. It is just a matter of understanding where it is heading and how we can also happily fit the pleasures of handmade into our personal lives as well.

What do you think about Jenny’s opinion?  What do you think that today’s society could remember from the past?

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