And now for something completely different
In about 1995 I started lugging around a laptop as part of my job for the obvious benefit of taking most of your office with you. When I got home or checked into a hotel, I would plug into the phone jack and download emails at about 20kbps. There were no social sites like Facebook and no home video sites like YouTube but we were a lot more connected than only a few years earlier. Even in 2000, this was the situation. Today, I went to the Human Bean and used their free wireless network to do the same thing except at much higher speeds. There are 3 places I know of where you can do this in Cobourg. But I am behind the “mobility times” - many people have Blackberries and do the same thing anywhere - not just in a cafe or hotel.
This is an incredibly fast change - I can’t think of all the social implications but they will come. This is as certain as the fact that Tibet is now in the Internet world and Chinese actions cannot be hidden from the world like they could when the Dalai Lama was forced to leave. Technology sometimes changes the way we live as well as the way we work. Examples: Telegraph, phone, TV, Internet, High speed Internet, Social networks…. What will be next? Biological technology has also made big social changes - antibiotics, effective birth control and more.
Hiding from technology does not help. Saying “I don’t need or want to participate” is not like insisting that radio is just as good as TV - it’s more like saying that being a hermit is better than living in a town. The world will change - you can either participate and benefit or live in a world that no longer exists.
But human nature is such that change is resisted - by some more than others. Some change should be resisted (e.g. pulling down historical buildings) but other changes both technological and social are inevitable. We should try to cope with them rather than try to stop them. This is a wide ranging comment - I don’t want to colour it (yet) by picking on a particular “change” but I’m sure others will!
John Draper
April 3rd, 2008 at 8:51 am
Reading this post I am reminded of Bob Dylan’s song called “The times they are a changing”. In it he says “you’d better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone” which I think is the underlying message in your post.
I used to think my grandmother, born in 1888 and died in 1969, and her generation, were the ones to see the biggest changes in society over their lifetimes, but I think now that the pace of change is even faster for us.
I would like to ignore much of it but that’s just not an option, as you say. We had all better hone our swimming skills, quickly!
April 4th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Two comments posted by regular commenters have been deleted. It’s hard to see how these comments were relevant. The point of running a blog is to get relevant comments and not provide a forum for poets to air their talent. This is not the first post to be tarnished this way and only certain people do it.
Moderator
April 4th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Plaudits for the post-post prophylaxis.
April 4th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
To my mind, change is actually “adaptation” to different circumstances around oneself. It takes effort to adapt, so when we resist change, we are actually declining the opportunity to adapt, perhaps because we don’t want to make the effort, rather than simply ‘resisting change’ as it is most often expressed. As humans invent ways to deal with their circumstances at any given time, they add opportunities for others to adapt to them as well, and this is perceived as “change” beyond our individual control. By resisting ‘change’, we fall behind in our own ability to deal with the adaptations of others and we feel more and more marginalized. As a result, a sense of the world running away with itself becomes an ongoing and growing concern for the individual. This brings me to the ideas expressed by some of you, that you can’t fight change, and if you don’t keep up, you get left behind. It’s not about fighting change, its about making the continuing effort to adapt - that’s a choice, not an infliction, and the degree to which we choose to adapt is as individual as our other life choices. It’s our adaptations that dictate the “change” that we experience.
April 5th, 2008 at 8:53 am
One of the things in Ms Deb O’Conner’s posting touched me. It was her reference to her grandmother’s witness to change from 1888 to 1969. This brings change down to the blue grass roots of the experience – the family, the generations that we have personally experienced. She reminded me very much of my mother’s experience which overlapped a large swath of Ms Deb O’Conner’s grandmother.
I don’t have any additional Bob Dylan quotes to enhance this posting, so I’ll quote myself, brief selections from Elegy to My Mother. Both Ms Deb O’Conner’s grandmother and my mother were born in an “unelectric world, devoid of devices of diversion” and lived their grass level lives in a “century of unprecedented carnage and creativity.” I listened to them, their memories “of the pre-tek world, of the pre-penicillin world, from pre-flight to post-lunar landings.” So there it is in a single life time. I look forward to the future.
At the end of the Elegy, the words apply not just to my mother, but to entire families, the extension of ourselves, biologically, culturally, forever into the future. Each of us, individually and collectively as a species, is an “unfinished poem carried into the interstellar future on the crest of code of dna, forever in a state of becoming . . .” We are evolving ourselves with ever increasing velocity. It’s exhilarating.
The general sentiment that ‘change’ is something of a nuisance to be endured is a sentiment shared by many. That’s unfortunate. There is something completely missing from this thread so far: a cheerleader for change. There are plenty of prime reasons to accelerate the velocity of change. Change is the consequence of unfettered creativity. Buckle up!
April 5th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Call me a nit-picker and a wacko, but I don’t think that it’s “change” that we’re looking at here (based on the original post). Change is ‘from’ something ‘to’ something, both of which are already identifiable. The “change” under discussion seems to be ‘from’ the present situation, condition or something equally identifiable but ‘to’ something that has not yet been defined - something reasonably unknown - a ’surprise’ if you will. Then, as we adapt to the ‘new’ condition, situation or something like that, we experience what is being labeled as “change”, but you aren’t specifically causing that type of “change” happen. Adaptation is based on what has passed - we can not adapt to what has not yet happened or been. The idea I took from the opening post was that we are certainly better off if we “adapt” to the “adaptations” going on all around us. If we want to effect “change” we have to have an objective to which we are going to change whatever it is that we are wanting to change. So, I’m saying that we cannot resist change, because it is an ‘action’ that we must initiate or it doesn’t happen. We can resist “adaptation” and that is how we should perhaps look at it instead. “Change” is neither positive nor negative. It is simply an intended action that produces a result that creates a difference. Adaptation is a voluntary action that we must also initiate but it can produce both positive and negative results and so requires some forethought to be effective as intended. “Change” results from ‘adaptation’. This holds true for humans, animals, nature, whatever.
I suspect that most of you have lost interest by now, but attempting to put this ‘concept’, that floats around in my brain, along with numerous other ones, to paper, is a most interesting and challenging exercise. I don’t usually share these ‘concepts’ of mine with anyone (again, because they get boring for most, I presume). However, they do help me to keep an open mind to whatever comes along. If you’re still reading, thanks for the interest.
April 5th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
I would take issue with one point that you raise Mr Manfred Schumann; your assertion that change results from adaptation. It’s the other way around. You either adapt to change or not adapt, at your peril.
We change/adapt to changed circumstances. Or we don’t. Circumstances change when a creative force asserts itself.
Life is not a noun. It is a verb. Creativity tends to overthrow old orders. Creativity is deliciously dangerous and exhilerating. We are passengers and participants travelling with accelerating velocity towards our destiny. There are those who largely keep their focus out the front windshield, and there are those continually glancing into the rearview mirror.
April 5th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
To think Draper deleted you and me for “irrelevent” posts.
The mind boggles….
April 6th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
One big change we hear a lot about is “Global Warming”. Only a few years ago, this was hardly discussed at all. But this year, our winter in Canada has hardly been warmer - I think everyone agrees it has been colder and with more snow. I am one of those skeptics who thinks that although the earth is warming, I have not seen any proof that it’s caused by man. BUT, does that mean all the environmental activism is wrong? Should we resist these calls for change?
If we reduce our production of carbon dioxide, we will most probably reduce our use of energy - especially oil and coal. And since these are limited resources - they can’t go on forever - reducing oil consumption is a good thing by any measure.
So the major change of a new-found environmental conservancy is a good idea even if we don’t all agree on the reason! I wonder how many other changes are good but not for the reason(s) given.
Other changes I think about are technology (e.g. internet and biological changes) and social (no smoking, less marriage, gay rights) and as several commenters have said, how we adapt (or cope?) with these changes is key. Probably the most interesting changes to me are technology changes that cause social changes - e.g. better communications causes people in Pakistan to rally against someone expressing his opinion in Holland! Not something that happened even 10 years ago.
April 6th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
“e.g. better communications causes people in Pakistan to rally against someone expressing his opinion in Holland! Not something that happened even 10 years ago.” — Mr John Draper
In August 1968, Chicago, Democratic National Convention, the police run amuck, and American youth in the tear gassed streets began to chant, “The whole world is watching. The whole world is watching.”
Marshall McLuhan mused about the Global Village.
Yes, it is accelerating.
Because I have spent my life in arty circles & triangles, I have seen the growth and development of body modification art. There will be a time when an artist teams up with scientists to develop living forms of art. Designer clones. I would encourage this sort of exploration.
Can I ask my dentist to install the latest crown with a built-in GPS system for when I submerge into Alzheimer’s?