All of the parts of our culture have become a mishmash of old and new components that really don’t align and add to the sense that our whole world is completely out of balance and headed for a crackup. Well, all that is true but I get the impression that this is just how the world feels to everyone as they get older. In fact, it was probably even more extreme a hundred years ago when people from really old cultures came in contact with American progressivism in the 1920s. And the tension between the old comfortable conventions and the chaotic modernism of the on-line existence is what will force the exact shape of what comes afterward. After all, there are things going on now that cannot possibly go on in their current shape. They are just too maladapted to last for more than a few years. And these excesses will spawn reactions that will modify and even optimize some of the new customs and patterns that the next generations will adopt.
So, no matter what the world looks like in the coming generation, I won’t like it because it’s not my world. But it will fit the people living in it. And I will have had whatever input I could provide by my limited feedback to my contacts in the younger generation and by providing an echo of what the world was like in my time.
Aside from whatever small influence I will have on the new culture what I will contribute to is the historical record of my time. The sum total of all the historical records of the second half of the twentieth century will be an enormous treasure trove for those who look back on that time period. It will be recognized that that era spawned the single most impactful technological event of the last thousand years, the digital revolution. And because of this enormous change the customs and practices of this generation will be studied to see what effect this innovation had on the older culture that pre-dated it. Because these changes are unprecedented. And I believe the negative effects of this revolution will be dire.
And at some point, corrective actions will need to be initiated to mitigate the harmful consequences on humanity. Some technological and commercial products may have to be banned in order to minimize the dysfunctional outcomes that these practices create in the same way that we prohibit the use of certain very dangerous drugs that create addiction in humans. And conversely, new products and services may be mandated to provide humans with patterns and behaviors that are known to improve individual and group mental health and benefit society as a whole.
Well, that’s a lot of supposing. But I think it’s a safe bet that we are currently living in the time when the most imbalanced on-line culture exists. I think as the maximum disruption of pre-digital culture is reached the imbalance of the digital culture will begin to recede as equilibrium around the new structures occurs. The only question is will it crash our civilization before that equilibrium is reached.