When Technology Is Invisible, Humanists Better Get Busy
As a historian of technology, I'm fascinated to be living through one of the epistemic changes in the history of technology. The internet, the many-to-many communication possibilities of Web 2.0, the globalization of knowledge, are all different in form and quantity (and, I would say, therefore in kind) than previously. But what is not different than other moments of technological change is the way the culture absorbs those changes. It's a bit of a simplification, but I see three stages in the history of technological adoption. The first is whenever the "new" is introduced. The rhetoric is hyperbolic--the change will solve all the world's problems or it will create them. Good or evil. Exaggeration in all directions. The second stage is debunking. All the good things you expected didn't happen, neither did the bad things. So this leads to confused thinking about the new technology, ambivalence, and uneven development---in the present issue, there is digital divide (of course), with uneven acceptance and application of new technologies for a variety of reasons, but there is also digital ambivalence and a kind of digital boredom (i.e. the difference between the tenth roller coaster ride of the day and the first). Enough already. I'm sick of all this speed and I'm ready to go flop on the beach. So then comes the third stage: invisibility. Technology no longer looks like technology; it looks like "life," like business as usual. It is expected, adjusted to, expectations (including hyperbolic ones) are gone and replaced simply by doing it. It's no longer a roller coaster ride (not the first, not the tenth) but everyday life.
I think we are already in this third phase. We expect change to come ever faster, we expect our cell phones or our iPods or our laptops or our X-Boxx's to be obsolete every six months or year. We don't expect everything; we don't blame our toys. They are just a given. This is where humanists must get busy. (They need to get busy, of course, in the first and second stages too----but now is where what we offer, our critical analysis, is essential.) Because the new technology didn't do all those hyperbolic things we first thought---but, in fact, they have changed our lives far more than we now may think they do. We know that IT in our institutions is far more expensive than it once was. So what's been cut to pay for all the new technologies? Art classes? Physical education? Smaller teacher-student ratios? Attention to the kids who are not doing as well? Attention to the braniacs? Something's gotta give. This is true in every aspect of our society. One that is intersting me lately is privacy. At one point, surveillance and Big Brotherism was on all our minds. It's not anymore and what does that mean, given that we passively take off our shoes and put our toothpaste in baggies at airports (and some of us get pulled aside before every flight because we "look" like terrorits), we have RFD's in our passports, we have surveillance cameras everywhere. Parents can check on their kids all day, to see what they eat for lunch at school, whether they tarry in the halls, what they do on popquizzes. We feared all this in 1993 . . .
When technology is accepted, when it becomes invisible, we really need to be paying attention. This is one reason why the humanities are more important than ever. Analysis--qualitative, deep, interpretive analysis--of social relations, social conditions, in a historical and philosophical perspective is what we do so well. The more technology is part of our lives, the less we think about it, the more we need rigorous humanistic thinking that reminds us that our behaviors are not natural but social, cultural, economic, and with consequences for us all.
- Cathy Davidson's blog
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Is it really invisible?
I think in some sectors of society, the advent of the Internet, cellphones, etc. has become invisible, but in academia, not so much. There still seems to be a lot of denial and resistance, perhaps along the lines of the first stage you mention. I definitely agree that analysis is important but what I fear is that it may come too late. I get the feeling that some humanists want to stop the world for a time so that they can do that analysis, but of course, the world is changing at an ever faster pace. It's an interesting dilemma, and I hope that you're right, that the humanities becomes even more important as the technology becomes invisible rather than the alternative, which would be for the humanities to remain in denial and thus become obsolete.
Uneven development, always.
Uneven development, always. Some wish nothing had ever changed since they day they received their Ph.D. . . . that is a whole different issue. I am more concerned about technology in everyday life being so expected and accepted as the cost of everyday life, so naturalized, that people start thinking about such things as (to name just a few) the high-level pollutants in the desk around your desktop, or in the old computers in the landfills, or in the production process in making technology. "Clean technology" is a lie. Or I'm concerned about hyperactivity and multitasking--the kind of work Kate Hayles is doing now with ADHD and mental processing. Or about the political structures of the world mobilized by new technology. Etc. These are all the kinds of topics that many interesting humanities scholars are engaging with.
On your other good topic I think some parts of the humanities become obsolete not because of their objects of study but because of their objection to anything that foundationally and fundamentally challenges the arbitrary, customary structures of humanities departments. I am appreciative of the long history of the humanities----but I find the idea that you hire by categories of nation and period and that you master a "field" according to catories of nation and period to be antithetical to the way ideas really accrete and influence and exchange--across peoples, across time.