There’s a pretty cool documentary available for download from your favorite torrent site (or for streaming on Vimeo) at the moment. It’s called “Us Now” and it looks into the way that new communication technologies are beginning to change the way that people, organizations, businesses and governments organize themselves and carry out their work. Here’s the Vimeo link:
Watch “Us Now” on Vimeo
I actually became aware of it while browsing the “movies” section on mininova the other day, where it was (at the time, anyway) ranked #1 in terms of concurrent downloads, outpacing Hollywood blockbusters like Surrogates, Zombieland, Up, Star Trek and etc. Which is apropos since, to quote the film itself:
We are living through what economists have called an positive supply side shock to the amount of freedom in the world. More people can say more things to more people than ever in history and that is still growing enormously.
And while it’s unclear exactly what effect that “shock” is going to have on the film and music and publishing industries (not to mention government and society at-large) it’s definitely something worth spending a few moments to consider. Because we’ve been faced with similar examples of systemic change throughout our history, and in many cases failed to realize the opportunities afforded by these changes, ceding victory to the forces of inertia and tradition. Not to say that’s necessarily a bad thing, but consider the example of the industrial revolution, in which global productivity increased by several orders of magnitude, presenting humanity with the chance to completely reconsider the relationship between work and leisure. But instead of taking this opportunity to redistribute leisure equitably among all workers, our adherence to a traditional morality that praises the “virtue” of hard work has created a situation in which many are overworked and an increasing number are unemployed while government and corporate entities continue to enrich themselves on the surplus of industrial output.
But it didn’t need to be this way. Bertrand Russell, writing “In Praise of Idleness” in 1932 proposed the following:
In a world where no one is compelled to work more than four hours a day, every person possessed of scientific curiosity will be able to indulge it, and every painter will be able to paint without starving, however excellent his pictures may be. Young writers will not be obliged to draw attention to themselves by sensational pot-boilers, with a view to acquiring the economic independence needed for monumental works, for which, when the time at last comes, they will have lost the taste and the capacity. Men who, in their professional work, have become interested in some phase of economics or government, will be able to develop their ideas without the academic detachment that makes the work of university economists often seem lacking in reality. Medical men will have time to learn about the progress of medicine, teachers will not be exasperatedly struggling to teach by routine methods things which they learnt in their youth, which may, in the interval, have been proved to be untrue.
Above all, there will be happiness and joy of life, instead of frayed nerves, weariness, and dyspepsia. The work exacted will be enough to make leisure delightful, but not enough to produce exhaustion. Since men will not be tired in their spare time, they will not demand only such amusements as are passive and vapid. At least one per cent will probably devote the time not spent in professional work to pursuits of some public importance, and, since they will not depend upon these pursuits for their livelihood, their originality will be unhampered, and there will be no need to conform to the standards set by elderly pundits. But it is not only in these exceptional cases that the advantages of leisure will appear. Ordinary men and women, having the opportunity of a happy life, will become more kindly and less persecuting and less inclined to view others with suspicion. The taste for war will die out, partly for this reason, and partly because it will involve long and severe work for all. Good nature is, of all moral qualities, the one that the world needs most, and good nature is the result of ease and security for all; we have chosen, instead, to have overwork for some and starvation for the others. Hitherto we have continued to be as energetic as we were before there were machines; in this we have been foolish, but there is no reason to go on being foolish for ever.
So yeah. Maybe whatever revolution it is that’s going on right now is another chance to stop being foolish. To dismantle some of the unidirectional, broadcast models of “communication” that have helped to create the neurotic, image-obsessed society we live in, and to experiment with some new means of expression.
Or maybe, as David Berman said about MDMA, it will only serve as a new kind of opiate for the “strangely passive kids who grew up in the child protectorate of the U.S. eighties and nineties [and] came of age, craving depersonalization. Apparently it helps them dance. They’re a very attractive lot. Have you seen them dance?”
Additional Reading:
Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software (2001) Steven B. Johnson
Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder (2007) David Weinberger
