In the long, long history of the human race--millions of years long--we began as hunters and gatherers. The way we look, physically, and the things we can see, and smell, and eat, and notice, are the result of a long history of hunting and gathering. The human critters whom we are, are the descendents of those who were good at hunting and gathering.
It was not until about 10,000 years ago that the first enormous change in the basic condition of human life happened: agriculture. People discovered that instead of chasing wild game all over the savannah, they could tame some of the animals, and have them right next door when they needed food. At the same time, they discovered that they could grow some of the plants on the hillside, and at the river bank, and would not have to go scrounging for wild onions and root vegetables, or for the grains of grasses. With both the domesticated animals and plants, keen observation, and careful selection improved the yield of the wild varieties. The result was a concomitant shift from a nomadic to a settled life. "Why don't we stay right here by the river, and make sturdier shelter. Thus, little settlements, and then little towns. Farmers. People who specialized in making clothing, or taming animals.
Only a few generations ago, another incredible shift happened. People discovered that instead of using human or animals muscle power to move things, or to turn things, or to plow, they could harness the energy of coal, and oil; make steam, and turn big shafts, with belts and wheels. And still later, but not much later, how to make portable machines to pull plows, and thresh grain, and even drive across the countryside. Airplanes. Cars. And eventually, even nuclear power. That was the industrial revolution.
Farmers could plow bigger fields, haul huge loads, without needing to have huge farm families with a dozen kids to provide labor. The kids went to town and got jobs in those factories that needed--not so much craftsmen, but cogs--to work alongside each other, each specializing in doing a small part of a complex whole thing. Industry. Detroit. Cleveland. Dusseldorf. The Midlands in England.
Those were the first two incredibly important revolutions in human life. We live in the third one. Someone--lots of someones--invented computers. Think of the post office. They still have not figured out how to make the transition from an industrial society delivering pieces of paper with information on them, to manipulating information electronically. The industrial factory towns of Pennsylvania and Michigan and Ohio and Wisconsin lost jobs to other places in the world where there were now surpluses of former agricultural labor looking for work in the new automobile factories, and the new steel mills; automobile factories that used the new computerized machines and information that the old factories could not have imagined.
Silicon Valley. "The Soul of a New Machine." Laptops. I-Pads. Cellular phones. GPS devices. Maybe in the old industrial factories there had been a premium on brawn. Now it rewards brains: anybody's brains, male or female; math skills, social media, clouds of information. Information, information, information! An age of information!
And we are trying to make that transition. Some of those old industrial jobs will never return. Some of those cities will never be what they were. The question is whether they will figure out what they can become, instead. Politicians promise a return to what used to be. They are appealing to the people who cannot imagine ever becoming part of what is becoming true.
Instead of promising a return to an industrial age, the politicians should be helping us make a transition, and that means helping the people who have no place to go back to, and who probably will not ever become computer programmers, or data base managers. Part of what we have to do is to take care of the people who have been caught in the revolution of work and leisure, who cannot make the transition. Part of what we have to do is to take advantage of the new situation and educate ourselves for it, learn to understand it, to plan our cities and transportation, and energy sources, and information pathways to enable it.
Nothing is to be gained by pretending that things can be the same, again. Everything is to be gained from seizing the new technologies, and ideas, and opportunities, and using them. But plain human care for each other demands that we understand what is going on, and that we do not discard those who are hurting just because the world has changed around them.
It is not just a soul of a new machine that we need, but understanding, and wisdom, and care, and a zeal to manage and utilize what is happening all around us.
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