Faustian Bargain

MY COMPUTER CRASH AND OUR FAUSTIAN BARGAIN

James R. Rosenfield

February 2004

Several weeks ago I suffered my first ever fatal computer crash.

Everything froze, not an unusual occurrence given the fundamental instability of Microsoft software. I did a hard re-boot, which usually kicks things back into gear, but when the computer came back on, only the dire words "Disc read error" appeared on the screen. Nothing I did could get things going. Alas, nothing my computer consultant did worked either.

The hard drive had simply broken. Dell was sincerely sorry, and sent out a replacement right away. But of course I had lost of lot of information. Critical things were backed up on the network, but like most of us I had failed systematically to save things on a continuous basis. Since this happened in late December, though, it made my new year's resolution for 2004 self-evident.

I suffered through the numerous stages of technological grief:

1) Denial

2) Anger

3) Resignation

4) More anger

5) Acceptance

6) Frustration

Plus, I was reminded again that we don't control technology; technology controls us. This is and will be the story of our lives and our world in the 21st Century.

Marshall McLuhan, the great 20th Century media prophet, often pointed out that any major technology "amputates" something, with any number of unintended consequences, many of them disagreeable. The automobile "amputates" our legs, we stop using our bodies, we become obese and subject to cardiovascular illness and diabetes. The television eliminates family interaction, dialogue between husband and wife ceases, and the divorce rate soars.

Think of the "amputations" you have suffered as a result of technology and your dependency on it. Here are just a few of mine:

--Once upon a time, I was able to add, subtract, multiply and divide in my head. That was long ago. The "amputation" took place years before personal computers, back in the late 1970s as an unintended consequence of calculators.

--I used to know numerous phone numbers by heart. That knowledge has long since been sacrificed on the altar of phone memories. Very convenient, unless you want to call someone and you don't have access to your usual phones. Again, the principle is one of compensation: What we gain in convenience we lose in dependency. Note the language I use, by the way: "in my head," "by heart." Machines take us away from our own hearts and heads, don't they? This is key to the Faustian trade-off that fuels post-industrial capitalism.

--I drive a Lexus that does everything automatically. But if a valet parker turns the lights off manually, I will inevitably drive for a while with no lights, since I no longer am habituated to turn the lights on when I start the car. Or if I drive a less high-tech car, I have to remember to turn the lights off, lest I end up with a dead battery.

How important it is to have a fail-safe, something that both overrides technology and reminds us to put a bit of our own energies into our technological tasks, so that we don't become slavishly dependent. But this is not the nature of technology, nor the nature of humankind. The battle (if it indeed were ever fought) is already lost.

McLuhan's observation about "amputations" was part of a four-point system he developed for thinking about technology. It's quite handy, in fact. According to McLuhan, every technology:

1) Magnifies or enhances something
2) Amputates or eliminates something
3) Retrieves something previously obsolete
4) Spins into reverse and/or creates enormously important unintended consequences.

The car, as mentioned before, amputates our legs. It also of course magnifies speed. It retrieves the proximity of a tribal society living side by side (McLuhan's "global village.") And it slows us down to a walk at a certain point of density (in New York or Bangkok you're faster on foot), creates pollution, and maims and kills millions.

It's illuminating to take technologies through this grid.

1) Magnifies ability to communicate across time-zones and geography

2) Erodes judgment (too easy to hit reply button, therefore too easy to reply angrily to an irritating message)

3) Retrieves instantaneous communication of tribal society (McLuhan's all-important "global village" again)

4) Turns into spam, reverses into labor-causing (deleting all those messages) rather than labor-saving

Word processing

1) Enhances speed of writing

2) Amputates ability to write longhand

3) Retrieves oral tradition by making writing more conversational (email does this also, of course)

4) Ultimately defeats literacy, therefore defeating the purpose of writing

The Internet

1) Magnifies ability to access information

2) Eliminates patience for slower modes of research (e.g., libraries)

3) Retrieves knowledge access of pre-literacy (e.g., encyclopedic local botanical knowledge of aboriginal peoples)

4) Reverses into information overload, unreliable information

Advertising is, I guess, not itself a technology, but it is a masterful user of technologies, and of course a tireless promoter of them. To me, this is what advertising looks like when put through McLuhan's process:

Advertising

1) Magnifies consumerism

2) Eliminates critical faculties

3) Retrieves childhood belief in magic ("buy me and you will become young, rich, beautiful, desirable")

4) Reverses into overload, cynicism

We don't control technology. Technology controls us. Is there any way to use technology and not be a party to its Faustian bargain?

I don't think so, without becoming a Luddite, a strategy doomed to failure. History tells us you can't go back. You have to work things through. The story of our lives will increasingly involve how technologized we can become while still retaining our humanity, and our sanity. There is certainly hope, but when I see little kids hypnotized by high-tech games or staring vacantly into the TV that now adorns the passenger section of their parents' SUV, I am not encouraged. Nor am I encouraged when I confront my own dependency, tempered only by my age (I'm old enough to be less technologically conditioned than young people).

Welcome, my friends, to the 21st Century!