Here’s a followup to an earlier post:

Part 1 (Kevin Kelly’s interview in Christianity Today)

Part 2 (my reply, posted here)

Part 3 (drawn from the comment thread to my post):

Kevin Kelly: Nick,

Thanks for the careful read and thoughtful response.

Curious lingo??? I think there is no doubt that God speaks just like Kevin Kelly.

But to the crux of our disagreement:

You end with:

“The best you can argue, therefore, is that technological progress will, on balance, have a tendency to open more choices for more people.”

This is precisely my argument. I am not arguing that technology increases the options for everyone equally. Of course new technologies remove some options. Lots of excellent horse buggy and whip makers lost their opportunities. I talk about a very tiny net gain in options when you tally up all the options lost compared to the ones added. That very tiny micro net gain accumulated over time is progress.

You say:

“Look at any baby born today, and try to say whether that child would have a greater possibility of fulfilling its human potential if during its lifetime (a) technological progress reversed, (b) technological progress stalled, (c) technological progress advanced slowly, or (d) technological progress accelerated quickly. You can’t.”

You can. If you take a random human on earth from 10,000 years ago, from 1,000 years ago, from 100 years ago and from 10 years ago, the chances are greater the nearer we pick the more that person will fulfill their potential. Or, second experiment, ask a random person today when they would prefer to live, and the more fulfilled they are, the more recent they want to live.

You say:

“It’s absurd to believe that if Mozart were living today, he would create the great works he created in the eighteenth century – the symphonies, the operas, the concertos.”

It is only absurd if the great works had already been created. That is if someone else had written Mozart like symphonies. But if no one had written symphonies like Mozart I don’t think it absurd that if Mozart was born now, he could write symphonies. Many are still writing classical symphonies. People are still writing operas and concertos. Artists are still painting still lifes and realistic portraits Writing novels. And making careers doing so. Why not Mozart? His music doesn’t have to sound EXACTLY the same. Symphonies that a 21 century Mozart would write today may be sound different, but could still be genius. Would you say that if Dickens was alive today he would not write great novels? Would you say that if Van Gogh was alive today it is absurd to think he would paint?

I’ve been thinking hard about the source of our divergent views since we agree on a lot. And in part it may be due to this:

I spent my formative years not in college, but in the middle ages. I mean I lived in medieval towns, and feudal villages and ancient camps. I have lived in the past, not just read about it. I spent a lot of time among illiterate people, simple people with very little technology. Years in places that for all practical purposes are a time before Mozart. I feel I have a visceral feeling for both the advantages and joys of that type of life, and of its disadvantages.

I feel I have a good sense of how difficult it was for a Homer to appear. It’s hard to describe to someone outside how constrained life and roles are in pre-industrial, to say nothing of post-industrial, cultures. 99% of everyone born was a farmer or herder. Only 1% achieved anything different.

My thoughts return again and again and again to the thousands of village boys and girls I met who spent their childhoods (and beyond) plowing behind an ox year after year, or mindlessly following sheep and goats for weeks on end away from home, wanting wanting wanting to leave — to do something greater.

Homer was lucky, a one in a million. The other million Greeks, as well as you and I if we were born then, had no such luck. Their lives would only be improved in satisfaction and fulfillment if they moved to the future. I know this in my bones. In particular I remember a remote Greek island I stayed on where the women were still veiled, the folk spoke a dialect of classical Doric, and all they wanted was electricity. There were farmers and housewives but no Archimedes. I have not been back for 40 years, but I bet today there are many more occupations, far more diversity of achievements. I bet 50% or more of the population of that island are now doing something other than farming or herding.

I can’t tell you how many hours/days/weeks I spent sitting around with people who had a lot of time to sit around. I would say they had a contentment, but I would never say they came close to fulfilling their potential. They generally agreed, because they encouraged their children to NOT follow their footsteps for this reason.

This progressive view does not stem from my theology. In fact it is the reverse. My theology stems from this formative experience.

Carr: Thanks, Kevin. Because your argument that technological progress is a moral force, a force of “love,” as you put it, has practical implications for how we approach technology – as individuals and as a society – I think it’s essential that we question your argument, which is what I’m trying to do.

You seem to swing between two explanations for how technological progress expands choices. One is based on a statistical analysis of utility: do new technologies (in general) have the effect of opening more choices for more people? I have no beef with you here. Human beings are toolmakers, and the main reason they make tools is because tools are useful. They extend human power and hence options. So it’s not a surprise that, on balance, technology would leave us generally with more options. This explanation does not require us to believe there is any moral force, any force of love, influencing the course of technology.

The second explanation you give is not about cold calculations of utility. It is about technological progress being a moral force that allows individuals, as individuals, to fulfill their “godly gifts.” As you say in the interview: “we are obligated to materialize as many inventions as possible, to hurry, so that every person born and to-be-born will have a great chance of discovering and sharing their godly gifts.” Please note that here you are not talking about statistics; you are talking about individuals: every person born and to-be-born.

I think it’s revealing that when I challenge your second explanation (which is the basis for your argument that technology is a force of goodness, of godly love), you quickly (in your comment above) take refuge in your first explanation. You revert to statistics, pointing to “a very tiny net gain in options when you tally up all the options lost compared to the ones added.” That is not the same as expanding the potential of “every person born and to-be-born” to fulfill their “godly gifts.”

I ask a question about a particular baby – a real child – and suddenly you want to talk about a statistically random child, a theoretical child. Does your God think about children in statistical terms, or does He think about them as individuals?

To put it another way: If there’s a God behind your first explanation, it’s a capricious god, who doesn’t seem particularly interested in the fate of his creations as individuals. He’s God as Statistician, concerned with “very tiny net gains.” The God you explicitly identify behind your second explanation is a god of love, a god who is interested in expanding the options for every one of his creations, each of whom is blessed with unique “godly gifts.”

Which God is it?

I truly believe your argument about Mozart (or Dickens, or anyone from the past) is specious. Just because the piano persists does not mean that Mozart would still be Mozart if he were born today. The world of human beings – the technium, as you describe it – has changed dramatically, opening some new opportunities and closing others, and it’s impossible to know how that complexity of changes would affect the fate of any given individual. And, as I said above in my reply to Mike, if Mozart’s gifts would survive history moving forward, why would they not survive historical change moving backward? Music existed before the piano. No, I don’t think that it’s absurd to think that Van Gogh would paint if he were born today (though it’s by no means assured); I think it’s equally plausible that he would paint if he had been born 500 years earlier than he had.

On the one hand, you want to tie individual genius to the particular technologies of the day. On the other hand, you seem to say that individual genius is not constrained by the technologies of the day. Which is it?

Let me make a final point, not for rhetorical reasons but because it’s one I struggle with in thinking about the effects of technological progress. You like to take a statistical view of technology’s effects, which leads you to speak of percentages of the population. For instance: a greater percentage of people live in material comfort today than did a few millennia ago. That’s a valid way of measuring things. But there’s an equally valid way of measuring things that looks at absolute numbers rather than statistical norms. The view is very different depending on which way you measure things. For instance: you could argue that technology has improved life on earth because a lower percentage of people exist in a state of physical suffering today than used to. But one of the most important effects of technology has been to allow for an enormous increase in human population. And if you look at absolute numbers, you might well find that more individuals exist in a state of physical suffering than did before. The statistical analysis obscures the individual sufferer. So is technology good because it has reduced the percentage of people who suffer, or is technology bad because it has increased the number of people who suffer?

Kelly: Good questions, Nick.

I think you throw out three main challenges, which I short hand here:

1) Which God is it? Individual or statistical?

2) Does time and technology constrain genius?

3) Does God care about a percentage or a quantity?

My quick reply.

1) You ask “Does your God think about children in statistical terms, or does He think about them as individuals?”

The first answer — which is not very satisfying — is that as a omniscient God he thinks both. But I don’t think it takes a God to hold both views in your head. I think that you can increase options for individuals by increasing the average option or increasing the options for the average individual. I argue that increasing technology gives a “greater chance” for an individual to become fulfilled. I do not argue that a technology A, or even set of technologies A-Z, will automatically optimize the potential of person N. I argue that it will increase the potential for potential.

Perhaps you object to the idea that a moral force could be statistical? Or that love might somehow be an impersonal force? That love is something that only occurs between two humans and is not found elsewhere in the universe?

To answer your first question directly, I think “a god who is interested in expanding the options for every one of his creations, each of whom is blessed with unique “godly gifts,” ” does this very thing by expanding the options for all. This steady expansion (known as progress) may not touch each individual (our and their loss) but because it can liberate gifts an average, like most freedoms, it is a moral force.

2) You ask, “On the one hand, you want to tie individual genius to the particular technologies of the day. On the other hand, you seem to say that individual genius is not constrained by the technologies of the day. Which is it?”

I say the presence of technology enables individual genius and the lack of technology constrains individual genius. The particular technologies available greatly influence what can be produced. If time were symmetrical, running backwards with no effect, you would be right. (” if Mozart’s gifts would survive history moving forward, why would they not survive historical change moving backward?”) But time and progress is asymmetrical. That is the whole point. So while some options diminish, most accumulate, and none completely disappear, although they may obsolesce. We have more choices. As the book Shock of the Old establishes, more of the old technologies are still very much with us. In Mozart’s case all his technologies — and options — are still here. All of Dickens’ tools are still here. That’s why, while Mozart’s gifts can go both ways, his tools only go one way.

3) Your last point is very interesting. What kind of moral progress is there if it only entails the expansion of percentages and not absolute numbers? I would say it is not a very robust progress then. But I take a very long view of progress (my books starts pre-history), and in this view the rapid expansion of population during the industrial age is still progress in absolute numbers because all those people living in rural areas were still better off than the hunter/gatherers of yore. And while we tend to ignore it, I believe there was very slow mild progress (increase in options) even in remote agricultural areas over the millennia. The peasants in China in 1776 were better off — on average — than the peasants of 1776 BC, or even 776. And as I maintain the poverty of urban slums is much preferable to the poverty of the countryside, so the mass migration into cities in absolute numbers is a sign of progress.

To sum, I think you bring up two main questions:

Is progress real? I believe the evidence is clear it is.

Is progress a moral force? I think it is, but this may be a matter of definitions.

Carr: Thanks, Kevin. I think we’ve both had our say, so I’m inclined to leave it there. But I can’t resist making two quick points. You say, “the presence of technology enables individual genius and the lack of technology constrains individual genius.” That’s not always so, as the Homer example shows. Technological change can disable individual genius as well as enable it. There may be many people on earth today who would have been better able to fulfill their genius, or in general their potential, had they lived in an earlier, less technologically advanced time. We’ll never know. You also say, “all those people living in rural areas were still better off than the hunter/gatherers of yore.” How do you know that? There’s a strain of recent research which suggests that many hunter/gatherers led pretty good lives – idyllic, in some ways. The number of available “options” is not the only measure of the richness of a life.

Kelly: Yes, I think we’ve had our say so we’ll leave it there, but I’ll just add to your final points;

You mention:

“There may be many people on earth today who would have been better able to fulfill their genius, or in general their potential, had they lived in an earlier, less technologically advanced time.”

Yes, there may be, but I find it hard to imagine who they are.

You also say, “all those people living in rural areas were still better off than the hunter/gatherers of yore.” How do you know that?

Having visited some tribes, and watching the record of others, and reading the literature by the impartial. Simply put, very few people continue that way if they have a choice.

“There’s a strain of recent research which suggests that many hunter/gatherers led pretty good lives – idyllic, in some ways.”

I’ve read that research very carefully, and you might call their lifestyle many things, but no one, especially the researchers would use any word like idyllic or anything close to it. Like the Amish it has many attractive qualities, but the closer you get, the less attractive it becomes for yourself. I know. I considered it and looked very closely.

Nick, as I said earlier, I think this difference is really what we differ on.

In the course of preparing my statements for the Economist journalism debate, I reviewed a bunch of recent, useful studies and surveys. It took a while to dig these up, so I thought I’d provide a list here (in no particular order) in case anybody needs it in the future.

Federal Communications Commission, The Information Needs of Communities (2011)

Congressional Research Service, The U.S. Newspaper Industry in Transition (2010)

Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy, Informing Communities (2010) and Re-imagining Journalism (2011)

Media Standards Trust, Shrinking World: The decline of international reporting in the British press (2010)

American Journalism Review, Statehouse Exodus (2009) and Abandoned Agencies (2010) and Retreating from the World (2011)

Columbia Journalism Review, The Reconstruction of American Journalism (2009)

The Guardian, Stop Press (UK regional journalism survey) (2009)

Global Journalist, Is the Foreign News Bureau Part of the Past? (2010)

Human Rights Watch, Whose News? (2011)

Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism offers many studies, including its annual State of the News Media reports and News Leaders and the Future (2010)

I’ve been looking for good counterpoints to John Gray’s mind-altering book Straw Dogs since reading it a couple of years ago. Raymond Tallis provides one in his formidable critique of “neuroscientism” in The New Atlantis.

Here’s a drop from the bucket:

A good place to begin understanding why consciousness is not strictly reducible to the material is in looking at consciousness of material objects — that is, straightforward perception. Perception as it is experienced by human beings is the explicit sense of being aware of something material other than oneself. Consider your awareness of a glass sitting on a table near you. Light reflects from the glass, enters your eyes, and triggers activity in your visual pathways. The standard neuroscientific account says that your perception of the glass is the result of, or just is, this neural activity. There is a chain of causes and effects connecting the glass with the neural activity in your brain that is entirely compatible with, as in [Daniel] Dennett’s words, “the same physical principles, laws, and raw materials that suffice” to explain everything else in the material universe.

Unfortunately for neuroscientism, the inward causal path explains how the light gets into your brain but not how it results in a gaze that looks out. The inward causal path does not deliver your awareness of the glass as an item explicitly separate from you — as over there with respect to yourself, who is over here. This aspect of consciousness is known as intentionality (which is not to be confused with intentions). Intentionality designates the way that we are conscious of something, and that the contents of our consciousness are thus about something; and, in the case of human consciousness, that we are conscious of it as something other than ourselves. But there is nothing in the activity of the visual cortex, consisting of nerve impulses that are no more than material events in a material object, which could make that activity be about the things that you see. In other words, in intentionality we have something fundamental about consciousness that is left unexplained by the neurological account.

Here’s the bucket.

And lest we forget, amid all the clamor surrounding the McLuhan centennial, this week also marks the 45th anniversary of the death of Bobby Fuller at the age of 23, asphyxiated by gasoline fumes. The official cause of death was either suicide or accident – the coroner couldn’t decide – though many believe it was murder. I’m convinced that, like Robert Johnson before him, Fuller pawned his soul to the Devil, and the Devil collected on the loan.

The gun-toting dancers are beyond great:

As a footnote to my previous post on Marshall McLuhan and his legacy (tomorrow is the centenary of his birth), I share the following excerpt from a 1969 Playboy interview, in which he describes his vision of the end point of what we today call cloud computing. As is typical of McLuhan, there’s brilliance here, but there’s also a whole lot of bad craziness. At least I hope it’s bad craziness.

MCLUHAN: Automation and cybernation can play an essential role in smoothing the transition to the new society.

PLAYBOY: How?

MCLUHAN: The computer can be used to direct a network of global thermostats to pattern life in ways that will optimize human awareness. Already, it’s technologically feasible to employ the computer to program societies in beneficial ways.

PLAYBOY: How do you program an entire society – beneficially or otherwise?

MCLUHAN: There’s nothing at all difficult about putting computers in the position where they will be able to conduct carefully orchestrated programing of the sensory life of whole populations. I know it sounds rather science-fictional, but if you understood cybernetics you’d realize we could do it today. The computer could program the media to determine the given messages a people should hear in terms of their over-all needs, creating a total media experience absorbed and patterned by all the senses. We could program five hours less of TV in Italy to promote the reading of newspapers during an election, or lay on an additional 25 hours of TV in Venezuela to cool down the tribal temperature raised by radio the preceding month. By such orchestrated interplay of all media, whole cultures could now be programed in order to improve and stabilize their emotional climate, just as we are beginning to learn how to maintain equilibrium among the world’s competing economies [ha! -Rough Type].

PLAYBOY: How does such environmental programing, however enlightened in intent, differ from Pavlovian brainwashing?

MCLUHAN: Your question reflects the usual panic of people confronted with unexplored technologies. I’m not saying such panic isn’t justified, or that such environmental programing couldn’t be brainwashing, or far worse – merely that such reactions are useless and distracting. Though I think the programing of societies could actually be conducted quite constructively and humanistically, I don’t want to be in the position of a Hiroshima physicist extolling the potential of nuclear energy in the first days of August 1945. But an understanding of media’s effects constitutes a civil defense against media fallout.

The alarm of so many people, however, at the prospect of corporate programing’s creation of a complete service environment on this planet is rather like fearing that a municipal lighting system will deprive the individual of the right to adjust each light to his own favorite level of intensity. Computer technology can – and doubtless will – program entire environments to fulfill the social needs and sensory preferences of communities and nations. The content of that programing, however, depends on the nature of future societies – but that is in our own hands.

PLAYBOY: Is it really in our hands – or, by seeming to advocate the use of computers to manipulate the future of entire cultures, aren’t you actually encouraging man to abdicate control over his destiny?

MCLUHAN: First of all – and I’m sorry to have to repeat this disclaimer – I’m not advocating anything; I’m merely probing and predicting trends. Even if I opposed them or thought them disastrous, I couldn’t stop them, so why waste my time lamenting? As Carlyle said of author Margaret Fuller after she remarked, “I accept the Universe”: “She’d better.” I see no possibility of a worldwide Luddite rebellion that will smash all machinery to bits, so we might as well sit back and see what is happening and what will happen to us in a cybernetic world. Resenting a new technology will not halt its progress.

The point to remember here is that whenever we use or perceive any technological extension of ourselves, we necessarily embrace it. Whenever we watch a TV screen or read a book, we are absorbing these extensions of ourselves into our individual system and experiencing an automatic “closure” or displacement of perception; we can’t escape this perpetual embrace of our daily technology unless we escape the technology itself and flee to a hermit’s cave. By consistently embracing all these technologies, we inevitably relate ourselves to them as servomechanisms. Thus, in order to make use of them at all, we must serve them as we do gods. The Eskimo is a servomechanism of his kayak, the cowboy of his horse, the businessman of his clock, the cyberneticist – and soon the entire world – of his computer. In other words, to the spoils belongs the victor …

The machine world reciprocates man’s devotion by rewarding him with goods and services and bounty. Man’s relationship with his machinery is thus inherently symbiotic. This has always been the case; it’s only in the electric age that man has an opportunity to recognize this marriage to his own technology. Electric technology is a qualitative extension of this age-old man-machine relationship; 20th Century man’s relationship to the computer is not by nature very different from prehistoric man’s relationship to his boat or to his wheel – with the important difference that all previous technologies or extensions of man were partial and fragmentary, whereas the electric is total and inclusive. Now man is beginning to wear his brain outside his skull and his nerves outside his skin; new technology breeds new man. A recent cartoon portrayed a little boy telling his nonplused mother: “I’m going to be a computer when I grow up.” Humor is often prophecy.

The whole interview – it’s a whopper – can be read here.

These Economist debates seem to unspool in slo-mo. They’re a sin against realtime. But the third and final round of my debate with Jay Rosen on whether the net is making journalism better is now up.

Here’s my closing statement:

Like many who celebrate the net’s informational bounties, my opponent in this debate is a member of the online elite. He is a fixture on Twitter, having written, at last count, 16,963 tweets and garnered 61,765 followers. He is a prolific and popular blogger. He broadcasts his thoughts to the world through a FriendFeed account, a Facebook account, a Posterous account, a Tumblr account, a Storify account, a YouTube account and a Google+ account. And he has a weekly podcast. Jay Rosen is very much of the net.

I do not intend that as a criticism. Mr Rosen is plying his trade, and he is doing a fine job of it. On the internet, hyperactivity is no sin. But even though he has devoted so much time and energy to the online world, he has not been able to back up his defence of the net’s effects on journalism with facts. Instead, he continues to give us sunny platitudes and questionable generalisations. In his latest statement, he declares that “more people are consuming more [good journalism] than ever before”. That is a remarkably sweeping claim. What evidence does he supply to back it up? None.

I sense that Mr Rosen’s opinions about the state of journalism reflect the internet hothouse in which he spends his days. He sees a smattering of experiments in online reporting, few of which reach the masses, and he senses a renaissance in journalism. He sees a few dozen comments appended to an article, and he declares we are in the midst of a populist media revolution. He sees some nascent attempts to figure out how to pay for long-form journalism, and he senses an imminent widening of the national attention span. He calls journalism a “democratic beast”, but his “democracy” seems awfully narrow and awfully privileged.

Outside the new-media hothouse, people do not have the luxury of spending their waking hours tweeting, blogging, commenting, or cobbling together a Daily Me from a welter of sites and feeds. They are holding down jobs (or trying to find jobs). They have kids to raise, parents to care for, friends to keep up with, homes to clean. When they have spare time to catch up on the news, they often confront a wasteland. Their local paper has closed or atrophied. The newscasts on their local TV stations seem mainly concerned with murders, traffic jams and thunderstorms. Cable news shows present endless processions of blowhards. America’s once-mighty news magazines are out of business or spectres of their former selves.

In this light, Mr Rosen’s suggestion that “journalism, to be useful, needs not only to reach us with information, but to engage us in public argument” seems facile. Most people today would be happy with the information. And has the “public argument” really improved since the web’s arrival? It was loud and polarised before, and now it is louder and more polarised. The web rewards, with links and traffic, fervid expressions of ideological purity. We can see the result in Washington, where politicians preach, and tweet, to the converted, and the spirit of compromise, of appreciating an opponent’s point of view, is all but gone. We have no shortage of argument today. What we have is a shortage of good, unbiased reporting.

The drift towards our current state of affairs began long ago. But the web has accelerated the trend by making it much more difficult to keep a robust, even-handed news organisation in operation. Mr Rosen may be loath to admit it, but professional reporters are and will remain the main source of news. “In any community, journalists are the primary intermediaries for news,” wrote the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy. “They ask tough questions. They chase obscure leads and confidential sources. They translate technical matters into clear prose. Where professionals are on the job, the public watchdog is well fed. Part-time, episodic or unco-ordinated public vigilance is not the same.” It is fine to talk about “news as a conversation”, but in the end what matters is how well journalism keeps the broad public informed and maintains a watchful eye on the powerful. By weakening those roles, the net has done great damage.

I understand how a member of the plugged-in elite would assume the internet has improved journalism. If you spend hours a day consuming news and producing opinions, the net provides you with endless choices, diversions and opportunities for self-expression. For the news junkie, the net is a crack house that dispenses its wares for free. But if you look beyond the elite, you see a citizenry starved of hard, objective reporting. For the typical person, the net’s disruptions have meant not a widening of options but a narrowing of them.

Mr Rosen is a skilled advocate for the net’s benefits. But praise of the gains needs to be tempered by an understanding of how the net has eroded journalism’s foundations. The damage is not over yet. Just last month, the Gannett chain announced the firing of 700 more employees at 80 community newspapers. If we are going to secure a better future for journalism, online and off, we need to be honest with ourselves about its present condition. We can begin by rejecting the motion before us.