“Change”. “Progress”. Two different words often used interchangeably.
All progress is change, but not all change is progress.
Change can be bad or good, driven by people, nature or the elements. It can be organic or inorganic.
Consider that major changes haven’t happened to the world itself or the human race over the last 150 years. But there’s been major progress. How so?
Organic change tends to occur over really long time periods. Human-driven progress on the other hand is an inorganic attempt to influence change, often reverse engineering it via new technology and marketing. Hence, in this day and age, it’s much faster.
Progress can only be good by definition, and in typical contexts, is human-driven. It occurs top-down, rather than bottom-up.
Not only is progress inorganic, it’s not always asked for or even desired by the people affected. Unlike organic change, It serves as an industry category of its own, driven as much by its own survival as by the needs of people.
Does it help if there’s natural demand? Sure, but lack of demand is not a dealbreaker. Every day, things are created in advance, relying on marketing to construct the demand.
Companies like Magic Leap can raise 2 billion dollars by appearing “progressive” to investors. That’s a lot of dough. Whether you accept what they offer or not, they will do everything in their power to make you want it.
The progress industry relies on your constant support, and belief in the forward vision it represents. What gets a large group of people to embrace progress? It starts with a Point A and point B.
Point A is what we’re moving away from: The lingering trauma of something in the past, and disenchantment with the present.
Point B is what we’re moving toward: What life could be. What we could be. A vision of paradise.
When this discontentment and longing become strong enough in a culture, “paradise” is a very easy sell, especially in the hands of a charismatic leader.
Note- The visions do not have to be true. They can be complete delusions, as long as they are compelling enough to massage the collective longings of the audience. To get their “buy-in” and spur participation.
Big tech has it’s own vision of paradise it wants you to buy into. This vision imagines humanity completely networked like nodes of a giant brain, with humans and AI seamlessly integrating. These better humans can be conceived as something more efficient and orderly.
On the flipside, a progress vision can fixate its longing on a long-buried cultural past.
In World War 2 Hitler channeled German misery and vengeful bloodlust into a diabolical, authoritarian killing machine. On the other side of the bloodshed was an imaginary Aryan paradise reflecting their perceived former glory.
For a less bloody example of similar sentiments, consider the Renaissance, Europe’s 400 year artistic golden age beginning around 1300 AD.
The very word “Renaissance” means “Rebirth” in old French. The “re” part of “rebirth” is critical, cause it tells us there’s an idealized past somewhere. Indeed, the Renaissance artists sought to carry the perfections of Greco-Roman culture onto their era.
There are many factors driving these shifts (not the least of which, are new technologies) but it’s the strength of the paradise vision that gives progress its enduring, transcendent romanticism.
People need to dream. No matter how bleak life gets, they will cobble together a paradise vision from whatever is available to them, with fragments of past, present and future.
However, there’s a major contradiction in the very notion of “seeking paradise”.
Once you find it, you shouldn’t have to find it again. Paradise in the biblical sense is an eternal kingdom. What’s the point of paradise if you need to keep trading it in for the latest model?
When we strip the romanticism away from progress, three deceptively simple questions get raised:
- Is progress a real thing in the West, or like paradise, just a fantasy?
- If progress exists, how would we measure it?
- If progress stopped, what would we have to face?
When we hit our paradise vision, it should follow that human beings achieve inner peace, and feel no need to “improve” society further.
But that’s not the case. The pendulum of desire is in constant motion. An overly efficient society dreams of being closer to earth. The earthy society longs for glamour and efficiency.
Contentment is a rare enough thing under the best of circumstances. But in an age of constant connection, with marketing aiming to topple our sense of contentment hundreds or thousands of times a day with visions of wealthier and happier people, it may be virtually impossible at the societal level.
If progress never brings us to paradise, then the journey has no destination, and the goal of progress becomes motion for motion’s sake- much the way a biker keeps pedaling to avoid the harsh reality of gravity.
What realities would we face as humans without the progress industry churning us along? Boredom? Fear? Spirituality?
If progress needs to exist independent of natural problems, you can expect the progress industries to be constantly tinkering with even our working systems, and if they can’t complement them, simply break and replace them. And of course, progress dictates someone will break their system too in due time.
An absurd circularity forms, with one set of problems and discontentments displaced and replaced by a new set of problems and discontentments.
Where does big tech fit into all this?
Big tech thrives on a shiny, metallic paradise vision it both serves and manufactures. The merits of this vision range from the really trivial (shaving minutes off already simple tasks) to the lifesaving (precise surgical applications of robotics).
In the paradise world of the tech giants, our world and even our very humanity are broken. And they can step down from their digital Mt Olympus to set us straight.
When it’s in their interest to sell the vision at all costs, can you trust them to know the difference between true progress and the manufactured kind?
We’re not asking the right questions about progress, what we gain and what we lose, and until that happens, we will just be a bunch of data points on a chart to be shuffled around and sold to the highest bidder.
True progress begins with asking the right questions.