Here Come the Barbarians

I don’t know whether to cheer or despair at the news that the FCC is proposing to free up unlicensed spectrum for a massive program aimed at spreading free ultra-high-speed wifi throughout the country.  For the significance of the program lies not so much in technology per se, but in the major acceleration of social and cultural change sure to result.  When President Obama was first elected, I made a note to myself that one of the greatest impact programs he could sponsor, akin to FDR’s rural electrification program and Eisenhower's Interstate Highway program, would be to promote broadband internet in the rural heartland of America.  So, on one hand I rejoice at the democratization of technology implied in the FCC proposal.  One of the things you’re taught in political sociology is that new technology usually goes first to elites who use it to strengthen their grips on the reins of power. This is the kind of reversal of that approach that has contributed mightily to social change around the globe.  A famous graffiti on a Middle-Eastern wall during the Arab Spring said simply, “Thank you, YouTube.”  The reins of power will now increasingly rest in the hands of the adaptable young.  On the other hand, there’s an old French proverb that the primary task of each generation is to save civilization from the barbarians of the following generation.  So far, we’re not doing very well at that, and a tidal wave of high-speed communication can only accentuate the problem.

The FCC proposal is generally supported by city governments and by technology vendors, with the exception of phone and cable vendors who fear losing business because of it.  It potentially can provide speeds 10 times faster than even our broadband vendors provide now, ushering in a real age of information availability.  Some areas of the world, like Taiwan in particular, are already experiencing it, and sneer at our backward ways.  It is being tested now by Google in the Chelsea area of NYC, and reported to be wildly popular, enabling small businesses to do things they’ve never been able to do before.  It will enable also the spread of innovations like new health care technologies such as remote robotic surgery, and even, it is whispered, future electronic transmission of medicines for assembly via nanotechnology at the patient’s bedside.  I suspect that in one form or another, the FCC proposal will be realized.  But a real spread of broadband technology will also result in changes to the heartland culture like we’ve never seen before.

It’s hard for city people on the east or west coast to appreciate the isolation of rural and exurban areas in the Midwest.  A few years ago, visiting relatives in rural Minnesota, I was surprised at the lack of the broadband internet I had come to take for granted on the east coast.  And that lack translates into information shortages.  Unless you really work at it, available information is mainly the local variety, or national and international information filtered through the local culture into a pre-existing point of view.  The hundreds of information sources I get regularly just don’t exist.  That situation is changing, but not at a rapid pace.  As a consequence, there’s a major culture lag problem in this country, where coastal citizens and heartland citizens have entirely different perceptions of what is happening here and around the world.   The result is the kind of impasse politics we’ve been experiencing, each side standing their ground for an entirely different vision of what the world is and should be. High-tech availability in rural areas will eventually create pressures for resolution of differences into a more common national vision.  That’s the good news.

But those hundreds of different information sources produce thousands of different standards for what is or is not acceptable behavior and what is or is not a valuable part of our culture.  As a result, we experience in a new high-tech culture an “any thing goes” kind of confusion about limits, generating the kind of social turmoil we see in our cities today.  And Beyonce replaces Mozart, at least temporarily.  The popularity of such TV shows as “Downton Abby” reveals a kind of longing for standards of an age we gave up long ago, but the popularity of “Big Bang Theory” and “Colbert” also reveals a moral core to the vision of the new age.  I enjoy all those shows.   We live in an age of transition.  Eventually things will settle down and social norms will reappear.  In the meantime, the barbarians are advancing.  The society of the future will be the result of what we do now.