|
Bardini has a profound grasp of this phenomenon of social inertia. The conservatism of our social institutions is his forte. Indeed, he is aware that the entire educational system is a gigantic qwerty phenomenon. Kimon's problem is that the political system is also a gigantic qwerty phenomenon. Both institutions are stuck in the agricultural society. Our schools and universities still have long Summer vacations so that students can help with the harvest. Our political systems are based on the sovereignty of national states each based on real estate, as established by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. Two paradigmatic shifts from agricultural to industrial and from industrial to information society (and the correlated shifts to video-based and to computer-based media) within a single century is much too fast for our sluggish social institutions.
The problem then is to help our social institutions across the digital divide from the first two generations of media, based on physical energy, to the third and fourth generations, based on electrical energy. The traditional Standard Social Science Model (SSSM), which considers the human mind as a "tabula rasa", is of little help. Trying to understand culture without biology is like a beachcomber trying to explain the pattern of flotsam and jetsam on a beach without mentioning the sea. (the Titanic deck-chair metaphor for futility should be updated!) Evolutionary psychologists argue that this 'tabula' is far from 'rasa'. Human nature has evolved over millions of years of survival in a harsh arena. Engelbart and Bardini realize that the solution lies in an understanding of human nature.
|
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 