What Hath Man Brought
Process Thinking: The Faith, Hope & Consequence of Standage’s Victorian Internet
Last week I was thinking a lot about the assumptions we make around new and emergent technologies, and what happens to those assumptions when humans start to use them at scale. This week I’m thinking that many of these assumptions we make are the reflections of faith we place in the technologies we create, and that these assumptions are repeated over time.
We see the problematic human aspiration and consequence in Standage’s telegraph, and also in the social media so abundant at the time of his writing. But we also see it today in our fear and embrace of generative artificial intelligence. When these behaviors are repeated over and across centuries, they stop being assumptions, and become human ritual in the ways we repeatedly place faith in the tools we create for ourselves.
There are rituals of hope in the positive benefits a technology will bring as much as there are rituals of consequence in their often unintended human use. There is common language of connectivity and unification. These are the elements which I think make Standage’s book still worth reading because they are present in his historical recollection, but also at the time of his writing and at the time of our writing in 2024. As I am developing a script which will be narrated over a video, I am still benchmarking length at around 1,000 words, which equates to about six minutes.
The main procedural difference I’ve made since last week is to sharpen the focus more around the ‘why is Standage still relevant’ question, bring our course questions to the fore, and wrap them all around a more simplified and coherent proposition and framework of faith and ritual. Questions of how we embrace new technologies are framed through a lens of aspiration ideas of hope. Rituals of consequence as metaphor for conflicting cultural practices and social change are counter-argument to the faith we place in technology. And my conclusion argues that Standage’s work articulates our cultural understanding of these technologies through rituals of hope and consequence repeated over time.
I’ve sharpened my abstract and significantly cut its length. I’ve dropped one of the previous week’s sections entirely so that I can focus my argument on these two main areas - rituals of hope and rituals of consequence, and how they show up across three distinct time periods - the 1800s, 2014 and 2024. I don’t think they are the reductive binary of ‘good or bad’ because they are both good and bad, but I will attempt to surface a number of important questions which never resolve themselves across the behaviors we see in the telegraph, social media and generative artificial intelligence.
Re-Written Abstract:
Technology is often the most human of tools. It motivates faith and hope in our aspirations for it to unite. It also brings consequence in its all-too-human unintended use. These behaviors repeat themselves as cultural patterns and echoes over centuries, transforming into ritual as we endeavor to make sense of the world around and between us. Standage’s Victorian Internet helps draw a highly relevant line of cultural exuberance and concern through the promise and innovation brought by the telegraph, to the hopes we held for social media at the time of his writing in 2014, through to our current fear and embrace of generative artificial intelligence in 2024.
Formal Outline & Organizational Plan:
Proposition/Thesis:
Standage’s Victorian Internet is worth reading in 2024 because it reflects a deeply human ritual of technological hope and consequence which has repeated itself from the invention of the telegraph in the 1800s, through the rise of social media in the early 2000s when Standage was writing, and continues in 2024 with the adoption of generative artificial intelligence.
Introduction: What God Hath Wrought
Why might problematic human assumptions be repeated over time?
We cannot understand the way in which technology is re-shaping cultural norms while we are still living through it
Technology motivates changes in communication between people through aspirational faith but also abbreviated efficacy
Metaphor as a means by which we can draw connections of faith between The Victorian Internet, 2014 and 2024
Current technological examples include generative artificial intelligence, mobile connectivity, voice recognition and messaging
The Promise Brought: Benefits & Bridges
Reason 1: We embrace new technologies through a lens of faith and hope
Example A: Human aspiration in the cultural benefits of unification and exuberance brought by the collapsing of time and space between people is present across the telegraph, social media and generative artificial intelligence
Example B: We make assumptions of faith that a more connected, unified world is a source of good, and repeat this over time
Example C: We place faith in technologies which expedite positive economic and cultural outcomes through those which generate ‘common sympathies’ to human problems - we look to end suffering, drive prosperity and reduce conflict, but for whom?
The Consequence Wrought: Privacy & Price
Reason 2: We understand a ritual of consequence as a metaphor for repeated conflicting cultural practices and social change
Example A: Technological consequence is wrought by unintended outcomes inherent in making assumptions, however aspirational.
Example B: Consequences of increased connectivity include erosion of human agency and privacy, fraudulent behavior, criminal activity - these span the telegraph, social media and generative artificial intelligence
Example C: In current times it motivates the weaponization of platforms by bad actors for economic and political outcomes
Example D: The data-harvested price of engagement and habituation when we are the product
Conclusion & Open Questions: What Man Hath Brought
Standage’s work articulates our cultural understanding of technology through rituals of hope and consequence
It links together cultural aspects of technological aspiration and fear between the Victorian era and our own, but also extends it towards the future as a pattern of behavior we can expect
The faith in which humans place their hopes in technology is often challenged by the unintended consequence of its all-too-human use
Assumption that a more connected, unified world is a source of good is repeated over time
All innovation comes with a price. It is up to us to understand if the exchange is worth it
