In a post to Waiting for the Storm .com I discussed how representative government made sense in 1776 when mail was delivered by horse and most citizens couldn’t read, but the need no longer applies. @lookingforthemeaning replied “is the communication any better today?” Here was my comment:
All of your points bring up good questions.
“Is the communication any BETTER today?” Faster – yes, but more rational – NO. So,net result: yes, for situations like the discussion we’re having right now; no for things like political debates.
If the question were changed to, “could it be better today”, I think the answer is clearly yes, many times over. So that needs to be the goal going forward.
Your question “why does it always have to be newer and faster to be better?” is a good one. Again, we run up against that “BETTER” word, as well as “ALWAYS”.
The word “always” is really misleading. That’s what my original post was trying to explain. “Always” creates an artificially narrow selection from square one: always vs. never. There is no room for “sometimes” or “most of the time” or “not very often” or “well, in the U.S. it might be this way” or “for musically inclined people, it might be this way.” When all of those kinds of differentiations are added, the options for answers become immense.
The irony related to “newer and faster” becomes clear when you turn the question around. The easiest thought process for an engineering team to follow when marketing says, “make it BETTER” is for them to give it new features ( newer ) and make it work faster ( and cheaper ). So, there are going to be a lot of examples where better is tied to newer and faster. And, the public reinforces this: which machine has the MOST memory, the fastest processor; lasts the LONGEST, gets the BEST gas mileage. But, run into the SAME people at an antique shop and you will hear an endless stream of opinions about how the old stuff was better. Let’s see. You had some words for this: “miseducated”; “academics are some of the stupidest people out there”.
Fixing this is the real challenge. And that’s why I say, we just can’t reboot. There are SERIOUS FAULTS in the old structure. It took me 1400+ pages in my books to pull all of this together with a plan that could “possibly” work. To fix the faults, many things HAD to change.
