People of a certain age reading this will remember a programme called ‘Tomorrow’s World’
It was iconic for people of my age growing up and for anyone with an interest in anything technological or scientific. The format was basically innovative demonstrations of new technology, generally ones which would make life better. The central theme running through the programme as I remember it as a boy was the onset of the ‘leisure age’ and the ability of new technologies to free up our time to allow us to do exactly what we wanted whilst the technology took care of the banal and the benign and the boring.
These were exciting times in the days of Sinclair Spectrums, Commodore 64s and the prospect of being able to carry a portable telephone around in a brief case!! The rose tinted view of the future that was presented in Tomorrow’s World though hasn’t quite materialised as far as I can see and I think that the answer relates to mastery.
In the days of Tomorrow’s World consumerism, capitalism and globalisation were not yet in full and unadulterated swing and we had not, at that stage, been completely mastered by money (that is to say we still had mastery over money). The same applied to technology – at the stage we were in control of the technology and in control of the development and the direction that technology went. We are now well beyond that stage.
Our technological advances were supposed to aid us to a better life, to free up our time to spend as we wished because we had saved so much of it with exciting technological developments. It didn’t, we haven’t and we don’t.
Sat nav allows me to get to my destination quicker so that I can work there for longer and get home later because in my mind I assume the sat nav would allow me to do it quicker.
A mobile phone has allowed me to do multiple tasks at once every single minute of the day to make sure I never feel any peace or quiet and I’m contactable at any time.
The computers strewn around my house allow me to never engage in peaceful contemplation for whenever there is a minute spare I can open one up, turn it on, check my emails, check a webpage and engage. It seems I can never leave them alone. That’s before I consider television.
The mastery of money is the other problem. In the wonderful future world presented by Tomorrow’s World I instinctively felt that people wouldn’t need to chase money anymore because they would have enough and they would be rich in time. Of course enough is never enough and the reason that we continue to work ourselves to death is that we’re caught in the societal trap of thinking we need to get more money so we can get some more technology so that our lives can head towards Tomorrow’s World.
I don’t think that Tomorrow’s World consciously thought that they were selling me a lie but deliberate or otherwise, a lie it was and one that cannot go on forever.
Blog Post Number - 1259
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