It has been said (by people wiser than me, let me hasten to assure
you) that the world’s only constant is change; that the only thing we can be
sure of going forward is that we can’t be sure of anything going forward. This
has certainly been true in my experience – if you had asked me, twelve months
ago, to tell you what I would be doing now, preparing lesson plans and
exercises for the four sections of Management 409 I am scheduled to teach at
Michigan State this coming semester would have landed somewhere between walking
on the moon and being elected dogcatcher. Which is to say, rather less likely
than winning the Nobel Peace Prize or finding a cure for the common cold. But
when I reflect back over the past year, and a few of the ones that came before
that, I can’t help thinking that generation gap that results from civil,
cultural, or technological change is almost as universal…
Consider, if you will, the people who persist in the belief
that e-commerce is a passing fad, and that if we all stick our fingers in our
ears and yell “LALALALALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU!” loudly enough it will all go
away. It may seem unique to this current time – and indeed, it would be
difficult to name anything quite as dramatic as the sea change that our society
has undergone over the past two decades. But if you think back (or ask your
tribal elders, in the case of you younger geeks), you may recall that VCRs were
another “passing fad” that turned out not to be. Recording television programs
and movies and viewing them when YOU wanted to see them led directly to current
technology such as DVRs, on-demand cable programming, downloadable audio and
video files, file-sharing sites and even things like You Tube and Twitter – not
exactly ephemeral trends…
If we go back a little further, cable television was
considered a fad when it first appeared – who would pay for television when you
could get it for free over the airwaves? In the 1970s (and into the 1980s) there
was (briefly) a generation gap between those who loved having dozens of
entertainment choices and wanted their MTV, and those who longed for the days
of Masterpiece Theater and newscasters who were more widely trusted (and
respected) than any government official…
I wasn’t around for the appearance of television itself, but
my parents told me about the time when the first sets came onto the market, and
the people who disdained the new medium sneered about how a broadcast program
you could see would never live up to the imaginary landscape created in their
generation’s radio dramas. My grandparents told me about a similar gap that
appeared between fans of the original motion pictures and those with synchronized
audio tracks – the so-called “talking pictures” or “talkies” that changed
everything following World War I. And my grandfather, who was born in 1904,
told me about the disdain his parents’ generation had for moving pictures,
which would never live up to the power of live performance…
This is not to say that every new technology will evolve
into something that changes our world forever. Digital Audio Tape (DAT) never
really caught on as a mass-media format, and neither did DVX (single-use DVDs
that self-destructed after you watched them). More to the point, perhaps, audio
CDs are on their way out, slain by the iPod and downloadable content, and the
iPod itself is showing signs of being made irrelevant by its own descendent,
the iPhone. People who cling to the CD will most likely end up in the same role
as those who cling to vinyl records, reel-to-reel tapes, and wax recording cylinders,
what is less obvious is that people who insist on clinging to the current
technologies will most likely end up in that same place…
As we move forward into the New Year, the only thing we can
be sure about is that the world will change, and we will have the choice of
changing with it or wondering why none of the products, services or media we
want to use are still available and why everyone keeps referring to us as “Luddites.”
I can’t tell you where I’m going to be on New Year’s Eve 2013, or what I’ll be
doing at that time; the only thing I can more or less guarantee you is that whatever
happens next won’t be anything like what we expect it to be, and that no protest
we make is going to matter. In the end, it doesn’t matter if you believe in
change; change believes in you…
In a few hours it’s going to be 2013. Let’s be careful out
there…
