Is America Premodern or Postmodern?

Richard · 05-27-2009, 06:58

Something to think about.

Richard's $.02

Quote:

Is America Premodern or Postmodern?
Victor Davis Hanson, 26 May 2009

During the last 20 years, science and a growing economy gave Americans the most sophisticated and leisured lifestyles in history. We inexpensively call or e-mail anywhere in the world. With online shopping and banking, Americans acquire and spend electronically — without seeing those with whom we do business. Taxes are filed over the Internet, and stocks are bought and sold daily online.

But with such ease and reliance on computers comes ever-increasing vulnerability. Brilliant engineers may have designed our laptops, cell phones, online commerce and 1-800 call lines. But someone still has to answer the phone, enter data into computers and assist customers who fall through the electronic cracks. And such human audit of the growing power of computerized commerce requires more, not less, educated workers than ever before.

And here is where problems arise.

Too many of us are growing more illiterate — reading less and watching television more. A conservative estimate of the national high-school dropout rate is 20 percent. Even for those who graduate, too often a therapeutic curriculum emphasizing self-esteem; race, class, and gender issues; and drug, alcohol and sex education has crowded out language, science and math.

A highly complex society, staffed by those who are unable to read well and compute at basic levels, can be terrifying. One mathematically inept transcriber or an American receptionist who cannot speak fluent English can do the public a lot of damage.

Their mistakes can get embedded into complex computers — the force multipliers of human error — whose functions they do not fully understand, which in turn automatically begin sending out mistaken notices, bills and payments.

To rectify these mistakes, the exasperated consumer dials in to a computer bank, pushes various buttons, is put on hold and, with luck, eventually finds a living, breathing real person — in India. (That said, Indian fixers often prove to be better educated and speak more precise English than their American counterparts.)

In the last year, I had many brushes with this growing dysfunctional side of America — experiences now common to millions. A Macy's clerk copied my address wrongly; then others sent three bills to a nonexistent location; and then, without my knowledge, still another reported the undelivered bill to a credit bureau.

DirecTV charged me each month for unwanted NFL football premium channels. Every time I called to stop payments, the phone-bank American receptionists either put me on hold, failed to understand basic requests or spoke English so poorly that communication was nearly impossible.

Most recently, a forger somehow got hold of my Citibank check-router number and began writing phony checks. In our impersonal world, the charges went through unnoticed to my account — even though the forger used clearly counterfeited checks with differently printed names and addresses from my own. We are a long way from my grandfather's world, where an actual person would have spotted such amateurish fraud.

I am sure that corporate dons, in their profit-loss models, have factored in all these potential foul-ups — and concluded that the greater profits of hiring poorly paid, poorly educated clerical workers — or simply turning everything over to impersonal computer audit — outweighs the greater risk.

But, on the other end of the equation, modern life is becoming not so modern at all for the rest of us. The more sophisticated the chain of our culture becomes, the more it is rendered vulnerable to a single weak link of the ever-more unsophisticated — costing us time, money and peace of mind.

Unless our schools return to an emphasis on language and mathematics, and then hire better auditors of our electronic world, it will not matter how many innovative thinkers like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs or Warren Buffet that America produces.

Just a few poorly educated cogs in our vast electronic wheel can easily undo their work, making our glorious postmodern life once again premodern.

http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/hanson052609.html

Utah Bob · 05-27-2009, 07:03

Very interesting. Thanks.

rocknrolla · 05-27-2009, 08:13

This is an excellent post; thank you for sharing, Sir. This article brings to light some of the threats that face us in the electronic world today. I took a few courses in college on cyber terrorism. Let me say that it is scary stuff. It is amazing the number of vulnerabilities in our current electronic system; I would reason to say the number is unquantifiable. Using a few examples of security breaches in the last year alone: one can look to the leaking of Marine One's engineering prints, countless corporate espionage hackings, electronic credit and identity theft, etc, etc. I could go forever detailing the exploits that have been discovered. Who's to say what is taking place as i write this post?

It is unfortunate that our new self-proclaimed 'forward thinking administration' has either ignored or neglected to realize this growing and very real threat. What is most alarming to me is that many attacks have been traced directly back to other governments, namely China. Our government needs to act now to prevent this emerging threat from causing further damage.

The primary point this author drives home is that for the vast majority of US citizens the 'nuts and bolts' of networking and electronics is as foreign as Japanese. We simply don't understand the basics of network calculus, ASCII, binary, etc. In general, there are few threats greater than an uneducated population using powerful machines with no real knowledge of how they work or how to control them. The danger becomes very real when you have a population who suffer under the dillusion that they are capable, when they are in fact quite incapable. We are becoming ever-reliant on electronic media to provide critical services. This leaves us vulnerable.

With everything available on-demand now, we are compromising more and more of our information and security. Too much sensitive information is made readily available for those smart enough to take it. I would point to historical referances to further my point. If you look back to 1920s Chicago, you see an era where the technology and capabilities of the bad guys far outstrips that of the good guys. The result, after much bloodshed and public outcry, was a re-vamped FBI and Americas first "War on Crime". I think in years to come we will look back on this electronic era in the same light. The world wide web might as well be the world wild west. Lawlessness reigns. Our government needs to realize this, and appropriate action needs to be taken.

I think a national firewall might not be a bad place to start, followed by the creation of both a domestic and international electronic police force. Not necessarily a spying or monitoring agency like the NSA, rather an agency that goes on the offensive. Additionaly, as the author points out, substantial changes need to be made to our educational system to confront this new threat. Laws need to be re-worked and re-written to accomodate the changing electronic environment.

Just my $.02, feel free to add or debate.