Shakespeare and the Havoc of Progress

9/3/2018

Job displacement, loss of privacy, climate change, radiation, cyberbullying: New technologies disrupt lives for better and worse. Tempting as it is to trace the shadow side of progress to the Digital Age or the Industrial Revolution, change has always wreaked some degree of havoc.

Take printing. Welcomed by all? Thanks to Rev. Scott Prinster for this quote from Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part 2, which the Bard puts in the mouth of rebel Jack Cade:

“Be it known unto thee by these presence, that I am the besom [broom] that must sweep the court clean of such filth as thou art. Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar school; and whereas, before, our forefathers had no other books but the score and the tally, thou hast caused printing to be used, and, contrary to the king, his crown, and dignity, thou hast built a paper-mill. It will be proved to thy face that thou hast men about thee that talk of a noun and a verb, and such abominable words as no Christian ear can endure to hear.”

6 Comments

Dennis Doren

9/3/2018 08:49:57 am

You could add the invention of the telescope which led to Galileo's excommunication due to its perceived negative effect on religious beliefs, medical advances that are seen as amoral while promising treatments for diseases (think stem cell research), and the technology behind the stock market that has facilitated both the ability of the masses to participate as possibly crashes. Technological progress happens despite those who oppose it. To paraphrase a commonly known utterance from Star Trek, resistance is (not completely) futile, (but) you will (eventually) be assimilated.

Sarah link

9/3/2018 09:13:34 am

Dennis, great examples. These cases suggest there's more to explore on the distinction between changes that produce actual harm and those opposed on moral grounds by people I disagree with - a subjective judgment, certainly. We can't stop technological change. Collectively we may be able to shape its effects to increase the ratio of "better" to "worse."

My sociologist father said, in a different context, "Assimilation is inevitable. The only question is whether it happens in a way that helps or harms those being assimilated."

Rebecca link

9/3/2018 02:34:09 pm

Funny that Shakespeare has a character criticize the printing press, probably the only reason why we still know his own name today. But I'm sure he is making light of an opinion of his time.

9/4/2018 07:31:57 am

I don't know the play well enough to know if Shakespeare sympathized with the rebel Cade or disdained him, or some of each. Early printing, like computers more recently, added another divide between the haves and the have-nots. I wonder if Shakespeare had any thoughts of his works living for centuries in print, or it they were just entertainment like the new season's sitcoms.

Walter Hassenpflug

9/4/2018 11:19:35 am

In their book (Future Shock) released in1970, Alvin and Heidi Toffler examine the effects of the rapid industrial and technological changes upon the individual, the family, and society.

"As we hurdle into tomorrow, millions of ordinary men and women will face emotion-packed options so unfamiliar, so untested, that past experience will offer little clue to wisdom. Today's fact becomes tomorrow's misinformation. This is no argument against learning facts or data - far from it. But a society, in which the individual constantly changes jobs, his place of residence, his social ties and so forth, places an enormous premium on learning efficiency. Tomorrow's schools must teach not merely data but ways to manipulate it. Students must learn how to discard old ideas, how and when to replace them. They must, in short, learn how to learn."

Walter: My years of studying Germanistics, gradually came to mean less and less as the studies of Spanish and Hispanic culture and society displaced that which was Germanic and also that which was Francophile, that which was Slavic, etc. for those who had received higher degrees in colleges.

I have to ask why the push for Spanish when I hear more Arabic spoken in grocery stores and shopping malls. Some local schools are introducing Mandarin Chinese.

Again, a great blog! I wish more of your followers had participated in this blog.

Good blog. Sarah, how do you come up with so many brain-teasers?

9/4/2018 03:17:22 pm

Walter, your observations and tie-in with personal experience are thought-provoking, as always. The changes the Tofflers foresaw have already happened (not that all schools have caught up yet). It's happening faster than we can keep up with. By the time formal education catches up with the importance of teaching Arabic or Mandarin Chinese, what language do you suppose will be the real need of the moment?

If students learned how to discard old ideas and learn new ones efficiently, have they learned yet how to evaluate the new "information" they find instead of choosing the false efficiency of whatever the search engine turns up first? Students used to learn library research skills to chase down obscure information. Some questions are still obscure - two of my recent searches were about medieval sailing speeds in the eastern Mediterranean and the dates of earthquakes leading up to the May 1481 quake that destroyed Rhodes - but the more common issue now is how to sort through an excess of information to identify the most reliable sources efficiently. What library/Internet research skills will students need a decade from now?

Shakespeare and the Havoc of Progress

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