the future is now?
Modernitātes diskurss gan ir ievērojami paplašinājies kopš 50-tajiem, kad Vīners publicēja šīs trāpīgās pārdomas:
"What many of us fail to realize is that the last four
hundred years are a highly special period in the history
of the world. The pace at which changes during these
years have taken place is unexampled in earlier history,
as is the very nature of these changes. This is
partly the result of increased communication, but also
of an increased mastery over nature which, on a limited
planet like the earth, may prove in the long run to be
an increased slavery to nature. For the more we get
out of the world the less we leave, and in the long run
we shall have to pay our debts at a time that may be
very inconvenient for our own survival.
We are the
slaves of our technical improvement and we can no
more return a New Hampshire farm to the self-contained
state in which it was maintained in 1800 than
we can, by taking thought, add a cubit to our stature
or, what is more to the point, diminish it. We have
modified our environment so radically that we must "
now modify ourselves in order to exist in this new environment. We can no longer live in the old one. Progress
imposes not only new possibilities for the future
but new restrictions. It seems almost as if progress itself
and our fight against the increase of entropy intrinsically must end in the downhill path from which
we are trying to escape. Yet this pessimistic sentiment
is only conditional upon our blindness and inactivity,
for I am convinced that once we become aware of the
new needs that a new environment has imposed upon
us, as well as the new means of meeting these needs
that are at our disposal, it may be a long time yet before
our civilization and our human race perish, though
perish they will even as all of us are born to die. However,
the prospect of a final death is far from a complete
frustration of life and this is equally true for a
civilization and for the human race as it is for any of
its component individuals. May we have the courage to
face the eventual doom of our civilization as we have
the courage to face the certainty of our personal doom.
The simple faith in progress is not a conviction belonging
to strength, but one belonging to acquiescence
and hence to weakness."
- Wiener N ., "The Human use of Human Beings" 2nd ed., pp. 72 - 73