"If": The Future of Humanity

When we are children, our parents often read stories to us until we can read them ourselves. I was no exception. My mom used to read just about everything to me. One set of her books, however, she said she couldn't really read aloud to me. I didn't understand why; until later, that is. You see, these books were collections of Calvin and Hobbes comic strips, as written by Bill Watterson. Watterson was the master of this field. His work is perhaps the one comic strip that qualifies as both art and literature. The fact that he did so while seeking such little publicity or financial gain is remarkable.

Watterson's strip serves as a canvas for his many philosophies and outlooks. One of his earliest strips illustrates this beautifully. A Sunday strip, the first panel opens with Calvin pondering: "It says here that 'religion is the opiate of the masses'. I wonder what that means." The second panel then cuts to a television set, 'thinking': "It means that Karl Marx hadn't seen anything yet..." Like Calvin, I too didn't understand any of this when I first read the strip at a young age. Looking back on it many years later, I realize that it may have been the best line Mr. Watterson ever delivered. He is absolutely correct. Television has in many ways served as a 'unifying force', the method of homogenizing our culture. 

Reading this strip, I can't help but think of Ray Bradbury's seminal work Fahrenheit 451. In essence, that work was a view of a future of dystopian proportions. The rise of the television culture leads to a mass uptick in anti-intellectualism, in which people begin to loathe and then aim to destroy all published materials. The viewpoint shared by both Watterson and Bradbury is that television and mass media are dangers to society. They have a degrading effect on our collective culture. However, it is also quite clear that not all television is 'unintelligent', so to speak. Take for example, Seinfeld, one of the most popular TV shows of all time. Although ostensibly a comedy "show about nothing", the series was actually a grand sociological experiment. It placed fairly ordinary people in everyday situations, and had them do things that often went against the grain, against the norms of society. It explored the intricacies of human social structures that no other show before or since could ever hope to. 

Seinfeld and Calvin and Hobbes share a number of similarities. Both took their genres beyond where anyone else held taken them, from the realm of banal comedy to the promised-land of constructive entertainment. Both stood head-and-shoulders above the rest of the crowd as a result. Both went out on top. In addition, and more to the point, both represent media that are on the way out. 

That last statement may come as a shock to some, for it implies that television is nearing its end. This will be addressed shortly. First, let's focus on the comic strip. As Bill Watterson often noted, the comic strip has been in decline for decades. Beyond that, however, the newspaper itself is, to be blunt, dying. Most people simply don't want to read yesterday's news. The progress of technology means that they don't have to. The Internet has become a vital source of information for the vast majority of the planet's population. I do not think it would be out of the question to think that the newspaper will be close to extinct within a decade.

Do not think for one minute, however, that newspapers are the only endangered species, so to speak. Books, magazines, CDs, DVDs, even television will all be absorbed into this ever-growing monstrosity that is the World Wide Web. Soon textbooks and notebooks will be obsolete; students everywhere will soon be using tablets for study, note-taking, and assignments. The postal service (already visibly sinking) will be practically unnecessary for the purposes of delivering actual mail. Bills, letters, advertisements; all of these things can be handled through advanced, digital forms if communication. Even parcel delivery will no longer require direct human involvement; it seems likely that Amazon's dream of using drones as carrier pigeons will soon become a reality. I will go as far as to to say that paper money has outlived its welcome as well; bank cards and online accounts are quickly becoming the norm. 

Are these trends bad? Luddites and the Unabomber would certainly think so. WALL-E might lead some to believe "yes". And anyone who's ever read I, Robot or seen Terminator must be absolutely terrified right now. Technology is taking over! The end is nigh!

Or is it?

Quite the contrary, actually. Let's take a step back for a minute, shall we? Technology can be loosely defined as anything that makes humanity's life easier. That's really what makes us unique among all the other species of organisms on Earth. We have the ability to make our lives easier through external means. Stone tools. Fire. Farming. The wheel. All of these things are technology. 

Personally, I feel that we humans today are awfully shortsighted. We look only at the micro view of things, and almost never at the macro. What exactly, then, is the macro? That, my friends, would be the of achievement the ultimate goal of humanity: happiness. Every single human being past, present and future has had this goal on their mind in some form or another. However, very rarely have we ever really looked at how to achieve this collectively. In reality, though, we have been doing so without even realizing it: through our pursuit of technology.

How exactly do we define happiness? It is a term perhaps best described in the negative: happiness is the absence of suffering. Suffering, in turn, can be described as any undesirable human condition, such as hunger, thirst, overwork, poverty, illiteracy, pain and disease, among others. Therefore, happiness can be defined as the absence of any undesirable human condition. 

How does technology allow us to achieve happiness? As George Orwell stated in 1984, "From the moment when the machine first made its appearance it was clear to all thinking people that the need for human drudgery, and therefore to a great extent for human inequality, had disappeared.  If the machine were used deliberately for that end, hunger, overwork, dirt, illiteracy and disease could be eliminated within a few generations." This, to me, is the ultimate statement of the power of technology. 

Clearly, we have not yet reached this point of 'utopia'. But we are closer than most think. 

What does this world look like? It is a world where all human labor is unnecessary, as machines take up the burden once borne by man. A world in which all knowledge is proliferated freely, with no desire or need for the protection of intellectual property. A world in which anti-intellectualism has no place, as the leisure time afforded to all allows all to pursue the intellectual, the scientific, the creative. A world in which all the peoples of the Earth face no shortage of food, or water, or shelter, or clothing, or any of the other basic or complex needs of society. A world in which advances in medicine and living habits lead to the complete annihilation of disease. A world in which consumerism and commercialism are unneeded due to the equality of opportunity of resources. A world in which this equality of opportunity eradicates the divisions along the lines of race, gender, creed, nationality, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, or any of the other artificial boundaries drawn up for the purposes of exploitation and oppression. A world in which all of the world's energy is provided through inexhaustible, ecologically sustainable sources. A world, in short, in which no undesirable human condition exists.