Post-Industrial Strength Blogging

In archeology there’s something known as the three age system. You’ve most likely heard of it – at least the gist thereof. It’s the whole Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age thing. And, as I understand it, there are any number of criticism to be leveled against it (such as the fact that it’s overly dependent on technological innovation and ignores other methods of development) but perhaps none more damning than the fact that it doesn’t work. Not, at least, once you get outside of the European stream of progression. Which is where the system was originated. And what it was designed to understand. Move it to other areas of the world and ages are skipped and what poor, old provincial European scholars thought of as necessary for a civilization to progress gets a bit hazy – take, for example, the Maya who charted the stars over a millenia before Galileo and who also discovered just about every use for the round things with holes in them except the most obvious one. Were they backwards because they didn’t have the wheel or where they ahead of their time thanks to their mathematic and scientific achievements? The system, like a metaphor, breaks and falls apart the more you stretch it.

All of which is to say I’ve thought of my own little system for numbering (What can I say, I’m a disciple of the Pythagoreans of the Renaissance, after all, who held that the world was created by God through the numbering of things. And Adam didn’t name things, he gave them numbers. Registry entries, if you will, in the database of the universal consciousness. Philosophy was really interesting back then, you know. I’ll spare you the link because it’ll take you some digging to get after it because it is deep and ingrained in that culture the way electricity is in mine.) the ages of man. And one that, unlike the three age system, incorporates the entire span of history that we can see and not just the bits before the current, modern age. Here it is:

Age of Cultivation – increased farming methods provide a level of surplus crops allowing for population growth. This level barely rises above subsistence farming. Food is the primary source of wealth and the source of all economic activity.

The dawn of civilization happens when people begin to farm. Sure there are hunter/gatherers and nomads long afterwards but these are relics and hold-overs from prehistory (As not every tribe advances at the same rate every “age” will have some contact with those from others and blur the distinctions. These categories are not hard and fast rules but more guidelines for a theoretical model for consideration. Think (link Turing Machines). But civilization is the province of the cities. And it’s only when you can grow enough food that you can start to develop cities. There, although the vast majority of people are tied to the land and must spend the majority of their time providing their basic needs, inside the safe walls of the city and with the full stomachs that a full silo of grain provides individuals can begin to specialize – to a degree that most primitive settlements and clans of wandering herdsmen cannot. Most are farmers but you get your bakers and brewers and doctors and scholars and soldiers and kings and everything else.

Age of Industrialization – farming techniques evolve to the point where a small subset of the population can support the rest. This displaces a large portion of the population that would formerly have been chained to the land to move on to manufacturing jobs which create a surplus of goods. More people producing more goods lowers their price and increases their availability which raises living standards. Trade goods are the main unit of barter.

If the previous age began with the farm then this one begins with the factory (And I’m not talking about smokestacks belching soot, I’m talking about any means of production that’s going to churn out a consistent product at a decent clip. So, when talking about Europe I put the Industrial Age a lot earlier. Probably 1200~1400, if not earlier. Maybe even as far back as the Romans. It depends on if I want to see the history of Europe as a continuum with peaks and valleys or if I think that the Roman civilization completely backslid into the previous age if not oblivion and a new civilization arose from the ashes.). Once the specialization occurs in the first stage then those individuals who are able to devote themselves to a particular area or field of endeavor will refine their skills. Over time, techniques are improved as newer and better technologies as well as the knowledge and experience of using them are dispersed through society. And, at a certain tipping point, the innovations made allow for a shift in the way that society is structured. No longer having to farm for subsistence it can devote yet more efforts into specialization. Cities grow as the population moves from the countryside to the urban areas where things tend to accumulate and newer and more interesting jobs and choices abound. People can now afford to get food easily as long as they have some other source of income. After a while this ready supply of labor allows for large-scale industrial manufacturing. And, again, as the means and methods of production are improved the cost – both to produce and to consume – lowers. And wealth – of many kinds - previously unimaginable is possible.

Age of Communication – Now, a small subset of the population can support the rests’ material needs. Those workers who would be chained to the factory or the assembly line are now freed to concentrate not on materials but on concepts. Ideas become the new currency and their trade becomes the focus of the economy.

Logically speaking, the cycle of better methods requiring fewer and fewer workers – which allows for ever greater specialization of skills – has no reason not to continue. After a certain point, the cost of labor and of producing what I’d call consumer goods becomes so low that nearly everyone can afford what have become the new basics. Not just vital essentials but the “modern” conveniences – TVs, cars, telephones, computers, and everything else – become widely and easily available. At that point there’s again a large pool of people with a lot to offer the shifting society who wouldn’t have been there in previous times. Since I’m more than a bit of a futurist and cyber-geek, I’d say that it’s the digital revolution that’s going to become the new model for doing things, if it hasn’t already. Not so much that people will be using computers – we’re already doing that now, thank you very much – but that the ways people have of communicating are getting better and more varied. And, to me, once you have your basic needs, and your material needs taken care of, then what comes next is your intellectual needs. Ideas and concepts are what you shop for because the methods of transmitting them have become so widely available thanks to all that lovely manufacturing.

Now, I’m thinking about this because as I mentioned the other ( day, I’m not quite sure what a post-Industrial society will look like. Just that we’re moving towards one. Where I was born and raised this is more than a little scary because it’s a place that’s heavily invested in manufacturing. And these days it seems that manufacturing is drying up and blowing away (I mean, in my lifetime, I fully expect General Motors to be merged or to close its doors. This was unthinkable even twenty years ago.). The solution given to most of those auto-workers who’ve lost their job because of this or that is that they need to be retrained. Learn new skills for the modern workplace, computers and the like. So, as you might imagine, there’s some deep skepticism that it’s going to be book-learning that gets us out of our current morass and venturing boldly into the future around there. Even I’m a bit skeptical about this whole thing that there’s profit to be made without something physical to buy and hold. But, that’s because, as I see it, we’re only dipping our toes into this new era and it’s going to come with as many upheavals as transitioning to the other ones did. But, the thing to remember is that even though food’s incredibly cheap to buy and for a farmer to grow there are still people who spend a lot of time and energy farming. Each of my eras doesn’t erase the one that’s come before – the way you won’t find much Bronze in the Iron Age – but instead grows out of and builds on the success and infrastructure created by the earlier one. In so many words, even though we’re entering a brave new world of memes and tubes and everything else on the cyber frontier we still need what we’ve had in the past. Mortgaging our futures by selling away our ability to manufacture is blindingly stupid because we desperately need those things – or the easy ability to get them – if we want our tribes to continue to live in the manner to which they’re accustomed. The easy way, of course, is if we - as a civilization - control them directly. And, yes, I think I’ve just argued myself into thinking that protectionism (in so many words) might not be such a bad thing after all. Guess I can’t go to anymore libertarian meetings. Which is a shame because they have some very interesting people at those things.