36 | http://www.nationalreview.com MARCH 23 , 2020T e c h n O l O g y s e c T I O nForget my grandfather for a moment
and imagine explaining that to almost any
literate person in human history. What do
we imagine his reaction would have
been? Do we think he would have said,
“That sounds like stagnation to me”? Or
do we think he would have said, “It
sounds as if you have reached the pro -
mised land, I hope you are extremely
grateful for the bounties you have inherit-
ed.” If not the latter, he’d be a fool.
From the desk on which I am writing
these words, I have access to all of the
great works in history: every song,
every play, every book, every poem,
every movie, every pamphlet, every
piece of art. I can find every translation of
theBible that has ever been compiled and
put them side by side for comparison. I
can read the missives that were sent dur-
ing the American Revolution, and exam-
ine the patents for the first steam engine,
and listen to all of Winston Churchill’s
speeches between 1939 and 1945. The
world’s recipes are available to me with-
out exception, and, if I desire, I can watch
a cornucopia of free-to-use instructional
videos in which experts show me how to
cook them. At no cost or inconvenience,
I can learn how to fix my sink or change
my car’s tires or troubleshoot my dish-
washer. If I want to know where the
“panda ant” lives (Chile), to which genus
it belongs (Euspinolia), how long it is (upI
PUTon a record today.
Well, I didn’t put on arecord, so
much as I put on a... well, awhat?
It wasn’t a vinyl plate or a spool of
tape or even a piece of shiny circular
plastic. Indeed, whatever physical medi-
um was being used to store the music I
was listening to wasn’t available to me at
all. It simply came in through the air—
like lightning. From the comfort of my
chair, I picked up my iPhone, chose the
album I wanted from the million-strong
list that loaded instantly before my eyes,
and directed the sound to the speakers in
my vicinity, all of which started to play
my choice within a few milliseconds.
And then, when I tired of it, I shushed it
with my voice.
I think about this sometimes when I
hear people complain that the bright tech-
nological future we were all promised has
steadfastly failed to appear. How, I won-
der, would I even begin to explain Spotify
and Sonos to my grandfather, who died in
1994? A compact disc could be compre-
hended by the elderly as a better vinyl
record, much as the Space Shuttle could
be comprehended as a faster airplane. But
streaming? If my grandfather came back
today, where would I start?
“Okay, so I’m using my telephone,
which isn’t really a telephoneso much
as a supercomputer-cum-Library-of-
Alexandria-cum-high-definition-movie-studio, to send a wireless signal to the
magical speakers in my home, which,
upon my request, will contact a set of
servers 3,000 miles away in San
Francisco, and request instant access to
the closest digital copy of—”
“Wait, what’s a server?”
“—hold on—to the closest digital copy
of one of millions of high-quality songs
to which I have full and unlimited access,
but neither own nor have to store, and—”
It boggles the mind.
It may be tempting to regard this
example as a mere bauble or trinket, or
even as a sign of decadence. But to do so
would represent a disastrous miscalcula-
tion of its significance. It is true that
some of our advances have slowed since
the 1970s. We do not go to the moon on
a regular basis, despite the promises of
the Apollo program; transatlantic travel
has become slower, rather than faster—
R.I.P. Concorde; our cars essentially still
use the same engines as they always
have; and life expectancy is no longer
leaping forward. But it is also true that,
unlike then, we now enjoy a magnificent
worldwide communications network
that offers the sum of human knowledge
in the blink of an eye and is open to any-
body who wishes to join it. If that is “all”
we’ve done in the last four decades, I
think we should congratulate ourselves
PHOTOGRAPHERISMYLIFE rather heartily./GETTYIMAGESOur TechnOlOgIcal
renaIssance
Claims of stagnation are not persuasiveby Charles C. W. Cooke
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