The Industrial Revolution and the Information Revolution

In 1950—at the dawn of the Computer Age—founding father Norbert Wiener predicted that the oncoming computer revolution would be comparable in scope and impact to the Industrial Revolution of 1760 to 1830. The social problems in each are similar: whether the new technology would be used for the “ennoblement or degradation” of humans. Wiener feared that the new information technology would make it difficult to prevent the “use of a human being in which less is demanded of him and less is attributed to him than his full status.” He feared such improper, inhuman uses would be the result of the loss of control by individuals, and increased control by organizations, made possible by the increasing control of the flow of information by those organizations. He correctly identified digital information as a key commodity or resource, which would be subject to ownership and to laws.

What parallels are there between the present age and the Industrial Revolution that led Weiner to recognize so early this potential crisis? The Industrial Revolution began in England in the 1780s and quickly spread in Europe and North America. It developed from the maturing of the physics of Newton, after his death in 1727. As scientists and engineers realized that Newton’s physics had applications beyond predicting the motions of the planets, they invented new technologies, such as steam engines and automated weaving and other textile machines. Rapidly adopted by industry for manufacturing, the technology greatly impacted society, creating leisure time for some, but also causing a large population movement of workers from the countryside to cities. This development has been compared to the Neolithic revolution, when mankind many thousands of years ago developed agriculture, allowing the first permanent human settlements. 

The invention of accurate clocks, occurring between about 1710 and 1740, paved the way for precise navigation cross the oceans—a boon for trade and military purposes—and set the stage for the invention of other precision machines. In 1769, Scottish inventor James Watt invented an improved steam engine, which replaced a large portion of the brutal human and horse-powered labor previously used as the source of energy for the pumping of water from coal mines and moving boats up and down rivers. Steamboat transportation on the Mississippi River and the Erie Canal made possible the settlement of the interior of the United States. In the textile weaving industry, automated spinning machines powered by steam engines allowed factories to produce far more products per week. Wealth increased and became more broadly distributed. The fact that steam engines were scarce, expensive, and large dictated that automated spinning machines—formerly household appliances—be brought together in large numbers at factories, where many such machines could be run through pulleys powered by one steam engine. The machines ran the people as much as the people ran the machines. The physical form of the technologies strongly influenced the social changes. On the other hand, people became more confident in their ability to influence the world and nature through their understanding of science. There was a movement against reliance on religious ideas by some intellectuals.

Often the new, more efficient machines required less expertise to operate than did the earlier, simpler machines. Brutal child labor and other nightmares ensued, as society adjusted to the new situation. As automation improved, some people lost their jobs to machines. Between 1811 and 1814 a group of skilled English workers and craftspeople, whose jobs were at risk by the new automated machines, protested by writing threatening letters to factory owners and in some cases smashing with hammers the new machines in the factories. These men were called Luddites after their fictional leader, “General” Ned Ludd. Even today, people who are perceived as anti-technology are often called Luddites.

In a 1995 interview by Kevin Kelly for Wired Magazine, Kirkpatrick Sale, a self-proclaimed modern-day Luddite, and Kelly discussed whether nature could be a model for a more human-friendly technology. Kirkpatrick Sale said, “This is simply an attempt to use science and its technologies to manipulate nature. This is an attempt to make nature technological, so that humans can determine everything about nature. ...It might be possible for you in the language of technology to come up with something faster, but you can't come up with something smarter, because you don't have that in your language bank.” Kelly responded, “That's where I think you are fundamentally wrong. Because you are stuck on an old language of technology, and we are creating a new one. It is possible to make an improved, smarter, wiser, more organic technology that can serve us better.”

In 2000, Doc Searls, a Senior Editor of the Linux Journal, wrote that the Neo-Luddites have already won, but they don’t know it—“The Industrial Age is over, and the Information Age is already well underway. Workers are walking away from rusty old industrial machines that are dying for a single transcendent reason: they mistook people for parts. Now those people are going off to ply their crafts as competent human components of better, smaller machines—or large machines with better, smaller, more craft-like—i.e. autonomous—parts. These are machines they run, not machines that run them.”

Perhaps the Computer Age—computers as machines—has been supplanted by the Internet Age—computers as portals. A portal allows you to walk through, at least virtually, to nearly any place on earth. While that is a wonderful thing, perhaps it carries its social price, as well.

Questions to ponder:

1. Does new automation, including robotics, cause unemployment or not?

2. Who benefits and who, if anyone, is harmed by new automation and information technology, including on-line technology?

3. Is the present-day resistance to automation largely among intellectuals or does it include employed and/or unemployed workers?

4. Can there be a new language of technology, or is just the same old same old?

5. What types of technologies promote centralization? Decentralization?

6. Is science apolitical by nature?

7. If humans are part of nature, can humans do anything that is "unnatural?" When human beings process silicon into computer chips, build computers, fashion the internet, and communicate with each other by keyboard, are they being any less natural than bees who extract nectar from flowers, build nests, communicate, and come together to manufacture honey?

Terms to research:

spinning jenny; luddite; neo-luddite; industrial revolution; scientism

Sources:

Broca’s Brain, by Carl Sagan (Random House, New York, 1979)

Encyclopedia Britannica

Science and Social Change 1700-1900, by Colin A. Russell (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1983).