I just finished an interesting little book by Bruce Catton called Waiting for the Morning Train. The theme of the book is woven from the threads of the author's hometown view of the decline of the lumber era in northern Michigan at the dawn of the twentieth century. What I like best about the book is the way Catt0n places the march of human history in perspective. Beginning with the "Little Ice Age," which buried his beloved peninsula under thousands of feet of glacial ice, then skimming through the early natives and explorers, he sets the stage for his scene in the play.
Most interesting to me was the comparison Catton made between the natives' use of copper and the Europeans' use of lumber. The natives took the copper they found exposed, learned simple smelting techniques and improved their lives with only minor changes to their culture. The Europeans learned better and better ways to take the trees, inventing a subculture along the way, then abandoned everything when the forests ran out. They left behind a scarred landscape and a population without means of support. After depleting the exposed copper, the natives simply went back to their old ways.
It is true that the natives' refusal to change ultimately lead to their near extinction. However, I wonder if there is a lesson in their attitude. I recently heard a colleague refer to information found in books as "real," as compared to that found on Google. She, like me, began teaching back when computers occupied entire rooms and had less computing power than today's wristwatches. I find a curious mix in my generation of those who embrace the digital age and those who curse it.
Dylan Thomas advised that we not "go gentle into that good night." I am wondering about going gentle, or otherwise into the good morning. We chuckle at the Kindle commercial when the "real book" advocate" revels in turning down a literal page. Some say it is the feel, others the smell of "real books" that makes them preferable. A friend recently said that my digital piano would never replace a "real" concert grand. Some folks won't give up their vinyl records. My wife still believes potatoes baked in a conventional oven taste better than those from a microwave. If we draw these lines too hard, we end up where the Amish live: out of phase and out of touch. But again, I wonder if they are all wrong.
We do lose something with each advance in technology. The automobile and the airplane have made the world a smaller place. At the same time, they have brought about the separation of families that once would have occupied adjacent properties. Medical advances allow us to prolong lives far into a stage of dependency which taxes family members and society with new burdens which death once obviated. Instant communication via satellite and cellphone has eliminated thoughtful communication almost entirely. So-called social networking on the Net has replaced old fashioned face to face friendships for many people.
I could go on, but in trying to think Christianly about this, I am double-minded. My good friend and pastor is a world travelling consultant on Internet uses for religious organizations. He can tell story after story of the gospel being spread through digital means. This is accomplished through a medium which is also the largest purveyor of pornographic destruction on the planet. I have a library in my laptop that surpasses the one I used in my Bible college forty years ago, yet I am so busy that I barely have time to read anything. We are witnessing the dawn of a new age. Information is the new currency, and digital distribution and manipulation is the press that prints it.
Just as Catton imagined the ice ages in the cold north wind, we might sense the glacial freeze of our new economy in some unforeseen collapse of the streaming infrastructure on which it flows. In the meantime, I wonder what new day this morning of technology is bringing. And I wonder if we will make the best use of it while waiting for that final morning when we wake up where all things are new -- and real.
