I’m reading — rereading, actually — the excellent book Isaac’s Storm, about the Galveston hurricane of 1900.
One hundred and fifteen years later this remains the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history. By a long margin. The San Francisco earthquake? The Chicago fire? The Great Peshtigo fire?* The Johnstown flood? The eruption of Mt. St. Helens? Hurricane Katrina? Forget them. All small potatoes when compared with what befell the people of Galveston.
And as you won’t be surprised to know, nature was only part of this “natural” disaster. Nature set the storm in motion and nature fed it. But human hubris was responsible for the colossal death toll. Some of the hubris was cultural and individual. Galveston was built on a sandspit in a can-do era by people who believed mankind was on the verge of overcoming every problem. Nature was to be conquered, not bowed to. The city was loaded with money (more millionaires than Newport, Rhode Island, some say) and the confidence to make more of it. The Isaac of the title was a conscientious scientist, assured he possessed all the world’s wisdom on hurricanes — and dead wrong.
But — also unsurprisingly — part of the hubris was governmental (federal), and that part of the story could have been written today: a mania for centralized control; rigid bureaucratic procedures; the deadly combo of ignorance + authority; and turf wars so intense that, even as the storm barreled at the Texas coast, U.S. government weather bureaucrats were trying to suppress the alarming forecasts of “foreign” scientists who had more knowledge and experience of hurricanes then they.
So Galveston was destroyed, and between 6,000 and 12,000 lives were crushed, by a “surprise” hurricane that could have been predicted days earlier.
Need I add that afterward the Weather Bureau(crats) conducted a vigorous nationwide cover-up, lying as prolifically as a Clinton, claiming that their heroism, unfailing accuracy, and timely warnings saved thousands of lives?
Yes, governmental to the core.
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These days, of course, meteorologists have vastly greater tools and instead of hiding facts to keep the public from being alarmed, they’re often the ones ringing the alarm (which has both positives and negatives, of course, but which has saved thousands of lives).
But government is still government and you can observe the same Galveston-style bureaucratic behavior in every disastrous war, failed program, and systemic injustice.
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Now here comes what looks like a change of subject. But it’s not. On “Marty McFly Day” (October 21), Spiked editor Brendan O’Neill asked “When will we get back to the future?” (H/T PT)
Please go read that if you haven’t already. I’ll wait.
O’Neill expresses something I’ve felt — and maybe a lot of us have felt — but not really articulated. Even though we live in an era of technological wonders, it increasingly seems as though technology is used (and intended) to serve the most petty wants and conveniences.
Vast fortunes and entire technological empires are built on “inventions” that do nothing more than offer electronic versions of scrapbooks, personals ads, porn magazines, and kaffee-klatsch gossip sessions. O’Neill mourns the lack of vision driving all this. He and others have noted the extreme narcissim enabled by today’s tech (I mean, seriously, why would any adult human being — ever — want to publicly and routinely advertise what he just ate or she just bought?)
Of course in one way O’Neill is wrong. The same gazillionaires who brought us gossip, shopping, and hook-up apps are investing their fortunes and their dreams in driverless cars, life extension, and spaceflight. So there’s vision aplenty, even as the average tech user can’t take his eyes off his iPhone.
There will — I hope — always be visionaries. But I’m much, much more worried by something O’Neill doesn’t mention (something it seems doesn’t even get noticed by most people).
I’m worried by how much tech — in virtually every field of endeavor — is turning us back toward the very sort of centralized control that’s brought catastrophe everywhere it’s been attempted, from Galveston to East Germany to the Department of Homeland Security. Tech that just a few short years ago was heralded as our liberation (and which has been in many ways) is going to put control of our lives right back into the hands of people like the weather bureau morons who were too busy with turf wars and secrecy to bother saving Galveston. People like the “security” morons who were too busy chasing misinformation or hidden agendas to prevent 9/11 (and the morons who followed them). People like the “emergency preparedness” morons who thought they were doing a heck of a job by managing the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina from Washington, DC.
Those people, and the deadly systems they inhabit, are having vast swaths of our lives handed to them. Right now.
More on that next time.
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*BHM’s own John Silveira wrote the best-ever article on the strangely unknown Great Peshtigo fire. I would have preferred to link to that, but couldn’t find it online. If you spot an e-copy, please let me know.
A cynic might say America abandoned self-reliance and individuality for the safety of the nanny state, and suggest we formally adopt a new motto: “Better safe than sorry” and alter the seal to show the eagle clutching a backdoored iPhone and a bundle of kale in declawed talons.
You can’t have everybody and hir nongender-normative sibling zipping about in flying cars; some irate taxpayer might decide to crash it into an IRS building. Space flight? Anything that can loft a payload into orbit can launch a warhead in a fractional-orbit trajectory… at say… the White House.
Just remember: Mommy and Daddy in DC know best.
I don’t “twitter” or even have a “smart phone.” Can’t hear what people say when they call me on the old dumb phone plugged into the wall. And I’m certainly not interested in telling the world what I had for breakfast.
I’d love to have windows that didn’t need washing, or even need screens to keep out flies and such. I’d love to have a house that actually could be kept clean, without the billions of little cracks and crevices dirt and bug parts fall into. I’d love a gizmo that weighed only a few ounces, but would cut the weeds and trim the trees without endangering either my hearing or my toes. And most of all, I’d like to see every kind of technology possible come along via a free market, developed without stolen taxpayer money or “protected” by government decree… and, oh yeah, without any kind of government back doors (or front doors either) designed to track and record everything we do and say. It will come, but only if people really want it.
But, in the meantime, I’m a little pissed because I was promised a flying car a very long time ago. And while I’m very happy with my old Saturn, I’d surely love to hum through the air as well as along the road.
The technology exists to make flying cars. The question is, what happens when the engine stalls?
Don’t know how to make the cause vs effect call on this.
As I see it, these innovations target and/or encourage the perpetual adolescents among us. A demographic that seems to be a majority. In a television equipped waiting room the other day. Watched a BMW commercial in which the main character was a six year old child….?
I’m with Fred Reed who said: “Stuff your inner child down a well.”
And the Eagles in ‘Get Over It’: “I’d like to find your inner child and kick it’s little ass.”
Great song, complete lyrics here: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/eagles/getoverit.html
> what happens when the engine stalls?
They plummet?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vkw2DdoskPY
Actually, at that point you’re hoping for that wonderful combination of airspeed, altitude, and good glide ratio. Also, there are aircraft with parachutes, the Cirrus SR22, for example. Not exactly how you want to park your flying car at the end of the day, but it beats the alternative.
So there’s vision aplenty, even as the average tech user can’t take his eyes off his iPhone.
The average tech user dosn’t matter. From Heinlein:
“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
“This is known as ‘bad luck.’”
Luck has nothing to do with it. (And Heinlein may have said more, to explain himself. I don’t know where that quote was taken from.)
It’s Man abdicating his mind and his responsibility that brings about “poverty.” He refuses to think for himself, he doesn’t attempt to take his tech further than other people have taken it. He “lets George do it,” and wallows in the stagnation that occurs when there are no Georges on the scene. His “poverty” stems from not understanding his own potential.
What is technology good for, if not for the GOOD? Trial and error is understandable, but deliberate misuse of his own abilities is the ultimate sin of mankind. That’s when governments step in to manufacture weapons of war, to promote fear, encourage dependence, and take over our lives.
But fear and dependence promotes the invention of uselessness, the unnecessary (and cheap and shoddy) items and activity that take up our time and energy while TPTB manipulate our lives.
And we let them. Rather than seeing evil in the useless and unnecessary, we revel in it and refuse to think past it. If we don’t use our minds to rise above ourselves, we will never move beyond our own limitations. That’s why history keeps repeating itself–because we keep repeating ourselves.
Technology is nothing more than a step up in ability. But humankind will never move forward until we recognize the past in what we do. Wrapped in different scenarios, called by different names, progress and technology mask the same problems from one era and century to another. We are headed toward another Dark Ages in humanity, but can’t recognize it in the light of invention and our own ego-centric talents.
I dunno. I can only add that while I deride Atlas Shrugged as bad fiction and Idiocracy as ham-handed satire, I frequently seem to find myself reenacting scenes from both – and I don’t even have to deal with people and their gadgets all that much. Must be torture for the rest of you that think.
Also, I want my damned flying car.
> what happens when the engine stalls?
I would imagine the same thing that happens when any other aircraft “stalls” or encounters any number of problems in the air.
You deal with it. 🙂 Nothing is going into the air without at least the caution and regard we invest in the safety of our cars on the ground, and the safety mindedness we’ve been using for other aircraft for a long time. And yes, some may crash, as with any other machine on the ground or in the air. And those who can’t or won’t take that risk will simply not fly.
I love to fly. I hate the TSA and all it stands for, so I don’t anymore… but I’d fly as often as I could afford it in a free country. I’d love to learn to pilot an aircraft. Heck, I’d love to fly to the moon and back. The risk of a crash isn’t even on the list of things that prevent that from happening. At least not for me. 🙂
With so much reliance on technology and the electricity that powers it, I wonder what would happen if there was an event like the 1859 solar storm?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859
Luck has nothing to do with it.
Which is what Heinlein said. When the minority who create are driven out of society, poverty is the result, and the luddites who drove them out label it as “bad luck.”
OT: A happy dog fate story. http://www.ijreview.com/2015/11/459766-they-had-to-give-up-their-dogs-when-they-moved-four-years-later-they-got-a-phone-call/
I wonder what would happen if there was an event like the 1859 solar storm?
Well, 1st off, there have been large CMEs since then, including the largest ever recorded. Earth just happened to be not in the direct path.
Opinions on large-scale devestation are mixed. I recently saw a presentation at a ham radio club meeting, given by folks on the “mega disaster” end of the spectrum. The EM waves generated in the atmosphere from such events include very long wavelength waves, which couple well with long transmission lines, inducing significant over-voltages at the transformers. (I forget the exact numbers.) So, blow up a bunch of transformers coupling the transmission lines to the substations and feeder stations? Grid down. And for a long time. There is no back-stock for high voltage transmission transformers. Any replacements have to be ordered to spec. and built. The lead times are in months – many months, and the prices are very high. (Yes, sorry, the exact numbers escape my memory.) The secondary effects of the national power grid are severe and wide.
I’ve also heard claims that the doomsday scenario is overblown. I can’t speak to that – I don’t work for any power generation or transmission companies. There are breakers in place. I don’t know anything about how well those function.
The work most often referred to is One Second After. Oddly, I have yet to read it.
And, speaking of solar activity …
Aurora Borealis visibility alert
But note that these forecasts change a lot. Still, as Jack Horkheimer advised, keep looking up. Heck, the Taurid shower is about to peak anyway.
I’m worried by how much tech — in virtually every field of endeavor — is turning us back toward the very sort of centralized control that’s brought catastrophe everywhere.
I disagree with your assessment. It is tech, after all, that lets us connect with anyone in the world and spread the ideas of freedom in a way that even governments in totalitarian nations such as China can’t completely stamp out.
No flying cars? A shame, but we can live without them far better than we could if the world became as fragmented as it was fifty years ago.
JdL — Oh, I definitely agree that tech has brought us a world of freedomista wonders. And may that never end. I just see that other aspects of tech are being used to assert central control over many key aspects of our lives.
[Even though we live in an era of technological wonders, it increasingly seems as though technology is used (and intended) to serve the most petty wants and conveniences.]
Nah, I’m not buying it. The article smelled like sour grapes. “Innovation is not going the way I think it should go.” Sneering at tweets, now there’s a safe rant…
[I’m worried by how much tech — in virtually every field of endeavor — is turning us back toward the very sort of centralized control…]
Maybe. But it doesn’t seem to be working. More and more people taking their kids out of government schools, more and more arming themselves, etc.
I’ve seen story after story that amounted to “the sky is falling” in my 65 years, so I guess I am pretty desensitized to that sort of thing by now. To me it’s not tech that is a problem, or Muslims (at least here), or Mexicans, or any of the usual line. A crashing economy is what keeps me up nights. What happens when you go down to the grocery store and nothing is there?
Did any of you people vote?
Innovation has slowed for a number of reasons. Our patent and copyright systems, and massive government regulation of important industries such as autos, has made it unlikely that individuals can reap the rewards of innovation. Our population is getting dumber, particularly in math and science, as 60 years of SAT score declines demonstrate. And in fact, many headline tech ideas, such as the SST and space travel, have yet to make an economic case…
I can see why the lower classes depend on big govt through faults of their own usually from making poor decisions , sometimes not all self induced, and the upper classes because of power and the ability to shed guilt from a perceived privilege , not taking into account the true evil bastards, but for the dwindling middle that has been convinced some faceless beaurocrat can run their lives better than they can by robbing their one true commodity, their labor.