a guest post by Daniel H.
This year the Starbucks Corporation realized significant losses in stock value. Today Bloomberg reported that the company’s stock prices were the lowest they had been since May 2004. Did the coffee bubble burst? Did everyone finally get their fix? Do some people like coffee less than they did 3 years ago? And has the trendiness of spending hours on a laptop in one of their cafes come to pass?
I mention this fact because I wonder whether or not the coffee market has become over-saturated. With a Starbucks (or Caribou, or any other name brand cafe) on every corner, can the market sustain itself? It seems, for once, that the forces of economics have begun to moderate what once could only be called a national caffeine dependency. And I’m somewhat guilty of furthering this craze myself; at this point in my life I’m still consuming 3 cups a day.
So if the mighty coffee market can weaken, what other markets can become oversaturated? Economic principals tell us that every market can reach a point in which demand is decreased due to abundant availability. But what about the information market? Will we ever reach a point in which our desire for information, for advances in technology, science, medicine, etc. is quenched, where the demand weakens, and the bubble bursts? It seems that an ever-increasing demand for knowledge has fueled, since the beginning of time, most of our scientific and technological advances. And at the beginning, our needs necessitated these advances. But have we, or will we ever reach a point when our daily lives have no direct needs that can’t be satisfied by previously existing knowledge? What do we need to know now, that we didn’t know before, to help us be better humans or citizens?
This week’s required reading: “Informing ourselves to Death,” by Neil Postman.
Image used under a Creative Commons license from Flickr user al-hayat.
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Does daily life actually require the synthesis of new, unique knowledge? It may be just a technicality, but I can imagine many situations in which preexisting information is sufficient to maintain the status quo. I think what you are implicitly asking is if it will ever be possible to not just maintain the status quo (of an individual life, of society, etc.), but to support change & growth without the generation of any new knowledge.
Personally, I doubt it. I think the fractal, ever-expanding web of humanity’s information – of media, of science, and of the daily, hourly, and moment-by-moment conversations we are having with one another – is driving all of us into an ever more diverse rethinking and reshaping of our identities and our goals for our lives. Thus our evolving culture bootstraps the persistent generation of new knowledge.
Additionally, you I think this New York Times article might be interesting to readers of this post. It’s about the recent auction of the Magna Carta and lightly explores the theme of “Information is now cheaper than ever and also more expensive.”
Mac, thanks for the comment! While I agree with you that it might be impossible to ever pursue some types of progress without the advent of new information, I would argue we might still make progress in other areas outside of the bubble of the “fractal, ever-expanding web of new information,”…theoretically of course, and we might not be able to continue far into the future without it…
The bigger question I have, and indeed, the one raised in the Postman article as well, is whether or not we need new information to help us become better humans or citizens (this requires a subjective analysis, I know). Take this into consideration, though: Could I be a better friend or neighbor, a more committed or loyal spouse, a more thoughtful voter, or could a someone become more selfless or altruistic (and continue to become so) without new information changing the culture in which we interact or the ways we interact? I believe they could. For example, Facebook has allowed me to have a more accessable network through which I can communicate with other people, but does it necessarily make me a better friend? In fact, maybe it makes me a more ambivalent friend because I use a less-personal means of communication than I used to. I argue that while information can empower us, and help us or cause us to change in myriad ways, we should realize that to improve our lives in some of the most essential areas, especially in how we relate to one another as humans, we may not require new information at all, but rather we could look to what our ancestors did before many of the technological advances we have today: they spent a lot more time together in groups, building tightly woven communities, and their hearts were put at ease by simpler pleasures.
We live are entering the post-evolutionary era. It’s time for us to start considering how we can change ourselves to better harmonize with our changing environment, instead of trying to change our environment into what we think worked well in the past. Tropophilia.
Mac, I’m curious as to what you mean by the “post-evolutionary era?” Are you saying that we need to focus on adapting to, rather than shaping, our enviroment? We started the tech revolution and it is a wonderful thing, but is it wise to take it as a given and be swept up in it completely? I think that is Dan’s point (Dan, correct me if I’m wrong?).
IMHO, many advances these days help us be better human beings, but I sure hope those advances never replace the basic definitions of what it means TO BE a human being. I think our goal should be to make our environment harmonize with who we are and want to be, and not to harmonize ourselves with what our enviroment is and what it wants us to be.