Authors:

 Punt, Michael.

Title:

 Forget Armageddon: the case for technological optimism at the close of the millennium.

Keywords:

 technology, optimism, enlightenment, mobility
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Abstract:

 When on All Saints Day in 1755 an earthquake killed 2,000 devoted souls at prayer in Lisbon the world changed as it was instantly apparent that man was not the centre of the Great Scheme of things. Thereafter it seemed we had to take charge of our own destiny; to recognise that the world was indifferent to humans and their joys and misery and had to be remade in the image that we wanted. From this insight the Enlightenment was born. In recent times however the environmental lobby, lead by the Green movement, has mobilised quasi scientific ideas about pollution to fill us with guilt and paint a picture of Millennial Armageddon. In doing so they threaten to return us to the nostalgic idea, so effectively dismissed three centuries ago that the world is emotional and could be angry at us for being bad-the future is Armageddon. Such technological pessimism collapses two quite distinct aspects of modern technology into a single
critical frame which nourishes this pious guilt. On the one hand technology causes pollution which is often visible and measurable in a scientific way. On the other technology develops aspects of human existence, consciousness, culture, communication, and intelligence which are not so easily measurable. Put simply it is easy to believe in Armageddon if I look at a movie screen in a concrete structure next to Beavis and Butthead with a gallon of popcorn and a Walkman between
them. Not so if I recognise the large technological systems which have
brought this imaginary world in contact with such diverse human
sensibilities. In this context the most emancipating legacy of post
Enlightenment technology is personal and intellectual and mobility.
This paper argues that technological pessimism, and its current media
manifestation - Millennial doom - is founded on a world view which regards technology only as machines rather than systems and inventions. Together systems and inventions circulate information, insight, spirit and soul: this is a more accurate reflection of technology at the close of this millennium. In this scenario the immanent Armageddon is no more than a nostalgic view of the future which threatens to prolong the cultural impact of industrialisation at the very moment when the highest aspirations of the Enlightenment for the human mind can at last be realised by intellectual connectivity as system and machine cease to be dissolved.
Punt, Michael mpunt@newport.ac.uk mpunt@easynet.co.uk Department of Art and Design University of Wales College Newport College Crescent Caerleon Michael Punt is a writer and artist. He is currently a member of the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis and a member of the Centre for Advanced Inquiry into Interactive Art (CAiiA). He teaches at the University of Wales College, Newport, and is Editor in Chief of Leonardo Digital Reviews. His recent publications include articles on early cinema history and digital technology. They can be found in: Design Issues. ("Accidental Machines: Understanding how we Understand New Technologies." 14 (1) 1998, and "A New Home for the Cinema" 11 (2) 1995), Kintop, ("Die panorama-Ansichten in Execution of Czolgosz," 6 1997 and "History in the Rewind Mode" 2 1994), Leonardo ("Digital Media, Artificial life and Post Classical Cinema: Condition, Symptom, or a Rhetoric of Funding?" 31 1998, (5)"CD.Rom.: Radical Nostalgia?" 28 (5) 1995, and The Velvet Light Trap ("Well who are you gonna believe... A Problem of Digital Photography. 36, 1995"). In preparation for Convergence (with Roy Ascott, "A Bibliography of Art and Consciousness"). Articles also appear in Brief Issues in Cultural Analysis. Kampen: Kok Pharo edited by M. Bal, T. Elsaesser, 1995, and Photography in the Age of Digital Culture. London: Routledge edited by Martin Lister, 1995. He is also a regular contributor to Skrien, a Dutch journal of film and television criticism where he writes a monthly column on art and the Internet.