The Myth of the Golden Age

So, another year comes around, and not only will the sound of broken new year resolutions be crackling around us like bush fire, but we’ll also be hearing the usual ‘in my day it was never as bad as this’.

Thus is the Myth of the Golden Age. Now, well into my 50s, I accept things are changing, and certainly our world in many ways is markedly different to when I was a teen-ager. Indeed, over the last 10 years the rapid expansion of the Internet (for example) has altered the lives of many people in substantial and permanent ways with the advent of Web 2.0. Many millions now have immediate access to huge amounts of information; mobile telephones mean we can keep permanently in touch with large numbers of people (and, incidentally, it is mobile phone technology of all recent developments that benefits the developing world most); Facebook, love it or hate it, generates terabytes of conversations, picture exchange and idle chatter for millions.

SO is all this a Bad Thing? Those lamenting the loss of a Golden, pre-technological Age propose that services provided by modern technology ‘dumb down’ society, suppress effective one-to-one communication, and lead to the foolish and self-indulgent sharing of our innermost secrets and daily activities. Whenever this argument appears, I ask of the person two things: when exactly was this Golden Age? And why exactly was it so good?

As always, there is no clear answer, and those uncomfortable with the rapid pace of change often cite a vague period of childhood with limited TV, and no Internet or mobile telephones. Nature is ascendant, and elderly citizens receive proper respect. Hmmm – sadly this only reminds me of Margaret Thatcher’s desire to return to ‘Victorian Values’. Yes, those times when children were pushed up chimneys to clean them, child mortality was astonishingly high, the gap between rich and poor close to that of present day Nigeria, and of course with those notorious workhouses working on the principle of ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor (see the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834). Good times.

I react in similar ways to those desiring a return to that ‘Golden Age’ of pre-Internet and pre-mobile telephone. Theodore Zeldin, cultural commentator and BBC contributor once responded to those suggesting TV ended conversations in the home, by saying that there was never really home conversation. People just never talked, and when TV came along it simply filled an awkward silence. He also said this: “The past is what provides us with the building blocks. Our job today is to create new buildings out of them”. Of course, people can obsess about text messaging, or Facebook updates; but at least they are talking. Communication now, for those who choose to use technology, is easier and richer than it has ever been.

Technological advances are of course always Janus-faced – there is benefit but also risk. That is the same now as during the Industrial Revolution (smoke), or the Renaissance (the growth of capitalism and humanism – for some a Bad Thing), or even the Iron Age (knives). Just how far back do the Golden Age-ists wish to go?

Now we have the risk of ‘phishing’, but we also have the facility to communicate rapidly, obtain information immediately, and share our photographs widely. Those who believe this is regressive are unlikely to have seen Face Book at work: some use it to talk with people as they would passing them in the street, or as they would talk with them in a pub, or as they would in an office or workplace. It works on many levels, utilising our tried and tested methods of communicating, just through a keyboard than around the coffee machine. OK, Twitter is largely a waste of time, but we can ignore it, just as we’d ignore that person ‘tweeting’ verbally in the office next door. Its no different.

Pining for a Golden Age is fine for nostalgia, but for critiquing current developments it lacks any theoretical purchase. The world changes, and we must learn to adapt. Facing up to technology may help as we prepare for a far more difficult challenge: climate change. Now that is something we should worry about, and with a legitimate Golden Age – the time of lower sea levels.