We don’t usually publish a blog on a Thursday, but this is a special Thursday so I made an exception.  Yes, it’s the day that we in the UK elect our members of Parliament for another term of office.

And just so I couldn’t be accused of trying to influence how anyone votes, I’ve waited until one minute after the final closing time to publish.  Because, otherwise, I would totally bend you to my will, obviously…

I have two fairly random and disconnected thoughts, but since they touch on matters I’ve blogged on before, I deem them worthy of a flag-up.

First off, as an observation, I have to say that I’ve never heard so much talk about change.  Many of the parties are using change in their election strap-line or motto.

I pass by the interesting questions of whether modern party politics can actually deliver substantial chance, or whether we the people really want much change.  Instead, munch on this law of power from Robert Greene:

Law 45: Preach the Need for Change, but Never Reform too much at Once

Everyone understands the need for change in the abstract, but on the day-to-day level people are creatures of habit.  Too much innovation is traumatic, and will lead to revolt.  If you are new to a position of power, or an outsider trying to build a power base, make a show of respecting the old way of doing things.  If change is necessary, make it feel like a gentle improvement on the past.

My second and final point has to do with the pivotal role TV has played in this election, with a televised ‘debate’ between the three main party leaders for the first time.  I’ve mentioned before my approval of Neil Postman’s insights on the deadly affects of TV on every element of our culture.

But what, specifically, about politics?  Here’s a glimpse.

The point is that television does not reveal who the best man is.  In fact, television makes impossible the determination of who is better than whom, if we mean by “better” such things as more capable in negotiation, more imaginative in executive skill, more knowledgeable about international affairs, more understanding of the interrelationships of economic systems, and so on.  The reason has, almost entirely, to do with “image”…  For on television the politician does not so much offer the audience an image of himself, as offer himself as an image of the audience.

If that is true, what does this election say about us?  I’ve never been a fan of blaming politicians for our national woes, as if they were a separate species from us.  This is a democracy, which means that our politicians represent and reflect us.  They didn’t beam down from the evil planet Zog.  How they act says something about who we are.  This is a democratic burden we have to bear.

So if you want political change, IMHO you should start with yourself.  Stop blaming ‘them’.  Take personal responsibility.

Be the change you want to see in the world.

Voting is not sufficient for political change.  Some might say it’s not even necessary…

Image credit: blogger’s own.

Dawn did a better job in her blog this week of weighing up the pros and cons.  For her, it all boils down to a matter of choice – both/and thinking, not either/or.  Although from the enthusiastic feel to her blog title – The Kindle is Reborn! – I think we can sense her positive vibes towards it.

All I want to do is quote a few relevant sentences from my main man Neil Postman.  Yes, I know I’ve waxed lyrical about his stuff before.  But, well, its my blog, frankly.  Plus a want to give another perspective from the usual technophile one that dominates the internet.

“New technologies compete with old ones — for time, for attention, for money, for prestige, but mostly for dominance of their world-view. This competition is implicit once we acknowledge that the medium contains an ideological bias. And it is a fierce competition, as only ideological competitions can be. It is not merely a matter of tool against tool — the alphabet attacking ideographic writing, the printing press attacking the illuminated manuscript, the photograph attacking the art of painting, television attacking the printed word. When media make war against each other, it is a case of world-views in collision…

“In the United States, we can see such collisions everywhere — in politics, in religion, in commerce — but we see them most clearly in the schools, where two great technologies confront each other in uncompromising aspect for the control of students’ minds. On the one hand, there is the world of the printed word with its emphasis on logic, sequence, history, exposition, objectivity, detachment, and discipline. On the other there is the world of television with its emphasis on imagery, narrative, presentness, simultaneity, intimacy, immediate gratification, and quick emotional response. Children come to school having been deeply conditioned by the biases of television. There, they encounter the world of the printed word. A sort of psychic battle takes place, and there are many casualties — children who can’t learn to read or won’t, children who cannot organize their thought into logical structure even in a simple paragraph, children who cannot attend to lectures or oral explanations for more than a few minutes at a time. They are failures, but not because they are stupid. They are failures because there is a media war going on, and they are on the wrong side — at least for the moment.”

Think about it.

I’ve been re-reading another one of Postman’s book recently,  the lesser known Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology.  His thesis is that the US is the first modern culture to have shifted from a  technology-using worldview to a technology-dominated one.  This is one ‘culture war‘ that is not usually included in debate but that is far more deep-seated in the American psyche.

This isn’t a book review, so I’ll spare you the summary.  Postman considers the question of when America changed into a Technopoly, a state in which culture “seeks its authorization in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology”.  To answer this question, Postman turns not to scientists or industrialists or politicians, but to a now almost forgotten management consultant.

Fredrick W Taylor published a book in 1911 called The Principles of Scientific Management.  Now just pause and ponder that title for a second.  Management is about managing people.  Taylor claims this can be achieved scientifically, that is, objectively, impersonally, mathematically.  People are reduced to bits of technology that require engineering.  Postman claims that this book…

…contains the first explicit and formal outline of the assumptions of the thought-world of Technopoly.  These include the beliefs that the primary, if not only, goal of human labour and thought is efficiency; that technical calculation is in all respects superior to human judgment; that in fact human judgment cannot be trusted, because it is plagues by laxity, ambiguity, and unnecessary complexity; that subjectivity is an obstacle to clear thinking; that what cannot be measured either does not exist or is of no value; and that the affairs of citizens are best controlled by experts.

Postman also has brilliant things to say about language and statistics as examples of ‘invisible technologies’.  But for now, I have a few questions.  How far has this technological mind-set, this treating people as bits of technology, infected our thinking on such topics as time management, psychometric testing, and the other tools of modern HR?  And when were human beings demoted to a ‘resource’ anyway?

Let me know if you can think of any more examples of Technopoly in the workplace.