What
drives the innovations that improve our standard of living at such an amazing
clip? It’s not politic
My
brother is teaching a semester in London, and he casually video Skyped me last
week to show me around his apartment, which is small but charming. I
reciprocated by hauling up the cover of the e-book I am reading, and shared my
desktop to show a YouTube performance of Renaissance music I thought he would
enjoy. We chatted a bit more and hung up. No “long distance” charges.
So what? Well, none of this could have happened 10 years ago. Not only that, you would probably wouldn’t have understood the paragraph in the slightest because it contains words and actions no one had heard of. Had I told you in 1992 that in 20 years, virtually anyone would be able to speak in wireless real-time video to anyone else on the planet, even to the point of sharing a real-time digital experience, you would not have believed it.
And if I had added that the technology was not
outrageously expensive, but rather being carried around in the pockets of
students and commuters everywhere, this would have seemed too outrageous for
science fiction. What amazing force in the universe hath rained down such
blessings on us mere mortals?
The truth is that we all live in a world today that
would have been unimaginable to us only very recently. It is so much woven into
our lives that we don’t think about it much anymore. And contrary to the rap on
the digital age, that it is all about geekery and gadgetry, the real driving
force behind this innovation is the flesh-and-blood human being and the oldest
desires known to humankind (such as wanting to stay in touch with family).
Another quick example. I was emailing with a U.K.
choir director two nights ago, and I mentioned a book of chanted music. He
hadn’t heard of it, so I sent him a link, from which he downloaded the material
(that magic click that creates a copy!). This morning, his choir sang the piece
in church halfway around the world, and he let me know that it was fabulous.
Here we have it: digits flying over oceans in a matter
of seconds, and then embodying themselves in beautiful music, sung now with the
same human energy as music was sung in the ancient world, that transforms real
lives. The person kneeling to prayer didn’t know and didn’t need to know how
the music arrived there. The technology is just the means; the end is the
improvement of human life.
Such cases like this are only a tiny snapshot of two
things I can briefly recall. Just today so far, I’m sure I’ve read articles I
never would have seen, talked with people I would have long ago lost touch
with, found out about events that would have remained forever unknown to me,
connected with someone who found something I said interesting enough to
consider…and just now, I recall that I heard word that a friend with asthma is
out of out a Shanghai hospital all safe and sound. None of this would I have
known only a few years ago.
Again, ask the question: What is causing all of this
amazing change? What is the driving force, the source of the manna, the
wellspring of all this avalanche of human progress?
I’ll tell you what is not causing it: politics. It’s
the great lie, the most-gigantic drain of valuable human energy ever conjured
up in the mind of man. What is politics but a grand argument about how we
should rule each other? Meanwhile, every step forward in history has come not
from this task, but a completely different one.
American politicians are always running on a platform
of change. They explain how their policies will make your life better. They map
out timetables. They present a portrait of a future. Above all else, they
presume that the future is theirs to control, and voters often go along with
this idea. As an example, look no further than the history of the State of the
Union address.
What if none of it is true? Just think about
education. Everyone has a plan for how to improve what exists. So it has been
for a hundred years. Meanwhile, the private sector, through physical and
digital technology, is reinventing the entire enterprise from the ground up through
every possible means. This decentralized, private-sector-driven,
technologically sophisticated education reform is making it almost impossible
not to be educated about something with each passing hour.
Online academies are opening by the day. Universities
are putting their courses online for free. For-profit companies are
distributing every manner of teaching tools one can imagine. For-profit learning
centers are opening in every town, all making a buck from teaching kids what
the public schools have failed to teach. For that matter, the History Channel
alone offers more sweeping programs than any public school textbooks two
generations ago.
Anyone in the world can be a teacher to the world
today, with a laptop and an Internet connection, and so, too, anyone can be
student.
It’s true in health care reform, too. For all the
problems in the pricing system and terrible insurance system, health care is
getting better, mainly due to private-sector innovations. The best radiologists
in the world can examine your scans in minutes, no matter where they actually
happen. Access to medical information is no longer trapped in a dusty book but
flies all over the world from hand-held devices. Error is more likely to be
corrected this way, saving and changing lives.
Society is not waiting for the politicians. When you
listen to what they say, when you watch what the bureaucrats do, when you look
at what the agencies are regulating, you suddenly realize that the political
monstrosities that burden the world are hopelessly out of touch with the kind
of progress that people are experiencing in their daily lives now.
Politicians can make the world a worse place, to be
sure. But if you look at the actual trends that are driving change in a
positive direction in our world today, none of them is inspired by political
initiative. They take place outside the public sector, and even outside the
purview of the politicians and bureaucrats. Sometimes it seems as if the
political class is clueless that the world has long ago moved on.
What is driving the world in a forward direction? It
is people connecting with people through free association, communication, money
exchange, enterprise, risk taking, commercial aspirations and the practical
arts. And from these forces, we are newly discovering the wonderful fruits of
civilization: arts, music, philosophy, faith.
And truth. Truth above all. The truth that is all
around us, the one that the public-sector machinery somehow cannot and will not
see, is that global society is making a future for itself without the help of
the world’s self-described public servants. The state in all its manifestations
struts and preens — builds monuments to itself and waves its flags — but when
it comes to really making change, we must look elsewhere.
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