Our Modern Dance with Technology

As I re-immerse myself in the thought of Francis Bacon, the problem of technology, and the crisis of modernity, I expect to be posting frequently on the subject.

In my last post, I made reference to Louis c.k., one of the most prominent popular thinkers of our day on the problem of technology (you must understand I have a dry sense of humor...but at least I have a complete name). He appeared to be suitably impressed by the advances of the last hundred years (flight, high speed internet access, and even the latter while flying) while at the same time understandably disturbed by what those amazing developments do to our hearts, becoming numbingly unamazing to us.

King's student, John, cited Wendell Berry as one who rebels against the computer and it's soul disfiguring effects by continuing to use a typewriter. ("Why I am not going to buy a computer," Harpers, 1987; reprinted in What Are People For?.) I responded that the use of that technology is now the privilege of the well to do because ribbons are rare and expensive if they are obtainable at all. A reader named Phillip corrected me, adding that they are now easy available on via the Internet (a word that MS Word insists that I capitalize). I added this:

Ahh! Though it would be Baconian but not wise to look to technology to solve all our problems, even the problems that technology itself introduces, it is interesting that whereas an advance in technology (and the economics of the marketplace) made typewriter ribbons difficult to obtain, a further advance in technology--the Internet--again along with the economics of the marketplace, has made them easily available once again and at what Phillip tells us is an easily affordable price, even for my old Underwood. Oh brave new world that has such wonders in it!

 (Yes, I know that I slightly misquoted Shakespeare. I'm allowed to do that.)

We see this ongoing dance with technology in something I read recently in Superfreakonomics by Leavitt and Dubner, a Christmas present (thanks, Steve!). Greenies, and perhaps people like Wendell Berry, look back wistfully on the days of the horse and buggy, the days of environmentally friendly transportation when the only emissions from our vehicles could be plowed back into the earth and enrich it for organic food production.

"New York City: Horse overcome by heat." Circa 1910. 

George Grantham Bain Collection.

But the economist and the journalist tell us this:

The horse, a versatile and powerful helpmate since the days of antiquity, was put to work in many ways as modern cities expanded: pulling streetcars and private coaches, hauling construction materials, unloading freight from ships and trains, even powering the machines that churned out furniture, rope, beer, and clothing. If your young daughter took gravely ill, the doctor rushed to your home on horseback. When a fire broke out, a team of horses charged through the streets with a pumping truck. At the turn of the twentieth century, some 200,000 horses lived and worked in New York City, or 1 for every 17 people.

But oh, the troubles they caused!

Horse drawn wagons clogged the streets terribly, and when a horse broke down, it was often put to death on the spot. This caused further delays. Many stable owners held life-insurance policies that, to guard against fraud, stipulated that an animal be euthanized by a third party. This meant waiting for the police, a veterinarian, or the ASPCA to arrive. Even death didn't end the gridlock. "Dead horses were extremely unwieldy," writes the transportation scholar Eric Morris. "As a result, street cleaners often waited for the corpses to putrefy so they could more easily be sawed into pieces and carted off."

The noise from iron wagon wheels and horseshoes was so disturbing--it purportedly caused widespread nervous disorders--that some cities banned horse traffic on the streets around hospitals and other sensitive areas. ... (I'm skipping the interesting paragraph on traffic fatalities. I want to get right to the dung.)

Worst of all was the dung. The average horse produced about 24 pounds of manure a day. With 200,000 horses, that's nearly 5 million pounds of horse manure. A day. Where did it all go?

Decades earlier, when horses were less plentiful in cities, there was a smooth functioning market for manure, with farmers [people, no doubt, like Wendell Berry--DCI] buying it to truck off (via horse, of course) to their fields. But as the urban equine population exploded, there was a massive glut. In vacant lots, manure was piled as high as sixty feet. It lined city streets like banks of snow. In the summertime, it stank to the heavens; when the rains came, a soupy stream of horse manure flooded the crosswalks and seeped into people's basements (pp. 8-10).

They then describes some other unhappy consequences: flies, diseases, rats, and worst of all...methane! Lots and lots of methane, "a powerful greenhouse gas." Urban planners were gravely concerned about this health crisis (even without the climate issue), but totally stumped as to what to do about it.

But the problem suddenly disappeared, and it was neither government regulation nor a political-cultural rebellion of people in large numbers returning to a simpler, rural, agrarian life out of disgust for what had become of cities.

The problem was solved by technological innovation. No, not the invention of a dung-less animal. The horse was kicked to the curb by the electric streetcar and the automobile, both of which were extravagantly cleaner and far more efficient. The automobile, cheaper to own and operate than the horse-drawn vehicle,  was proclaimed "an environmental savior."

Of course, the dance continues. But my point is that it's a dance, though a dance between two who are inextricably locked in embrace and in what will always be, on account of sin and until the Lord's return, a love-hate relationship. Our goal should be, wise in the study of these things, to "spread the love."

P.S. -- My 10 year old daughter, seeing the picture of the exhausted horse, invited me to explain it, so I told her all about New York's horse problems in that day. She immediately suggested that we could have horses today because we have better means of hauling away the waste and the carcasses. Great idea, I thought, and a good application of technology to incorporate the best of yesteryear into modern life. We have bicycle lanes. Why not horse lanes? Cars have to drive around pedicabs. Why not make way for horse drawn buggies? Indeed, New York does have a few of these around Central Park. We could license them so that the numbers do not become unmanageable. I doubt, however, that there will be sufficient real estate in Manhattan that people can affordably devote to stabling a great number of horses. Just a thought.