Technology and Heroes...
This is an excerpt from what I was reading on the web just now...
More than a third of a century ago, before anyone had ever heard of videotapes or the World Wide Web or 24-hour TV news stations, Daniel Boorstin, in his uncannily prescient book The Image, described how, as we move deeper into what he called the Graphic Revolution, technology would threaten to diminish us. Ideas, even ideals, would be reduced to the level of images, he argued, and faith itself might be simplified into credulity. "Two centuries ago, when a great man appeared," the historian wrote, "people looked for God's purpose in him; today we look for his press agent."
The hero — so ran Boorstin's prophecy — was being replaced by the celebrity, and where once our leaders seemed grander versions of ourselves, now they just looked like us on a giant screen. Nowadays, as we read about the purported telephone messages of a sitting President and listen to the future King of England whisper to his mistress, the power of technology not just to dehumanize but to demystify seems 30 times stronger than even Boorstin predicted.
posted by Ankur Pruthi at Thursday, February 03, 2005
2 Comments:
The problem is not with technology. Rather it is the attitude of the common man which has changed drastically toward these issues. Now a common man is not so common as he used to be a few centuries ago. That is a good change brought about by technology. The expectation of the common man has grown to enormous proportions and any achievement in any field nowadays doesn't impress people as much as it used impress in earlier times. For example the revolutions brought about Einstein and the like wont be so spectacular nowadays.
Roughly one can say that the standards for heroism are too high to achieve. And even if someone achieves something of that sort, the fame is temporary and he is succeeded by someone else.
From a different angle I feel that some heroes of history have fooled the common masses and have become heroes that way. I dont find killing people in wars as something very heroic. But that used to be the standard in those times. Thanks to modern outlook about heroism, we dont have such standards now.
Anyway we already have a lot of heroes in the history to get moral boost and we need not bother about their absence in present times.
Infact, one can say that the idea of heroism has changed over time. In the beginning, Kings, Religious leaders and philosophers who could drive public opinion were heroes. Next the artists became heroes, then towards renaissance, even scientists were considered heroes. People worshipped them and wanted to emulate them. Then came the great industrial leaders but today, people are fiercely individualistic, their idea of heroism has changed, they don't get influenced that easily and that has more or less reulted in the demise of the real hero. Today, As the article said, there are only celeberities, whose life-style we want to emulate, nothing less, nothing more.
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