The Illusion of Advancement

With the newfound discoveries in science and innovations in technology, the world progressively shrinks and people become more interconnected and intertwined. With time and space between countries and people across the globe shortening, ideas, knowledge, and culture are spread faster and faster. Improvements, advancements, and progress can be seen jumping from one area to the next. However, Berman’s All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity, Beck’s What is Globalization?, and the Economist’s “Rocket Machine” show the limitations of advancement and its drawbacks.

    Modernity and globalization brought forth changes that propelled humans into the future and changes that hindered advancement. Modernity is the “heroization” of the present, as Foucault describes; to follow the present that breaks away from tradition, to move from an agrarian lifestyle to one of industrialization and mass production, to focus on novelty and innovation. As people continue to move forward, with ideas and change flowing all around, the quick paced nature often leaves people behind. Lack of ideas or road blocks in innovation is also an eventuality. With modernity, improvements in transportation and telecommunications, globalization follows. Speed and efficiency with technology and science shortens time and space, breaking the barriers between culture, language, and geography. Along with it, new social, economic, and political traditions arise. Outsourcing, minimizing costs, and expansion becomes the norm. Those already at the top reach further heights while those left behind struggle with whats left of the “innovation.” The inability to innovate leads to mimicry and replication, but also competition with those whom become capable of expanding across oceans or those whom also follow the same path of imitation. But as science and technology expands and reaches new thresholds, life becomes more mechanized and repetitious. Those who are left behind work as drones in a hive, doing relatively the same task until the end. With certain monotonous and easily replicated tasks, the future holds robots and machines that can be designed and programmed to do exactly the same with minimal human error, to replace the unpredictable and costly worker. It is but an illusion that advancement and progression is smooth and perfect.