The Psychic Pain of New Technology

Change is inevitable. New technology is helpful, but what does it take away ? One must anticipate and adjust.

The effect on Nepal of roads, hydro-electric power, television and other kinds of technology will come in two categories. The first one will better the lifestyles of the people. Refrigeration, for example, enhances food storage and guns facilitate hunting. The second category, whose workings are harder to gauge, will have the opposite effect. Its practices will subtly eat away the fabric of the culture in the name of development. What I hope, therefore, is that Nepalis can somehow learn to anticipate the adverse effects of technology and, thereby, learn to avoid them. Perhaps technological intrusion cannot be stopped, nor would it be fair to many if it did stop, but it could be slowed or modified if it is understood that it could cause harm. If they do nothing more than anticipate and understand these effects, Nepalis will be one of the first cultures to do so in history.

At one time, I was a dam builder. So I understand the power potential of rivers. I remember seeing the roaring Dudh Kos i river in its deep canyon as I walked from the Phortse Bridge to Gokyo in the Khumbu. I visualized a gigantic electric power dam and roads constructed to wheel in supplies and equipment. But then I also thought about what effect the building of such a dam would have on the people – mostly the children.

Cheap, abundant electricity would illuminate, heat, and inform through radio and television. With roads, porters would no longer have to walk. It is easy to speculate what electricity and roads would bring to the Khumbu and other parts of Nepal. But what will be taken away?

The Canadian historian Harold Innis writes about the abrasive and destructive effects of the media on more traditional forms of culture. In the book Empire and Communication he shows how the spread of literacy in Greece between 470 and 430 BC destroyed family unity and scathed religious beliefs. Even as individuals began to read and write, they became more independent and more willing to question traditional values.

Yet, none of the Greek philosophers seem to have been aware of how literacy was also destroying the bond of family life, the existing culture and the belief in the gods. While they were aware that their tradition was slowly disappearing, they were either unaware that the problem was literacy or consciously avoiding blaming literacy. Even Plato saw only benefits in literacy.

Literacy has been handed down from those ancient times to the present nuclear age. There were also other continuities but many of them have been lost in a mere half decade. Television was still unknown in my childhood and youth. As a result, I spent a lot of my time outdoors, playing games, some of which have come down, like literacy, from Greek and Roman times. For instance, a piling-on game called "Buck Buck – How Many Fingers Up" had remained essentially unchanged since Roman children played it two millennia ago, until around the early 1950's, when not only "Buck" but also marbles and chestnut bonkers disappeared from the scene. Strangely, no one was aware of the loss. Those born before 1940 remember the games quite well, but those born after seem not to. In 1952, television, like a Pied Piper, enchanted the children and brought them indoors. For these children, what they saw on the screen for hours and hours every week had little in common with the traditional culture and what they were taught by parents, teachers and priests. They acquired new ideas and new wants, being often dissatisfied with their own lives and with their parents' insular views. While the parents put the blame on many causes, few, if any, pointed to the television screen.

Tim Chesterton, a friend, has the third most northerly church parish in the world, at Holman in the Canadian Artic. Seven years ago, his church installed a satellite dish. Story-telling practices began to disappear as soon as the TV sets were clicked on. Not only that, the youth began even to forsake their warm parkas and to go out into —40° centigrade weather in light leather jackets —because this was what their television heroes wore.

Instantaneous changes in culture have occurred everywhere and at all times. One more example: when Johann Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1454, anyone willing to read found books available within a few years. The result was that so many read, and read well, that they were soon able to challenge the small group of priests who had enjoyed a monopoly of knowledge until then. "The book," says Harold Innis, "was the battering ram that brought the cathedrals and castles of Europe crashing to the ground." The church blamed the devil for its collapse.

These very thoughts about rapid change and the disappearance of tradition occupied my mind while in Nepal recently. On one of my visits to Swayambhu, I was with my grown-up son and daughter. We came across scores of children skipping and playing as we started to walk from Thamel. My children joined them and even gambled a couple of rupees. One day, these children having fun outside will also be enticed indoors to watch the "American dream" by the hour. They will get new ideas and discover that their parents are ignorant of what is happening in the larger world. Dissatisfied with their own culture, they will question its very foundations.

Surely, if both the parents and the children can anticipate the change, there will be enough time to adjust to the results of the new technology. Anticipation will, in fact, allow for control and for dealing with troubles that lie ahead. As Professor Marshal McLuhan says, "Anticipation gives the power to deflect and control force."

Television will be only one of the many technologies to influence Nepalis. There will be others. It took 18 porters eleven days to deliver a tonne of cement to the Everest View Hotel above Namche Bazaar. Someday, trucks will replace porters and, thus, end the "porter culture". One can hope that the porters will find a better life in other callings, but this cannot always be assured. When the airplane started taking supplies to the North of Canada, the Inuits had no more reason to hunt. So, many filled the void in their lives by taking to drink. Values judgments generally win over detached logic. If only this could be reversed…

My great uncle, Sir George Everest, charted your land. I hope that, in some small way, I can help in the making of a different chart – one that will be a guide for the mind rather than the feet. There is a great need to reduce the psychic pains of the coining technology in Nepal.

G.E. Munro lives in Ontario, Canada.