14 
So we may not have gotten the future we wanted with flying cars, robot butlers, and vacations on the moon. But we did end up with fantastic advances in science and modern medicine, and the internet. However, there was a catch. A very costly addition to the fine print that proves you don’t get something for nothing. [DogHouseDiaries]
Modern-Day Bionic Man Costs About £640,000
MP Costs Herself £14k For Not Really Understanding Twitter
There Really Is an Eye Watching Us From Space
Totally worth it!
I’ll see your Doghouse Diaries and raise you one Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.
Music these days is fine…in fact it’s exactly the same as it has always been…some is good…some is crap…….deal with it
True. Many get to a certain age and start to think the younger generation isn’t cutting it, it has always been the case, and they have always been wrong in thinking so – it is easier to for them to dismiss than try to expand themselves and understand – when the fact is each generation is creatively and technically better.
Creatively and technically better? Really?
Creatively? Probably not.
Technically? It wouldn’t suprise me. If someone creates something technically more challenging, it then exists and people will strive to equal that. Thus requiring future technical improvements to be even more difficult.
Why would we start getting worse all of a sudden after 40,000 years of advancement? Each generation has always been technically and creatively better than the one before – the media produced today is always going to be more advanced.
I don’t deny we have a lot of crap, people are creatively more empowered today. But the finest stuff by our best professional people is the best, and we wouldn’t expect anything less.
Look at a Beatles early love song, say “I Want To Hold Your Hand”, is that creatively or technically better than “…Baby One More Time”. Both silly little songs, but one is sharp, witty and pumping and the other just a sentimental jingle.
There isn’t any point comparing one song from this generation to another from 10 years ago. There were horrible songs as well as good ones then, too, but time preserves the classics so it seems a better era in retrospect. And in any case, everyone’s tastes are different. If people want to listen to beiber, so be it. Doesn’t bother me.
But there is a point, anyone can easily see that our creative concepts and technical ability is always getting better, as each generation stands on the shoulders of the one that came before.
Taste is a different issue, not liking a song is a poor excuse not to respect the creative and technical quality of it. And history does preserve those classics, yet the current generation always has to push the bar to out do those classics, and they always have and always will, appreciated or not.
“anyone can easily see that our creative concepts and technical ability is always getting better” – really? Can you? Music isn’t something you can so easily quantify. And even then, it’s entirely your own opinion. Other people might (and do) say it is getting worse, as computers play a bigger and bigger role.
“Taste is a different issue, not liking a song is a poor excuse not to respect the creative and technical quality of it” – so you respect Beiber’s music (ooh baby) then? Seems you are being a bit hypocritical here. Regardless of whether you like it, it is extremely popular for a reason which required creativity etc. etc.
I didn’t say they were getting worse. I think it all stays the same. As for the technical argument, you are always building on the work done before you so you cannot judge how much better one improvement is over another.
The argument is the same for both creativity and technology, they walk hand in hand. I think you are right, we are working on the same level. The people working at CERN are no more or less intelligent that any generation, yet they are doing things that was impossible decades ago, and doing things that would be inconceivable a 100 years ago. So while they are working at the first level the expectation, results and rewards are far greater. The point is that we are building on that previous work, you can’t take it away from us, and because of that everything we do is better.
I don’t buy the argument. I don’t think we are technically better than those before us, we’re just more advanced than they were is all. What we develop now is done on the back of those who came before us, each generation taking things a stage further. Maybe I’m being too pedantic here but better, and, more advanced, aren’t the same thing. Regarding creativity, I don’t think we’re better either. I think it’s more a case of tastes change over time. I don’t think the creativity of one generation has more intrinsic value than the creativity of following generations.
I understand what you are saying, technically or creatively we haven’t changed in 40,000 years on an individual level. But experience is compounded on both the creative and technical side that makes a huge difference, and the human is successful in being able to specialise and fractionise, and then work together in highly specialised units. The point is Mozart may get a Hip-Hop vibe on, but it doesn’t happen because he has no reference points nor modern electrical kit that is needed to progress. But today anyone if anyone wants to get into Hip-Hop then they can jump into that world, absorb decades of sounds and then go outside that world and combine in with any other reference point, and not only acquire the tools, modify and change them, invent new tools based beyond current standards. And the same for classical or any genre.
Having a reference point means that advancement can be made beyond that point. A scientist doesn’t need to make the batteries to power a lab, nor would you expect them to, and we may also forget them for not having such knowledge outside their own chosen field. The fact that a solid electrical energy in on tap for the lab, means that bigger and better solutions can be looked into.
A big part of us doesn’t like to except that the current generation will out do the previous generations on every level, but it has always happened and isn’t something that can be halted – we will always be creatively and technically better because of the reference points we have. It would be pointless for myself to become a cubist painter today, but it wouldn’t be pointless to study the subject, even if it is seen as a childish knee-jerk reaction to photography. It is an important lesson, and in studying it we may take away one small component that may lead to the the next great video art, music, film, etc – yet without that cubist reference we have a void. It really can’t be underplayed how far advanced that makes us. The average school kid knowing more than a classical great greek thinker isn’t a small deal.
What you’re talking about is the idea of cumulative human achievement and the concept of the “expert”.
The idea is that progress in a field is inherently accelerated from generation to generation within a society; by virtue of the fact that the ‘pupil’ has the benefit of the expertise and experience of his ‘teacher’, and increasingly in modern times; the ability to reference the studies and findings of individuals at the frontier of a particular area to become “expert” in that field more quickly, allowing them to then contribute their own work to that area of study.
It is indeed the very foundation of our Higher Education system. An Undergraduate achieves a foundation in a chosen area of specialisation, a Post-Graduate moves to become a ‘Master’ in that area of specialisation, a ‘Doctor’ is expected to prove contribution to their area of specialisation that delivers progress in cumulative human knowledge/achievement in that field. (Literally ‘doctoring’ the sum parts of an accepted body of understanding).
There are however several caveats that you have completely ignored in pursuit of a point. And although I believe you to understand what I’m about to say, you’ve come across very ‘black & white’ in the way that you’ve articulated yourself and thrown around that phrase “Creatively and Technically better” (or similar) more times than I’m comfortable with.
NOBODY can seriously suggest that the person who wrote “Baby One More Time” (Max Martin) is “creatively and technically” more gifted than Lennon/McCartney or Mozart. It’s not that simple at all…and I’m going to attempt to explain why:
Let’s stick with music as our example for now as it works well for the purposes of explanation. Out of Mozart, Lennon/McCartney and Max Martin, Mozart had the worst starting point. Recorded Music did not exist and he (and his contemporaries) had comparatively little access (there was no internet in the 18th Century of course!) to the studies and workings of music from a technical perspective when he embarked on his journey in his chosen field. The advancement of the field of music pre-Mozart to post-Mozart means that the net contribution of his creativity and technical achievement was immense. He was creatively and technically brilliant. Lennon/McCartney had the benefit of the work of the great composers as reference when they wrote their music, but nobody is going to claim those two were better musicians and composers than Mozart (the skill-level was diluted as the “progress” from Mozart’s time had been shared throughout human population due to specialisation – more on this later). The audiences were also very different, with different aims in their listening (again, more later). Max Martin had the benefit of having knowledge of the great composers AND Lennon/McCartney when he wrote “Baby One More Time”…but does this make him more creative? More technical? Better?
Two problems with this idea. The first is my friend ‘utilitarianism’ and specifically John Stuart Mill’s contribution to Jeremy Bentham’s earlier work (see what I did there?
):
“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question.”
In modern society; an educated elite has taken a back seat in favour of mass education. Median wealth has also normalised. Why is this worth mentioning? Well…if you have more wealthy people, their purchasing power and quality of lifestyle are lower than if those people existed in a society with greater disparity between rich and poor (not everybody can have a Country Estate, Stables & a Jet!). People, often without their awareness are engineered to be satisfied with instantaneously pleasure-inducing ‘lower pleasures’ (pig in shit stuff like Britney, Eastenders etc.) over more challenging but ultimately more rewarding stuff ie. ‘higher pleasures’ (great symphonies, great pieces of poetry/literature).
Unfortunately; one of the other symptoms of mass education and proliferation of wealth & the onward march of the species is that individuals and pioneers take a back seat in favour of the collaborative effort. Specialisations become ever more specialist and although generationally we might progress compared to previous generations, the net worth of the individual is lessened. Cream should still rise to the top, but there’s often just too much cream to call something ‘creatively or technically’ worthy of note. The dumb are getting smarter…but in a relational sense…the smart are also getting dumber (compared to the breadth of knowledge we could apply to luminaries from the human races’ illustrious past).
I could legitimately suggest that nobody since Leonardo Da Vinci has made as creative and technical a contribution to human achievement. He, as a Renaissance Man and had a mastery of many things that are now specialisations (you’re not going to get Banksy designing tanks & helicopters!). I might say the same of Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Since his time; the requirements for engineering have increased and engineering as a field has improved considerably. Only a fool would argue that human society hasn’t progressed in this area post-Brunel. But today, the guys who build bridges don’t also build the railways, waterways & ships etc.
The requirement for Fresco painters, sculptors, aqua-ducts and canals has definitely lessened in the last hundred years, meaning these fields have stagnated in their progress and indeed gone into retrograde motion in many cases. These skills are being lost as society’s needs and wants (remember higher & lower pleasures) dictate a requirement for new skills and specialisations.
Society might want an instant-access, bubblegum pop, digital world with flying machines, internets and fast-food…But let’s be more careful in respecting what got us here and understand that not all ‘progress’ has been for the better and that certain creative & technical skills being lost is a travesty and anything but ‘better’ or constituting ‘progress’.
Oh…and “The average school kid knowing more than a classical great greek thinker” thing is a complete fallacy. They might take on more information, and have access to a greater variety of information, and Aristotle might have struggled to use an iPad…but let’s not get silly. Aristotle, Plato, Socrates all kick my intellectual arse…and I will kick the intellectual arse of any schoolkid for generations to come (knowledge diluting etc.) Needs, wants and desires and the means to satisfy them are all that really change.
Why is there an xkcd tag?
Probably one of the worst Giz articles I’ve come across. Everything is wrong.
It’s ironic though that we used sounds inspired by the internet and technology to make this totally crap music.