The Significance of Historical Perspectiveby Kirsten Wiking; 9/30/09To what extent do the Victorian writers Robert Southey and Thomas Carlyle address concerns relevant to a twenty-first century audience? Are they still worth reading? Why or why not? Victorian writers Robert Southey and Thomas Carlyle evaluated the social changes occurring as a result of emerging technologies in the early nineteenth century. In State and Prospects of the Country, Southey discusses how innovations such as public roads and the availability of printed text have negatively affected the social dynamic of Victorian society; similarly, Carlyle in his essay Signs of the Times breaks down the ramifications of his generation's shift into the "Age of Machinery". As both texts were written in the early nineteenth century, the modern reader may make the error of dismissing these writers' views as archaic, if not irrelevant, criticisms of technologies now thoroughly integrated into our contemporary society. Upon closer consideration of these works, however, we can see how these Victorian writers' predictions about technology's influence have in many ways manifested themselves in our modern-day culture: how the technologies of our age are extensions of those criticized in the Victorian era. These nineteenth-century essays are pertinent to us now because the serve as a historical mirror from which we can gain perspective on our own society and situation. In his essay about the consequences of his era's advances, Southey states: "We are, perhaps, not far enough removed from these changes to estimate them at their proper value" 1, but we, his twenty-first century contemporaries, have the distance necessary to more accurately evaluate his claims; so let us first consider the primary elements of Southey's criticisms, then explore how his observations have extended themselves into our era, and see whether or not we have benefited as a result. The first technological advance Southey discusses is the increased accessibility to public roads. While the average person of Southey's time was once relatively confined to his or her native village, the introduction of public roads opened new opportunities of exploration. The consequence of this, Southey argues, is that "[t]he warm and tender feelings which riveted each man so firmly to his kindred, friends, and neighbours, have now lost much of their former vigour" 2, since "persons of almost every rank may float along the stream of life, without taking or exciting much real interest in a single human being" 3. People, Southey asserts, have lost meaningful connection to their hometown families and neighbors as a result of these new channels of travel and contact. Consider this idea in a modern context -- like Southey's Victorians, our generation has too discovered a means of connecting with people entirely outside of our limited family-and-neighbors scope: the communication superhighway. With technologies like internet and phone communications, we have access to millions of people whom we would be unaware of were it not for these means. Although these technologies have in certain ways benefited the modern user -- for example, allowing those who feel geographically isolated to connect with people around the globe -- they have also led to a situation where we are so well-connected that we have paradoxically lost the ability to make real connections with others. Social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, for example, emphasize this broad, surface-level style of communication since correspondence through these media is almost exclusively through short notes and messages. Although a person may be able to very expediently communicate with seemingly limitless numbers of internet avatars, it is likely that his ability to build real relationships with physical beings has suffered as a result since his need of true friends has been outsourced by this convenient access to digital acquaintances. This shift leads one to wonder how a culture changes when its people lack close friends whom they may share their more private feelings or ideas with. Although we may not be able to fully answer this question, we can see how Southey's nineteenth-century observation on human connectivity has extended itself into our era, suggesting the negative implications of our modern transformation into this type of connection. Another observation Southey discusses is the increased availability of education and the subsequent lowering of its quality. He asserts that "though the stream of knowledge has become wider, it has not always become deeper, or more fructifying as it flows" 4. Although the "cheapness of books -- the multitude of teachers -- and the spare time created by the extension of machinery" 5 has spread education amongst the various classes of people, Southey argues that the depth of this education being offered has lowered and become almost irrelevant as those "who really have a love of learning, and the zeal which has been shown to improve them...[have become] among the most signal peculiarities of the present day" 6. He argues that since knowledge and education have become so available, they have also been cheapened because the sheer volume of what is being offered undermines the idea that quality education, even if only available to a select elite, is better than substandard mass learning. This is not to suggest, however, that public education is a negative development in contemporary society, as Southey's criticism seems to suggest. Rather, one should look at his disapproval of mass education under the context that what is bad about it is not that education is now available on a large scale, but rather that the quality of information offered has decreased as an unintended result of this spread. With the introduction of technologies like the modern-day web, this quality has been lowered to an even greater degree. Information-sharing technologies -- whether it be the printing press of Southey's time or the internet search engine of ours -- have decreased the depth of information we encounter, and has accustomed us to media that convey knowledge "more easily, simply, or compendiously than before" 7. While these technologies have allowed us access to a much greater breath of information than ever thought possible, they breed learners who feel themselves "without time or strength to embrace the vast field of knowledge now expanded before them, readers give up profound and systematic application in despair, and betake themselves to works of a subordinate character" 8. A person using the search engine Google, for example, has access to a plethora of information on every conceivable topic, but since there is so much data, much of which is not regulated for quality or depth, the reader finds himself overwhelmed, often not exercising much skepticism towards the information he receives since it is so conveniently given to him.Ê So while the mass accessibility to information is, in itself, a positive development, Southey's criticism leads one to consider the quality of information made accessible to the masses in both his day and in ours. Like Southey, Thomas Carlyle also discusses technology's effects on Victorian society. Carlyle argues that the Industrial Revolution not only altered the external world of Victorian culture, but also his generation's internal approach to knowledge: how the acquisition of it is no longer a process of actively inquiring after truth, but rather a mechanical method of finding an answer by the most efficient means possible. Carlyle describes this transformation: Instruction, that mysterious communing of Wisdom with Ignorance, is no longer an indefinable tentative process, requiring a study of individual aptitudes, and a perpetual variation of means and methods, to attain the same end; but a secure, universal, straightforward business, to be conducted in the gross, by proper mechanism, with such intellect as comes to hand. 9 People, Carlyle argues, have shifted to mentality thatÊ "what cannot be investigated and understood mechanically, cannot be investigated and understood at all" 10, which suggests that the core of understanding is no longer truth since it cannot always be found through this mechanical process. This nineteenth-century shift consequently fostered a change in the ways people approached knowledge for just as a machine works to find the most efficient solution to a task, so too did people of Carlyle's time shift to a methodology of seeking the simplest route to an answer. Technologies like Sparknotes or Cliffnotes could be considered the modern mutations of Carlyle's observation. Both technologies work to supply their users with "the answer", allowing them to bypass the journey traditionally needed in finding that answer. A student writing a paper on a book, for example, does not even need to have read the book to know what it is about: Sparknotes systematically breaks down every element a student could need to know -- summary, important quotes, and, most significantly, analysis. Modern students do not need the skills once required for drawing conclusions and connections from a difficult text since there are technologies that do this work for them. While these sources have certainly reduced the time and effort required of a student in comprehending a text, they undercut the premise that true understanding is not the mere possession of some idea, but rather the total process involved in reaching that idea. Can a student really draw meaning from literature if it is not by his own processes that the conclusion is reached? When this process is eliminated, as Carlyle describes happen in his society and as seems to be occurring in our own, the concept of what real knowledge is lost as we become accustomed to accepting any cookie-cutter analysis that is given without exercising our own judgment and skepticism. Those who dismiss writers like Southey and Carlyle as irrelevant are likely to assert that even if these Victorian critics were correct in their observations of society and that these negative effects of technologies have, in fact, manifested themselves in contemporary culture, attempting to slow or stop society's progression forward is futile. Not only is this type of philosophy apathetic, it is quite plainly dangerous: the moment people cease to care about and work to regulate the progress of society is the moment that human intellect becomes lost in the reckless inertia of change. Reading these Victorian texts offers a means of viewing the historical development and evolution of technologies through time, allowing us to notice disturbing patterns and consider whether or not these developments have truly benefited our culture. These essays are still pertinent and worth reading by the modern person because connections can be drawn from these nineteenth-century criticisms to the problems of today. This noticing of historical parallels leaves us more sensitive and aware of contemporary society's problems: this awareness is the first step towards a solution, hopefully leading to a more active engagement in choosing how we allow new technologies to shape our existence. 1. Southey, Robert, "State and Prospects of the Country," in The Emergence of Victorian Consciousness: The Spirit of the Age, ed. George Levine (New York: Free Press, 1987), 115. 2. Ibid., 116. 3. Ibid. 4.Ibid., 118. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid., 119. 8. Ibid., 118. 9. Carlyle, Thomas, "Signs of the Times," in The Emergence of Victorian Consciousness: The Spirit of the Age, ed. George Levine (New York: Free Press, 1987), 24. 10. Ibid., 28. |
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