Canberra is joining in. The Legislative Assembly commissioned a study of what Canberra would and should be like in 2020, using a pun on twenty-twenty vision.
It is to issue the third of four quarterly reports on Monday. The first was a quick demographic projection. The second was some 300 pages on recycled paper. Third will perhaps be as long and will come down a few days after a information technology academic, UC’s Professor Mary O’Kane, called for more government data to be available electronically.
IT is the bore-word for Canberra’s future, along with tourism. If that is the case it is a shame that history is becoming so easily disgraced. It is a shame it is being replaced by sociology and “”communications” and other mumbo-jumbo, because history can tell us so much about the future.
History tells us, for example, that tourists invariably wreck the things they come to see and then move on to new pastures, that tourism is a fickle thing. A thriving Aswan one day is deserted the next. Yes; let’s have some tourism, but let’s not rely on it. How silly to replace reliance on the Federal Government with reliance on tourism.
History can tell us a lot about technology, too, and the way it affects the way people live.
2020 is 27 years away. The house I live in is 27 years old, and will no doubt last another 27 years. As I look around it, I notice that the big technological breakthroughs are all very old.
Television, the tape recorder, camera, even computer, and certainly the electric light and telephone are very old technologies. The ideas are half a century old or more. I look out the window and see more old technological ideas: the car and aeroplane are nearly a century old.
So what’s new? Where is the technological revolution? And what is likely to happen in the next 27 years.
The big changes are not what things are being made, but the way things are being made, what they are made of and how easy they are to use. These are perhaps more important than what things are being made.
Tape-recorders are a good example. They were invented in the 1950s, or earlier. Few people could even carry them. And even fewer could afford them. Now they can be made smaller, or lighter materials and by industrial robots. Everyone can afford them and they are easy to use. The breakthrough was not the invention of the tape-recorder, but the accessibility and affordability of it through changes in the way it is made and what it is made of.
Cameras are a better example. Colour photographs have been around a very long time. Only the automatic focusing and exposure and automatic processing of the results enabled the masses to bore each other with cutesie baby and holiday photos.
So, too, with the car. We no longer have crank starters, spark retarders, chokes and many cars don’t have clutches. They are cheap and easy to use.
I look around houses and see better materials being used to make the same things. But that is an important change because it makes things more affordable.
These trends tell us to look for presently expensive and inaccessible things that have begun the trend to being cheaper. IT is one of them. As a member of the privileged information-rich class, I have had computer toys for more than a decade. They are still almost prohibitively expensive for most families. But they are coming down _ slowly.
But computers and modems are still expensive and hard to use. There are huge databases out there of information, but the huge majority of the population cannot afford to reach it, or even if they could, would find the programs to access it far too complex.
IT is where the car was with crank starters and the camera with manual light-metering and focusing. IT will get smarter, gradually, a more people will use it for many more things. Many people will use their computers and modems to: do the banking, pay bills, get information out of government; go shopping; search encyclopaedias and so on. We know this because a few people do it now. Only cost and accessibility prevent the masses doing it. And these are gradually overcome.
How does this affect Canberra? History shows the impact of technology to be gradual, that people take it on board and then take it for granted: the fax machine, credit cards and the mobile phone are good examples. They might change lives by making them more comfortable or productive, but human nature stays the same. Humans will still be selfish in 2020, and altruistic, greedy, sharing, caring, dull, bright, soulful and witty.
Humans are gregarious creatures. Organisations cannot function without humans gathering together. Bizarrely, much of the necessity to gather comes not only from the need to co-operate but also from the need to compete. Electronics will enable some people to work from home, more of the time, but not all (or even a majority) of the people all of the time.
Let’s be really prosaic: it’s a safe bet Belconnen Way (with a new and different surface) will still be there in 2020 and that cars (with some new sorts of materials) will hurtle down it in the morning peak.
If that is not the case, Canberra is in for a very bleak future indeed.
I can see it now: the passing of the Parliamentary (Electronic) Sittings Act 2019. MPs will sit in their electorate offices scattered throughout Australia and link up by video telephone for parliamentary sittings.
We know individual humans are selfish and will often not do things that would be good for everyone: recylcing, driving sensibly and not polluting, for example. And a tiny minority will impose huge security and medical costs on the whole society through stealing, violence and drug abuse. These things will continue. Can their impact be reduced with cheaper and smarter technology and smarter action by governments.
Or do we continue doing dumb things that history and experience have told us over and over again do not help: throwing people in jail or threatening them with fines?
We know the post-war baby boomers, through sheer numbers, have dominated society from the baby shows of the early 50s, to the me-generation of the 60s. Should they form a dominant grey power group? Can some of their wealth be milked for the general good, with death duties or encouraging benefaction in wills?
History tells us the business cycle is like to continue with perhaps an end-of-century psychological warp in favour of optimism. Can we smooth its painful ragged edges? Can we stop wrecking the environment in which we live? Can we think about more than one policy at the time: housing and transport and population and health?
Is all this discussion of the future an indication that humans are at least on the way to getting smarter? Is it an indication that governments want to change their reputation for doing dumb things or only doing the smart thing when all the dumb things have been tried at great cost and proven to be wrong? Let’s hope so.
If 2020 succeeds in just getting more people in power to think long-term rather than short-term or even just to think at all before launching into action, it will have been a success.
It seems we are broadening the thinking beyond Canberra as a tourist and IT mecca. It is just as well because it may not work. As Oscar Wilde said: “”There is only one thing worse than not getting what you want: that’s getting it.”