declinism

This page considers 'declinism' - anxieties about relative or absolute cultural and economic decline in which digital technology is claimed as a cause or as a solution.

It covers -

• introduction
• the nation of the future
• the ideology of decline
• digital measures
• digital fixes, digital fears

     introduction

For many people the golden age is the generation before last, an era after which economic performance (or prospects) and morals grew worse. Pessimism about the future, often expressed by elites in cultures enjoying unprecedented levels of comfort - is deeply traditional. Claims that a society, nation or region is in 'decline' are a counterpoint to the ideology of progress that has driven much western development, with people expecting that the following generation will be better and and succeeding generations will enjoy even greater benefits.

That decline can be absolute, with a perceptible decrease in mortality and employment, increased unemployment and crime, greater civil disorder, lower return on investment or loss of territory and respect. It may instead be relative: some states and regions advance more quickly than others, today's leader becomes tomorrow's follower, absolute increases in wellbeing may seem less important than a perceived decline (or potential decline) relative to a peer.

Declinism is thus as much about perceptions as it is about realities.

One reason is the difficulty of measurement, evident in recurrent disagreement about China's economy (with the Asian Development Bank for example suggesting in 2007 that GDP is 40% smaller than indicated by the World Bank). Another reason is that decline, whether historic or forecast, can be attributed to a range of factors, from the enervating effects of hot baths, rock & roll and old age pensions to gentrification of English entrepreneurs, 'excessive' taxation, 'imperial overstretch' and industrial 'hollowing out' through emphasis on services rather than manufacturing.

US theorist Samuel Huntington noted the moral value of declinism, commenting that "It provides a warning and a goad to action in order to head off and reverse the decline that it says is taking place". Declinism, in the digital environment or otherwise, is a theatre for polemicists, one in which the decorations change but themes recur. Some past claims - for example fin-de-siecle anxieties about the imminent end of civilisation through the 'rise of the colored races' and 1920s eugenics obscenity on the need for 'social prophylaxis' - have echoes in the more extravagant contemporary rhetoric about the decline of the US

the West - wedded to a multiculturalism that undercuts its own confidence, a welfare state that nudges it toward sloth and self-indulgence, and a childlessness that consigns it to oblivion - is looking ever more like the ruins of a civilization.

Many prescriptions for averting or reversing decline also sound familiar, including reduction of taxes and bureaucracy, increased 'law and order', stricter disciplining of children, a return to the classics, greater censorship, shorter hair (but not too short) and an emphasis on outdoor exercise. As an embodiment of modernity the net has not been exempt from those nostrums.

A perspective is provided in The Idea of Decline in Western History (New York: Free Press 1997) by Arthur Herman, The Perfectibility of Man (London: Duckworth 1970) by John Passmore, History of the Idea of Progress (New Brunswick: Transaction 1994) by Robert Nisbet and The Idea of Progress. An Inquiry into Its Origin and Growth (London: Macmillan 1920) by John Bury.

     the nation of the future

The problematical nature of many announcements of the 'nation of the future', expressions of hubris by the country in the 'passing lane' and angst on the part of the superceded nation is evident in a succession of works that include -

• 'The Geographical Pivot of History' (1904) by Halford Mackinder
• Le défi américain [The American Challenge (New York: Atheneum 1968)] Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber
• The Emerging Japanese Superstate. Challenge and Response (London: Deutsch 1971) by Herman Kahn
• Japan as Number 1: Lessons for America (Cambridge: Harvard Uni Press 1979) by Ezra Vogel
• America as an Ordinary Country (Ithaca: Cornell Uni Press 1979) edited by Richard Rosecrance
• Japan in the Passing Lane (London: Counterpoint 1984) by Satoshi Kamata
• The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Random House 1987) and Preparing for the Twenty-First Century (New York: Random 1993) by Paul Kennedy
• The Japan That Can Say No (New York: Harper 1991) by Shintaro Ishihara
• The Chinese Century: The Rising Chinese Economy and Its Impact on the Global Economy, the Balance of Power, and Your Job (Philadelphia: Wharton School Publishing 2004) by Oded Shenkar

Responses include The Sun Also Sets: The Limits to Japan's Economic Power (New York: Simon & Schuster 1989) by Bill Emmott, The Coming Collapse of China (New York: Random 2001) by Gordon Chang.

Contemporary 'barbarians at the gates' literature includes -

• Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (New York: Metropolitan 2007) by Chalmers Johnson
• The End of the American Era: US Foreign Policy and the Geopolitics of the Twenty-first Century (New York: Knopf 2002) by Charles Kupchan
• Are We Rome?: The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin 2007) by Cullen Murphy
• America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It (Washington: Regnery 2006) by Mark Steyn
• The Roman Predicament (Princeton: Princeton Uni Press 2006) by Harold James

As the preceding paragraphs indicate, much of that writing is very traditional, an echo of US lamentations in the 1950s, British and German fin-de-siecle anxieties, and denunciations in the 1790s or beyond. Perspectives are provided in The American Jeremiad (Madison: Uni of�Wisconsin Press 1978) by Sacvan Bercovitch and The Imperial Tense: Problems and Prospects of American Empire (Chicago: Dee 2003) edited by Andrew Bacevich.

     digital measures

How do you measure absolute and relative declines, particularly if you are conscious of the problematical nature of many statistics and are skeptical about voodoo from gurus whose confidence on occasion is in inverse proportion to the accuracy of their forecasts?

Enthusiasts have used -

• basic measures of teledensity, typically counting the number of landlines and mobiles but not grappling with more fundamental questions of how that connectivity is used
• notions of 'e-readiness' in developing international rankings or promoting the idea of a 'broadband gap' (reminiscent of the 1960s 'missile gap') that should be reduced through government support - typically through concessions favouring incumbent network operators
• differing metrics regarding regional, sectoral and national digital divides

     digital fixes, digital fears

Dot com enthusiasts have proposed a range of 'fixes' to address supposed national, local or sectoral declines - real or imagined.

Those fixes include -

• e-democracy, with rhetoric about 'netroots' and digital plebiscites as mechanisms to deal with voter alienation, the tyranny of 'machine politics' and disenfranchisement of the poor or the 'silent majority'. MoveOn, YouGov, IBNIS and Facebook are thus proposed as a a solution for Putnam's 'bowling alone'
• e-government, with electronic networks bridging gaps between citizens and officials, reducing costs and increasing responsiveness or accountability
• e-business, with the 'glass pipeline' in supply chains, etailing and more targeted marketing claimed as lowering costs
• e-health, with patients having access to independent information (albeit with a risk of cyberchondria), governments cutting service delivery costs and service providers being able to readily integrate data for improved dignosis/treatment
• e-education

For others digital technologies are the problem, not the solution. Concerns include notions that -

• silicon fibre is sapping a nation's moral fibre, requiring censorship of online content, or enables communication by terrorists
• crowdsourcing is eroding the livelihoods of education and that UGC such as Wikipedia will lead the 'digitally illiterate' astray
• corporate cost-cutting through extensive offshoring will result in hollowing-out of industry and pose fundamental dangers regarding identity crime
• the 'always on' society of 'teleworkers' or 'connected workers' represents a digital Fordism that chills creativity and poisons family life
• advanced economies are becoming 'surveillance states', with the 'death of privacy', panoptic sorting on the basis of data mined by information brokers and their clients, and abuse of tools such as RFIDs and ECHELON
• erosion of free speech and of scope for creativity and learning through over-reaching responses by intellectual property owners to developments such as file-sharing and mashing
• the net, more so than television, is an 'electronic wasteland', characterised by trivia, gawking, 'cyber-addiction' and 'information overload'.

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