Selling Out the Future

Mass communications has been used to over-sell the future for more than a century. Over time this blog will show how an inflated vision of the future has generated excessive optimism, leading recently to the credit bubble that is crippling the real economy. The latest issue of the Atlantic Monthly (December, 2008) contains an example. Author Henry Blodget is a chastened former investment broker who gives his version of what went wrong in Why Wall Street Always Blows It. According to Blodget, the reason is in our DNA . We are programmed for optimism, no matter what evidence exists to the contrary. On page 86, he offers this encapsuled explanation: "The future is always uncertain -- and amid uncertainty, all sorts of faith-based theories can flourish, even on Wall Street."

On the opposing page is an ad by a major U.S. energy supplier. "Tomorrow Begins Today" is the tag line. It is one of the oldest themes in American commerce, and one of the most misleading. In fact, for the generation whose hopes are being dashed in the collapse of the stock and housing markets, the most blase forecasters don't see a turn-around for at least a year or two. Others think it might take the best part of a decade for that to happen.

The lesson is brutally simple. Once in a while the future runs out and -- like a demented game of musical chairs -- we are stuck in the reality of the present.

A Chorus of Ones

Obama relied on social networking technology to win a stunning victory over his Democratic and Republican opponents. Now he's using it to govern prematurely as the president-elect. On the weekend he used the Web to spread the message of his infrastructure plan to rescue the U.S. economy. With the emphasis on interactive technological solutions, Obama may be remaking the bond between Americans and their president. This kind of short-term action will help to strengthen the constituency for dramatic change, even in the face of economic instability that is unprecedented in the lifespan of a couple of generations. Rapid-fire measures, conveyed directly in real time, will certainly revolutionize communications between the governors and the governed. In time, it may even produce valuable momentum on the path to a resurgent economy. No doubt it will also excite expectations that technlogy can be relied on to do the heavy lifting instead of expending the human capital that has always been required to move the mountains. That is not an adequate lesson for the long term. We North Americans have come to believe that somebody or something else will pick up the tab for our extravagance. What other message can the people of developing countries be getting when we persist in the lifestyle that created our current mess and expect them to ride bicycles? We need to devise solutions that work because they are facilitated by technology. But we cannot duck the onus for change. It is on each one of us.

Amen Emanuel

The pre-Christmas Wallmart shopping stampede is just the latest example of a herd mentality among North American consumers that is unbecoming of cattle. This is what decades of mercantile propaganda has wrought in a society that would kill for the sake of a big enough bargain. Six people were trampled in the rush, including one 34-year-old man, Jdimytai Damour, who died from his injuries. And nobody was being charged because there was no way to assign responsibility for the death. But it is unlikely that the spectre of such frantic acquisitiveness will change much. After all, how many shootings will it take to stem the media-induced high school death toll? People who value liberty over human life will continue to shoot each other over nothing and trample the rest as long as they can. Having proved its unwillingness to stamp out gun violence, what are the odds that government will restrain rampant consumerism. Only the markets can restore a common-sense balance. And maybe the debt crisis will make the point, for once, that there should be some some limits beyond what people can get away with. Hopefully Rahm Emanuel had that in mind when he said we shouldn't let any crisis go to waste.

The boom and bust cycle of hopes and inflated expectations has been repeated frequently since the Second World War when industrialization gave it momentum and the impact of televised mass media took hold. Waves of technology-charged consumerism drove the economy to new heights until the 1990s techno-bubble burst and the Y2K balloon broke. But that didn’t stop the geniuses of the U.S. stock market from contriving ways to blow up what was left of the economy by creating another wave of false expectations around the housing market. Now we have another media-driven phenom in the making in the person of Barack Obama. How long can any mortal withstand the pressure he will be under?

Prophets of Boom

The usual cast of malingerers, psychics, mystics and star-gazers who have adhered to the prophetic tradition in any age were in ample evidence throughout the 20th Century. Cultists, levitators and prestidigitators of every religious and sectarian stripe pronounced their particular revelations to anyone who would listen and then quickly passed the hat before their zeal could backfire on them.
The future was one of the most prevalent themes in mass communications during the last half of the 20th Century. Entire bodies of literature, journalism, art, design and commercial promotion have shared prophetic themes. Marketers accentuated the obvious appeal of the future in order to merchandise everything from family sedans to household fans. Advertisers aroused and exploited the fevered postwar rush for consumer goods. Prophecy earned a new respectability from the postwar transformation of North American values. In this new universe, achievement took second place to embellishment. It became immensely more rewarding to trumpet the virtues of products, many not yet even invented, than to toil on the shop and factory floors. And the real price of all the hyperbole is just beginning to dawn on us.