Cultural threat of technology

INSENSITIVE: Eleanor Hawkins (centre left) and Danielle Petersen were fined about $8000 and deported for their naked antics in Malaysia.

THE story is attributed to Sigmund Freud. Early in the 20th century, an acquaintance thinking he was doing the now famous man a kindness, pointed out the benefits of modern technology. "Just think of it, now you can get on a train and in only six hours, visit your son in Rome anytime." "Yes," replied Freud, "and before there were long-distance trains, my son wouldn't have easily moved to Rome but would be here where I could see him daily."

We tend to have an optimistic bias where technologic change is concerned and, in our Western ways, we refer to that change as progress. Others may see it quite differently. In this culture, we're conversant with the creative destruction that results when capitalism combines with technology.

Ford's assembly line production of cars, combined with rising worker wages, put the prospect of ownership of the newfangled machinery well within reach of everybody.

What started as a novelty for the rich became a necessity for the average person and soon gave birth to the urban sprawl we know and complain of today.

Buggy whip-makers soon had to find another trade as horse-drawn vehicles retreated from city streets. Horses were still used to deliver ice and vegetables decades after the automotive revolution began.

In other parts of the world, the habits which accompany technology are not always well received. Eleanor Hawkins, 23, and three of her fellow backpackers just found out how unpopular their Instagram photos made them in Malaysia.

Photos of their naked antics on top of Mt Kinabalu in Malaysia did not go over well with authorities there. Sabah state deputy chief minister Joseph Pairin Kitingan claimed the "disrespectful" stunt was to blame for triggering a magnitude -5.9 earthquake that struck the 13,400ft-high mountain last Friday, killing 18 people and leaving hundreds stranded. The mountain is considered sacred and the group was fined about $8000 and deported. Lucky at that. They had faced three months in a hellish Borneo prison. Tribal leaders had called for the group to atone for their insult by offering up 10 buffalo heads.

Quite apart from the insensitivity of the group's actions, they owe their new-found notoriety to the fact that one of their number put the footage of their naked stunt online - another aspect of our devolving notions of privacy, which don't always strike others as simple harmless foolishness.

This cultural clash exemplifies resistance to what some have called "cultural imperialism". Pop music, rock and roll and Hollywood movies have been seen as conveying messages of individualism, anti-authoritarianism and consumerism. There is a body of opinion supporting the notion that American and British pop music helped to undermine the Soviet empire. The yearnings of the young people for the opportunities and desires promoted by the Rolling Stones et al brought about conditions that led to the eventual collapse of the Iron Curtain.

While authoritarian cultures may more easily attempt to close themselves off to the significantly mass technologies, like movies and music - think Taliban - it's the newer digital technology that represents a greater threat to established order in these cultures.

The smartphone is a tool that enables individual impulse - impulse towards creativity but also towards personal and political action, disturbing to the status quo. The organisation of protest in Cairo's Tahrir Square was facilitated through text messaging on cellphones.

It can hardly be claimed the newer technologies are value neutral. The same technology that allows people to take their private parts into the public arena with the all-pervasive pressure to share - see Facebook - can then be used by a censorious government to sanction behaviour and ideas. That's the lesson we should learn from Edward Snowden. And now from the example of Eleanor Hawkins.