When Marty McFly in Back to the future II (1989) from his DMC DeLorean enters the year 2015, he sees flying cars that enter the normal street via ingenious runways. It is not the only science fiction film from the eighties and nineties of the twentieth century that resounds with a rock-solid belief in progress; flying cars, maglev trains and hyperloop-like connections, we should all have it by now.
The reality is different: we are still en masse in petrol cars and are clamoring to go to the sun and sea in a kerosene-fired plane. Moreover, it does not take us a minute less than it did fifty years ago. Rather longer, due to the hordes queuing in front of you thanks to the increased prosperity and democratization of luxury goods. The train to Enschede takes longer than in 1950 and a dirty plane is still the most attractive alternative for those who want to go to cities such as Berlin, Bremen or Hamburg. In short, the technological progress that mankind has made in recent decades is rather disappointing.
Yet the insidious and paralyzing belief in progress is far from gone. As a by-product of neoliberalism, that belief boils down to the fact that we don’t really need to do anything, or even can do anything. After all, we are on the cusp of some major transition, and new inventions will render today’s efforts futile. In addition, we constantly tell ourselves that this is not the right time for major investments. The financial crisis was the biggest crisis since World War II, then that was the corona crisis and now the inflation and Ukraine crisis is that – not now!
Nonsense of course, we’re just a bunch of lazy teenagers looking for an excuse not to clean up our own room. Ignorance and naivety about what real progress is also play a role, as administrators who constantly confuse digitization with progress prove. They gloat at the opening of iPad schools, but the geeks who designed those iPads let their own children play with hoops and wooden toys only because they know the destructive power of their product.
The same administrators talk endearingly about ‘all those smart boys and girls’ who will ensure that the world will look completely different in twenty years from now. But where that confidence comes from remains a mystery. Dutch education is in a declining trend, we are performing relatively little on a technological level anyway and I don’t see many indications for a renaissance of technological progress in the tick-tackling narcissism around me.
It is therefore not the law of the inhibiting progress that should be feared, but the law of the inhibiting belief in progress. After all, this ensures that governments and companies continue to postpone major changes and investments, with the idea that De Techniek will save everyone sooner or later. Faith of progress should never absolve anyone from the duty to act now. Now that the era of cheap money seems to be coming to an end, the lack of decisiveness in recent years is all the more painful.
The idea of technological progress is closely related to the idea of economic growth. Both are untenable, however, because of physical and ecological limits, as good old Marx already knew. We are still sacks of flesh and blood moving through the physical world, and unless the journey is to another continent, it should just have to be a fast train.