the shock of the old

Work has required me to read a very interesting book, 'The Shock of the Old: Technology in Global History Since 1900' by Prof. David Edgerton of Imperial College, London. (Indeed i have the pleasure of speaking to him tomorrow and hopefully persuading him to take part in the film I'm working on).

The idea behind it is rather simple: we hold it as axiomatic that life is move ever faster in a technological blur, becoming almost dizzying in its rate of change. Except in many ways, as Prof Edgerton points out, it isn't. We often confuse invention with utilisation and even the mobile telephone is merely an innovation on phone technology that has existed for a century. The triumph is in the marketing, not the product. Most of our life is based on technologies that have endured, not technologies that have exploded like fireworks onto our consciousness and then disappeared again, having failed to latch on to our lifestyles and consciousness in more permanent ways.

Is there a parallel for emotions? Are we obsessed with new treatments particularly for negative emotions or old problems by pharmaceutical or therapeutic means? This is not to denigrate either field completely, it's just that I can't help but wonder if we are too blinded by some shiny modern chimera. The notion of medicalising grief springs to mind as an example of this, or perhaps diagnoses of conditions like social anxiety disorder where perhaps the term shyness might be as appropriate and a pill definitely not the answer...