THE ODD COUPLE
By Robert Lunaburg
No, this is not an article
about Neil Simon’s 1965 Broadway play, The
Odd Couple. But that story and the story of culture have many remarkable
similarities which I will dip into here. Notice I didn’t say delve, dive, or jump
into. I said dip into. After reading this, you will see how the analogy I make only
skims the possibilities Simon’s story has as it relates to Culture.
The Odd Couple’s
plot concerns itself with two mismatched room-mates; I mean really mismatched.
One is a slob, a real mess, while the other is uptight, and fastidious. The
descriptive adjectives slob and fastidious represent the opposite ends
of a pole in my mind, yet these two men coexisted as room-mates…incompatible,
which in a way means definitely not the same, yet none-the-less, they dwelled
together. Not only did they dwell together, but they had a tremendous influence
on each other. Neither took on the persona of the other, they just adapted to
each other.
This brings me to the point
of this piece. Who said, “Finally?”
Since I have lived a life
fully and completely married to technology (from a degree in electronics
through to a business career with IBM, and now eleven years of teaching the
personal computer to seniors), I believe myself able to understand technology
enough to intelligently talk about it. I also live within a culture, so I feel
I can talk about that, too. And the first thing I conclude is that while they
coexist, and dramatically influence each other, Culture and Technology are nowhere
near the same.
Technology is a cold, benign
entity that just sits there and is.
Culture is all about warm fuzzies; the emotional bonds between
people and their relationship with their environment.
One is cold while the other
hot. Yet they coexist. Not only do they coexist, but they influence change in
one another.
I love the question, “How
long does a culture last?” Bear with me here, this is
an important question…to me…and hopefully to you.
I generally think of culture
as a long lasting phenomenon. I think of the middle-ages European culture as
lasting forever, and the Incan, Egyptian, and Roman cultures lasting the same
way. I imagine them as unchanged over many years. I like to think that way,
because culture, to me, means the knowledge, emotions, values, and sustenance
needed by people who survive on planet earth. Since culture means comfort, and
I want to be comfortable in my life, I don’t want things to change…if I’m
comfortable. I figure everyone is like me; ergo culture is something I want to
hold onto and guard against change as much a possible. So don’t attack my 
culture (my perception of culture). I’m going to
defend it.
I was surprised,
however, to discover how the general culture I live in, here in the
Walk with me a bit.
I was born at the advent, maybe some would say the heyday, of radio. My culture
embraced vaudeville as a form of entertainment prior to radio, but the
technology changed that. 
People stopped going to a theater where they laughed
together, and stayed at home where they laughed just as a family, not within a
homogenous crowd of people. A significant influence on the need for
togetherness changed. Then came TV, and the need for theater (ergo crowd
togetherness) diminished even further. But there still are
the movies, and movie theaters, you say. Yes, I say, but the action is not
live. Movies are celluloid…a further people separator…no longer live actors and
a live audience, now just a live audience and technological film.
Did these technological
advances influence my culture? Yes. And how quickly did it happen? Over the
span of about twenty years. In twenty years my culture went from comfort in
being together when being entertained, to just family dependence, and then for
some isolated independence. Technology made that possible.
Then there is the computer. I was alive and well on my
way into life before many even thought about a computer, or even knew what it
did. In most lives the need for producing readable documents and the accurate
computation of numbers was relegated to the efforts of people. There was little
or no technological help for these. A big thing for me, in my life, was the
technological assistance I received from my always leaky fountain pen.
The typewriter was
technology’s infant back then. It replaced the fountain pen if you could afford
one. Key here is that while the typewriter may have taken away my culture’s
value of handwriting, it did replace it with more commonly legible
documents…give some, get some.
This lasted for, perhaps
forty years, and then the idea of, and after that, the reality of, the computer
snuck into culture. I listened as the founder of IBM, Thomas J. Watson, who
some say popularized the use and need for computers, speculated that there may only
be need for ten or fifteen of these things in the entire world.
People didn’t realize at the
time how much the influence of typing, spelling, and accounting mistakes had on
culture. Mistakes of this nature don’t lead to warm fuzzies, if you get my drift. The computer brought more
stability in one aspect of human need, but changed forever the need for
students to memorize the times tables in school. Technology takes care of that
today. Human skill at ciphering is no longer valued. Calculators, cash
registers, and computers eliminate the need for all people to do the math. Culture changed. What we value, and what
makes us comfortable changed. That all began only about fifty to sixty years
ago, and that is a small bit of time in the grand scheme of things.
Some believe the telephone was a super benefit to
mankind. I won’t dispute that, but I will say that it virtually eliminated the
need for face to face personal communication. Chatting with a neighbor over the
backyard fence was no longer necessary. We didn’t have to come together, and be
together anymore for much of our socialization needs. The feelings and
attitudes between people that developed through personal contact began to
evaporate. A level of interdependence was taken away by the telephone. It
wouldn’t have lasted had it not been for the greater benefit derived by the
dramatic extension of our ability to talk with others farther and farther away
from us. The telephone changed my culture, and in a brief span of time too.
So, I would venture to say
that things like technology, in themselves and as benign as dirt, will always
coexist and influence culture. And I’ll also say that those influences can
happen so quickly as to confound what a person values as a positive influence,
and what is really bad for culture.
Are the Xbox, the MP3 player,
and the Game Boy good or bad influences on culture? I don’t know the answer to
that question, but I do know that they are definitely an influence.
Now, whoever asked about the
cell phone and the TV remote control, I’ll have to leave those questions to
you.