Same as It Ever Was

It's easy then to think that technology driven change is a new phenomenon and that it is something we've only recently had to learn to handle.  But this month I was reminded that's not so.  Rapid technology driven change has been around for at least a century.

This month marks the 100th anniversary of Ford's Model T, the first affordable car for the masses and one that quickly changed the American landscape.  Industries changed, long used skills suddenly were no longer needed yet new skills were suddenly in demand and in short supply. New infrastructure for servicing and fueling cars had to be created.   To get an understanding of the cultural shifts caused by the auto read former Penn Stater Deborah Clarke's book, Driving Woman: Fiction and Automobile Culture in Twentieth-Century America.

Earlier this month at the Central PA Festival of the Arts, I watched the Paragone Ragtime Orchestra perform. This is a small orchestra who has revised the practice of showing silent films while playing the original score for these films.  What struck me was how quickly this changed in a very short period of time with the introduction of the "talkies".  Through the 20 century teens and twenties there were thousands of musicians who made their living by being part of theatre orchestras, and nearly overnight the market for these orchestras disappeared.

While it may seem of more concern to us when it directly affects us, technology-driven change certainly isn't new.  We should recognize this as a natural part of the cycle of discovery and adaptation.  The need to continually learn, to remain flexible, and to be willing to adopt new methods, new techniques, new technology is no different now than it was a century ago.