Essays in Idleness

A commenter and queryist on yesterday’s effusion makes the brilliant and original suggestion that technological progress is inevitable. (Droll alert.) It makes no sense to resist, he says. With some background in the printing trade, he averred that the replacement of hot lead with cold film, in the world of half-a-century ago, entailed such large savings of time, money, and clatter, that only fools hesitated to buy in. (He overlooks the overheads.) Ditto the next revolution, less than a generation later, from film to digital, in which the newly-acquired skills of the paste-up artists followed those of the metal typesetters out the window. What use are skills that have been obviated? What use are Luddites?

In the case I cited, he fully missed my point. Yes, the revolution was happening, and soon great masses of heavy metal would be melted down as scrap. But why should we be in the forefront of that revolution? The New York Times, of all grey ladies, would not make the changeover until 1978. (There is a lovely documentary in the Internet somewhere, on the last day of the linotype machines in the Times composing room.) The little Bangkok World was rushing in where angels fear to type, in 1970. Why not take our time, and get it right? Let others who enjoy such things experience all the pain of pioneering. We can do our buying into the new machinery after the stupidest mistakes have all been made, rather than be among the first to make them. At least be conservative.

By some chance I know more about typography than printing, and have done since childhood. The first thing I noticed during the typesetting revolution was that all standards in typography had been relaxed, to accommodate the new procedures. To this day, cut metal type remains normative: it allowed human precision in the cutting, the font size gradations, the kernings and spacings, that computer algorithms can only approximate, having nothing to match the aesthetic faculties of the human eye and hands. The sublime beauty in the slight irregularities of craft production cannot be delivered by programmed machines; it can only be faked. Thus we “advance” by increments — not only in print — from the hard, unforgiving art that assists our rise to Heaven, into the soft homogeny of computer simulation.

Then followed the new slapdash sparkly effects, in both typography and writing. The notion of fussing over quality had lapsed.

Yet all this aside, we have the issue of whig-historical rush, in itself. Why, when the mythopoeic lemmings are rushing, ever quicker to the cliff, should we struggle to outpace them? Why not play the wise tortoises, instead? For as my son, the electronic engineer, tells me, they are the Luddites who force all the genuine improvements. Verily: why not experiment with moving the other way?

Granted, the “market” shrinks in that direction — where we find that the great plurality of the lemming-men have “moved on.” But still, we might enjoy the open spaces. They used to be so crowded.

To the point: why should human beings, created by God in His own image, agree to form such herds? Why should we emulate dumb animals in migration? (The actual animals have reliable signals, and every intention to return.) God made men to be Artists, like Him; to be “co-creators.” Each was endowed with his unique talents, and most, the time to discover and cultivate them. Each has his place in the mysterious, whole, Body of Christ. We aren’t interchangeable.

I will admit this thinking is counter-cultural, as well as uneconomic. More, it is philosophical; we stop to ponder as the herd rushes by. It is true that we will die, just like all the others. But the instruction from our Maker was to choose life.