LOOKING BACK IN ANGER

Dear Readers,

The second decade of the 21st century is now on the road, and as we cruise down the highway of time in our shiny, new vehicle, there's every reason to suspect that what we really have is a chimera of a ride, cobbled together from the remains of several chassis, despite the new-car aroma.

With all the best-of, most-of and worst-of lists for the 'decade with no name' out of the way, it seems to me that the years 2000 through 2009 can be summed up in four words: greed, corruption, war and technology. This quartet could describe any decade, of course, but the depressing thing is that these aspects of life seem to be intertwined in a more sinister fashion than in past ten-year chunks of history.

It's worth noting that greed and corruption have no redeeming qualities, while war and technology can be both good and evil, depending on the generally accepted righteousness of, or which side of the battle or invention you happen to be on. And while more and more ordinary people are connected to the world at large than ever before, the influence of this mass of humanity on events that shape this world seems increasingly impotent, despite all the writhing and moaning.

Take Twitter for example. This ingenious little network allows us all - potentially - to be reporters, commentators and published diarists to a (potential) worldwide audience, hard-wired for virtual social networking. Apart from the inanity of what Paris Hilton is up to, news that used to have to wait for an hourly radio bulletin, TV film at 11 or the next day's newspaper to 'go viral' can now ricochet all over the globe, almost instantly. But the value of this 'speed of information' seems dubious to me, and has yet to prove it's value. Sure, the world knew that Michael Jackson had croaked within minutes of the singer's assumption of room temperature, but was it vital information? Did it matter? It was titillating, perhaps, but could have easily waited until Eyewitness News At Six. So much of this 'vital information' falls into the category of 'it could wait'. Maybe the best example of the potential power of a 140-character burst of knowledge came during the post-bogus-election-result protests in Iran. Texting, Twittering and cell-phone photographing provided the protesters involved with instant access to each other and the world at large as they clashed with the goon squads of the state in a confused, running battle. But in the end, it did not change the outcome one bit. The repressive regime survived, intact. Score one for brute force over Blackberry, Palm Pilot and I-Phone.

As the financial and influence gap between the wealthy, powerful elite and the great mass of the rest of us widens, the paranoid in me wonders if the ruling class has somehow kept us docile by bestowing on us the gadgets of modern technology that keep us so glued to our Wiis, wide screens and smart phones that we have even less time than before to look critically at the big picture all around us. The powers that be can rest assured that there will be no protests in the streets as long as we're absorbed with our tweets.

So, while two futile wars rage on, and Wall Street's new generation robber-barons wallow in obscene, Great Recession bonuses, a sizable plurality of America's public stays firmly in debt in order to stay firmly gadgeted-up. But people have yet to truly tap into the power that's been so cynically handed them. It's still all about me and my space. We may sheepishly accept the wars and the rip-offs imposed from above, but if a reasonable request to turn off a cellphone in a theatre is made, look out, There Will Be Blood. Meanwhile, outside in the real world, big finance's dodgy products wipe out millions of jobs at a stroke. Classic Machiavellian tactics: keep the mob at each other's throats so that they don't go for the ruling elite's jugulars. Maybe a gross misreading of the situation, but it does seem like a lost opportunity so far, the chance to use the new technology to hold the guilty to account. Seems we'd much rather be the first to know that Tiger Woods has resurfaced in the Bahamas than raise an angry protest against the men who have sold us out.

In China, the ruling class keeps limits on Internet access and social networking because they know that with a population that size, with less to lose, the risk of revolution is greater than in the US, where the populace is generally comfortable enough to put up with misfeasance. Our leaders live in hope that the center will hold, and our child-like optimism about the future will last a while longer. The financial/political elite of this country must look with absolute envy upon the Chinese system, which, as the balance of power shifts from the West to the East(thanks, largely, to the cynical, short-term-gain-for-long-term-pain, financial sell-out to the Orient), seems to be evolving into a kind of 'Capitalist Dictatorship', or free-market, centrally controlled economics coupled with political repression. The Chinese squash dissent with tanks, the US must (for now) continue to squash dissent with affordable, entertaining gadgetry.

The 2000's was a decade where we raced boldly into the future without facing up to many of the fundamental problems of the past. Now, in the new year and new decade, partially blinded by the light of a billion LCD screens, it's quite easy to lose sight of the fact that we've heavily mortgaged our future for the pleasures of the present, and the latest I-Phone app won't do much to address the threats of terrorism, corporate crime, climate change or the fact that millions of people live lives right this minute that we wouldn't allow our pets to endure.

There's a great line in John Osborne's play, Look Back In Anger, that effectively(and contradictorily) describes my opinion of the 2000's. To paraphrase a character in the play comparing the older and younger generation of the time -" one is angry because everything has changed, the other is angry because nothing has changed". Happy New Year.