Nothing is Normal
In mathematics and computer science, “algorithm” and “effective method” have precise definitions, but for most of us, effective means whatever works. From brushing our teeth to driving to work to having sex, human behaviors are tested over time and passed down through instruction and storytelling and mediamaking.
No human behavior is correct. Individually and collectively, we do everything the best way we know how. We often use the phrases “working knowledge” and “rule of thumb” to mean sufficient or good enough. We can’t wait for perfection, so we go with what gets the job done.
Few of our behaviors today were practiced the same way even a hundred years ago. From the clothes we wore to the food we ate to the entertainment we created, life was different during the Civil War, the Industrial Revolution, and the Roaring Twenties, just as it is different now.
It wasn’t long ago that it was hard to imagine the Internet, or video messages, or handheld computers. Though we saw similar concepts on futuristic television shows like Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek or Hanna-Barbara’s The Jetsons, we couldn’t imagine how their tools would work in our everyday lives.
When AOL or Skype or the iPhone first appeared, many consumers embraced the new methods, but just as many rejected them as silly or threatening. Even now, after decades of worldwide penetration and use, I meet students who think the World Wide Web is a fad.
Like a thought you have and then forget, the past lingers in the back of the mind, falsely giving the impression you can return to it. The behaviors of any era become fixed in the heads of its youth as normality. In the 19th century, horses were the “natural” mode of transportation. Then cars became “cool.” Soon, computer-driven cars will feel “typical.” Normality changes as often as the terms we use to indicate it.
My grandfather died at the age of 90 in 1999. He was born in the first days of “horse-less carriages.” In his final days, I thought of all the change he’d seen and wondered if I’d see anything close in my lifetime. Now I have no doubt.
For a time, civilizations slowed change to such a degree that a generation could avoid or ignore it. Suggesting change could get you ostracized and even burned at the stake. Strict rules were once the algorithm, but flexibility was destined to become more effective.
Technology has both lengthened lifespans and how much change occurs within them. Today, we imprint what is ordinary as children and then watch it fade away in decades. People I met in college, open to all kinds of experimentation on campus, now squint skeptically at the Internet and its effects on their kids.
At every stage of a new idea, naysayers appear and jeer. They reject change because change has its dangers. Centuries of careful experimentation in the face of swift violence have honed our behaviors. If doctors veer from their training, they kill someone. If chefs misuse ingredients, they kill someone. When diplomats fail, we go to war.
Wikipedia only holds the knowledge it does because of flatlined patients and poisoned meals and the long history of battles.
Innovation may look like play, but it is never less than obsessive, learned, and patient practice. Practice is another word for perseverance. One step forward and two steps back is the safety dance.
When Henry Ford perfected his Model T automobile, I’m sure there were town hall meetings on their dangers, and studies on the muscle loss incurred from sitting over riding, and bestselling odes to the saddle. Now, more than a million people die every year in car accidents, yet you can’t pry drivers’ licenses from the hands of people on their deathbeds.
Not surprisingly, this is changing too. Millennials no longer equate freedom with the open road.
Cars aren’t normal; they are just more effective than a horse.