1984: Xenotron's video composer work stations for newspaper page and ad make-up
Between February 1984 and September 1991 I worked as a software engineer for a UK company called Xenotron. This company was manufacturing and marketing proprietary desk top and plinth computers for the interactive make up of Ads and Newspaper pages. This was done WYSIWYG style by moving around and tweaking blocks of texts on screen. At the time this was an innovative hardware/software combination and a revolution for litho-printers (perhaps comparable to the invention of the printing press?). Xenotron products took the market by storm, so when I joined the company in 1984 it was riding the crest of the "we-did-it-first" wave. But the
creative destruction of market dynamics which had brought Xenotron into existence ensured that the Xenotron itself was up for eventual destruction and the last remnants of the company were wound up in 1991. I am in the process of creating documents which tell the Xenotron story via newspaper clippings, memos, brochure photos and notes. The first part of this three part story can be read
here.
The story I tell reveals just what
creative destruction feels like for the lives of its human players, players who may find themselves on the back foot and perhaps not that well adapted to the circumstances creative destruction throws at them. After all (wo)man is a creature whose mode of society, for many thousands of years, was that of the hunter-gatherer. Small hunter-gatherer communities lived in harmony with nature in so far as they could take from nature what she offered with little or no environmentally detrimental effects. But that environment could be cruel and ruthless and this helped ensure that the members of these communities valued each other because each member had their recognised role in providing much needed community support. I suspect that inter-tribal conflicts were fairly minimal in such an underpopulated world where in any case conflicts were pointlessly wasteful when there was so much that needed doing just to survive. But all in all the human animal was undoubtedly well adapted for the hunter-gatherer life style, a style which lasted for thousands of years. I guess that for the people of these primitive communities expectations were seldom crushed because they hadn't been conditioned to expect much from life other than food, shelter, reproduction and above all appreciative human company. There was no time or space for listlessness, depression, disaffection and dissent from one's community; they knew how to enjoy and be grateful for basic pleasures and probably felt fulfilled when they had won these pleasures.
But I don't want to paint too rosy a picture of hunter-gatherer society: They were dirt poor by our standards even though, perhaps, surprisingly happy and contented. They had short rough lives as they faced the ravages of the environment and illness. What made it all tolerable is that they knew (and expected) nothing better. In comparison many of us in the West
live like entitled aristocrats having (and expecting) riches and privileges that our ancient forebears couldn't even imagine. But a deep sense of expectation fulfilled, social belonging, tribal identification and social recognition & status, all of which are so important to human feelings of well-being, often allude us. Citizenship has always been a dubious concept since the first cities.
I'm not anti-capitalist or anti-market, but as for the realities of hunter-gatherer life I try to avoid a romanticised vision and instead endeavour to be cognizance of the our society's downsides: Free market industrial scale communities are not entirely successful at satisfying all the needs of the human heart and delivering contentment. Instead, as Marx observed, capitalism has a tendency to breed alienation and dissent in spite of its riches. This is not surprising given that agricultural man is less than 10,000 years old, urban man 4000 years old and industrial and hi-tech man (developments we can thank the free market for) has only been around for a mere 200 to 300 years. In comparison hunter-gathering was a way of life for perhaps a 100 thousand years or more. Which life style is our psychology best adapted to?
It is not surprising that a creature which battles with selfishness, epistemic challenges and social alienation in a world where expectations are sky-high and where zero sum games abound, some times finds contentment and fulfillment to be illusive. But to be fair modern humanity's relationship with rich market driven societies is ambivalent. On the one hand such societies provide opportunities to express ambition, creativity, and individuality. These rich societies can also satisfy human acquisitiveness and a need to achieve. Also, let's not forget the relatively secure environmental bubble in which we live in Western societies. On the other hand all this comes at the cost of economic instabilities, fractured community spirit, social alienation, purposelessness and boredom. Like the trench warfare of WWI times of stifling empty monotony are punctuated by times of unsettled terror.
Some of the human ambivalence toward market driven technological society can be seen in the very human details of the Xenotron story where we see the needs of tribal affiliation and creativity initially provided for and yet ultimately tugged at by a wider market dynamic. As I always say, technological capitalism has made us rich beyond the imagination of our forebears and has given us huge vistas of knowledge but the devil is found in the details.
