For at least the past 200 years, ever since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, human experience has been running faster and further in a world that we feel is under our control with the cooperation of our machines.  Scientists and scholars have answered questions about both our inner and outer physical existence and solved many mysteries, a reality impressive in itself even as it diminishes the capacity for wonder and takes over our sense of enchantment.

            “Enchantments are archetypal, living, vital experiences with deeply unconscious currents,” writes Lee Worth Bailey, “such as myths and rituals about outer space and robots.”  Designers and engineers have not installed myth and ritual into the circuit boards of rockets and computers.  Instead, Dr. Bailey sees technological “wonders” as the fulfillment of ancient striving of humans to fly or to see the invisible.

            Lee Worth Bailey is associate professor of religion and culture at Ithaca College.  His new book, “The Enchantments of Technology” draws from his background as a young student of industrial design before he turned to the ethical and psychological questions that continue to confront us.  The anthropomorphic relationship between people and technology could be an instance of psychologist Karl Jung’s concept of a “collective unconscious”.

            Science and technology can undermine beliefs that were once strictly within the realm of religion, which Bailey believes “is increasingly reduced to merely a matter of personal, private, subjective interiority.”  But the challenge to a full sense of enchantment may begin with a common mode of thought – the “subject/object dichotomy” that makes people into just one more object to be controlled.  At the same time, if we wish to notice it, “technological culture is teeming with dreams, visions, hopes, goals, expectations, and imaginative premises.”

            Illustrations abound of enchantment within our technologically dominated culture, from the first clocks, which stole from nature the measurement of the passage of time, to the ancient camera obscura, which captured and controlled vision itself to our obsessive development of speed and the leap into space.

          “The Enchantments of Technology” looks into the deeper significance of technological accomplishment, from the ill-fated voyage of the Titanic, which should have sunk the notion of “utopian triumphalism”, to the “space cowboy” aspects of space exploration.  Bailey is especially impressed by the spiritual awakenings and perspectives of many astronauts.  Edgar Mitchell returned from the Moon with a sense of “universal connectedness” that was similar to the impression years earlier of pioneer aviator Charles Lindbergh, who wrote, “What freedom lies in flying!  What godlike power it gives to man!”  It is a route to transcendence.

          We even try to transfer our human powers and emotions to our machines.  The robot is to Dr. Bailey “a central symbol of the transfer of the sacred to the technical.”  These machines are often designed with humanlike characteristics and programmed to “think”.  But they are no match for the human mind and muscle because “an undetermined portion of unprogrammable, implicit knowledge is required for all understanding.”

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“Selling America” is not a business text or an economic treatise.  It is a book of short stories by Tom Tolnay of Delhi, built around the theme of people buying, selling and otherwise turning their personal strivings into a transaction.  Tom Tolnay visits OFF THE PAGE on Tuesday, February 7^th.