By Richard Yeagley (26 Years old)
“The digital revolution is eradicating many of the experiences I used to have with the physical world.”
-The Modern Day Luddite
I am ashamed because I cannot build anything in the physical world. In witnessing me attempt an act of carpentry you would realize immediately that I was incompetent – and this knowledge has lessened my personal measure of myself, of my own manhood. I have always thought of hands-on dexterity and physical agency as a universal image of masculinity. But I am not alone with my lame aptitudes for physical construction; rather, it seems to me that this is the embarrassing norm for the majority of men of my generation – and only my generation. When I look at my father and his peers, only one generation removed from me, I see men who possess an innate passion and talent to work with their hands; even if their daily occupation is outside of the construction realm. It is quite funny but also sad for me to recall that my father personally built the deck on our house and renovated our attic into a finished bedroom. I could not even consider such architectural endeavors – I, the man who struggles mightily trying to screw together an Ikea three drawer dresser. For me it would be a day of immense pride if I managed to construct something with such utilitarian purpose; for my father, building his deck was simply something he wanted to do – and he could do. My father is not a carpenter but he somehow learned the skills of building through experience and osmosis. It wasn't out of necessity, but out of a true love to synthesize the trio of mind, body, and hand into action to create a functional and physical element. But how did he and the men of his generation absorb the skills necessary to accomplish such a thing on their own and my generation generally did not?
I believe that my personal experience with building in the physical world has been neglected because of the proliferation of digital technologies in my male life and the male lives of my generation. Not only do our toys operate in the digital ether but so do many of our tools and the very fabric of our social lives. Our experiences are increasingly less physical and more binary code. In the bigger picture, with the ubiquity of commerce on the internet and its tangential technologies utilized as tools for enterprise, the gold rush is on to dominate the digital infrastructure: to monetize it offerings and possibilities. The big money is paid to computer programmers and IT professionals now. As more pecuniary and human capital is drawn into the new digital infrastructure, the obvious result is that less money will flow to the older physical infrastructure, i.e. roads, bridges, sewers and schools. Of course there shall never be a complete rejection of the physical infrastructure, but there are only so many private and public resources to spread around and the incentives have not been put in place to fuel a massive refurbishment. President Barack Obama and Congress did invest a healthy amount of capital into construction, maintenance and rail projects in the stimulus package, but most assignments were slow to start and inefficiently executed. Additionally, a government infusion of this nature is only temporary. Without private investment dollars into these types of projects and an acknowledgment of the importance of a solid and modern foundation, the physical infrastructure will not receive the sustained boost it needs. Individual investors fearful of cost overruns and high risk will look offshore to places where a stronger emphasis is put on large scale investing into modern infrastructure. The infrastructure is improving, just not in America. Incentives could be put in place so that private investing is more attractive. The American population should hope for an improved, productive, and "green" infrastructure. The reasons are numerous: costs reductions for businesses, the stimulation from innovation of construction and manufacturing, and the subsequent creation of many jobs. The amount of jobs that are created through construction and manufacturing initiates are immense: coupled with modern and innovative forms, they are also decent paying jobs – jobs for an "actual middle class." It is stunning to see the number of staff needed for a hugely successful modern tech company such as Facebook (2,000 employees) and then take a retrospective look into the 50's when General Motors employed nearly 600,000 people.
Although I am aware of my lack of manual competence, I still make no effort towards corrigibility. Why? Maybe I am perpetually grasping onto the hope that I will someday be one of the handsomely compensated few who are contributors to a modern company like Facebook – or, more generally, that I will find a permanent occupational place in the digital economic ecosystem. Most of my generation has hopes for such an opportunity. Even with that said, I still hope that a proportionate amount of motivated and skilled individuals of my generation find satisfaction and financial incentive to maintain the physical and mental desire needed to enhance and modernize the physical infrastructure. So as I type this Word document, peruse my social networking accounts, and edit video on a computer program, I often consider how many of my cultural and generational brethren are actually using a Sawsall or a hammer. I can only hope that in the future less hammers will be thrown at a wall in frustration when struggling with the most rudimentary of all building constructions, the IKEA product.
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