The Romantic Era Part 2: 2015-?

Is the Romantic Era that produced incredible literary and artistic works including Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, The Bronte Sisters' Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, and Samuel Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" about to be revived in the common era?

Not exactly, says David Brooks, but he argues in his article "The New Romantics in the Computer Age" that we might see something like it. Brooks explains that at the current technology growth rate, computers will quickly surpass humans' abilities to make financial predictions and risk calculations. They will be able to sort and compile data to accrue evidence for a civil case or make an informed prediction about the housing market, and do it with more accuracy and speed than a human worker. He believes that because of this growth, computers will begin replacing lawyers, doctors, and financial experts. The only jobs left for humans will require skills that computers cannot exhibit: creativity, empathy, authority, leadership, and communication.

While I agree with Brooks that these skills will be more valued in a technology-driven workforce, I don't see our society rushing to turn back the clock to a nature-oriented existence. The Romantic Era emerged at the end of the Industrial Revolution because people developed a newfound appreciation for nature and its interaction with the human experience. This time period was characterized by people's nostalgia to return to the simpler past. In contrast, today we are always looking forward to (and becoming more dependent on) new technologies. Take, for example, all the hullabaloo that occurs before a new Apple smartphone release. You can't pick up a newspaper without seeing some kind of review or prediction about its success. And it doesn't stop there. Cell phones, laptops, and tablets have made us lazy, self-absorbed, and ignorant to the world around us. We created technologies to make our lives easier, so that now we can spend less time thinking and more time posting and reacting to a virtual world.

That being said, technology has also allowed us to do great things; to connect different parts of the world, to increase the standard of living in poorer nations, to discover ways to combat disease and save lives. But unlike after Europe's Industrial Revolution, I don't think we have the option to look back at a time without technology.

In tenth grade my teacher introduced a challenge called "The Experiment." The goal was to abstain from technology usage for a month and a half for anything other than homework. About 75 students started the project. Of them, only 10% made it to the end, but that wasn't the important part. What I found most shocking was that people would leave the project because they thought that "they couldn't live without technology." Herein lies the heart of the problem.

As we have gained new technologies, we have lost our creativity, communication, and empathy (ironically, what David Brooks thinks we need in the future). We are less likely to spend time interacting with our peers in person and more likely to spend time liking their posts and statuses on social media. Like Sherry Turkle said in The Flight From Conversation, "Human relationships are rich; they're messy and demanding. We have learned the habit of cleaning them up with technology...it's a process in which we shortchange ourselves."

Brooks says that helicopter parents, standardized tests, and college application processes are to blame for the current lack of the arts. I would say, these are only symptoms. The real way to return to the romantic era he speaks of is to pare down on electronics and find our humanity again. While David Brooks sees an increase in technology as a way to return to our roots, I see it as a threat to our very existence.