Interview with Robert Mann
Once the doorbell rang, he gladly invited in his new guest, and with a look of un-containable joy began his conversation. He begins to then go into a lengthy explanation of how he lived through the information and transportation advancements of the 20th Century. Who is this man? His name is Robert Mann, a 66 year-old man who lives at 1110 Viscano Dr. in Glendale, California. He lives in a cozy but quaint house, filled with an overall aura of knowledge, as antiques and photographs adorn every nook and cranny. Robert began the interview with his straightforward attitude and a look of determination in his eye.
I’d like to speak about how information and transportation have changed the world in the 20th Century. So, I’ll give you two examples, I’ll try to tell you what things influenced not only my life, but everyone’s. The ability to mass move people had a very great impact on the way we live. I went to Hawaii in 1959, and when I flew over there, I flew in a very slow, propeller driven plane. However, when Hawaii became a state later that year in 1959, they began developing more and more jet aircraft. It wasn’t just the jet, they had also been making the jets so large and so big, that now they were transporting 300-350 people every flight. Therefore, it was the ability to move this mass amount of people and fly from the east coast, stop in Vegas and spend the night there, and then the 350 people would get on the plane, go to Hawaii, and spend a few weeks there.
So to bring it into the present, in all the wars and engagements we’ve had in the last 15 years, nobody goes on a ship anymore. Everyone flies over in an airplane, whether it’s a tank or a person, so it’s the ability to move mass amounts of people that has influenced the way we live, and it’s changed the demographics of the United States, because people have greater ability to travel somewhere, and they can travel in a shorter amount of time. For example, people come out to California from the Midwest. They do this because they see the sunny weather and they see the Rose Parade, and the next thing you know, they’re livin’ out here so that, I think, is what I’m suggesting. Hawaii went from a small state with very few people, and now it is inhabited by all kinds of different people with second homes etc. This applies to the rest of the world too, they see what life is like here, and they want to be here.
And the other thing that kind of went along with that was the dissemination of information. Television was still kind of in its infancy when I was in college, and when people wanted to watch it, there wasn’t that much on as far as programming ect goes, but the one thing it did give was the ability for news to be cast worldwide in a split second. A good example is obviously 9-11. It happens, then I hear it on the radio, and then I see it on TV. That information is disseminated so quickly, that it’s still happening when we turn on the TV set. 30-40 years ago, that might not have happened. I guess I would say bad information disseminated quickly is bad, on the other hand, you can have information that is very good and very helpful ,and that obviously helps society.
Society is resistant to change. When they built the freeways in Los Angeles for traffic, it took a long time for people to adjust. I mean they realized they were there, but they kept to their old ways of going places, and it takes a while for people to change their ways. And obviously, when people find something that will make life easier, it takes less time to change. But even if it’s sittin’ there, starin’ them in the face, something has to motivate them to change, and everybody goes at their own pace, so when things happen, they decide weather or not they are going to use it. When I was exposed to all this for the first time, well, it’s not really a case of being exposed to it, as you don’t really notice when it’s changing around you. In other words, when I’m in Hawaii, the planes are getting bigger, they’re coming more often, and they’re carrying more people. When I was there, there were maybe three hotels on all of Waikiki beach, and now there are so many, you can’t see the ocean because of all the buildings. And it takes gradual time for it to sink in. What was happening never really hit me, I mean I didn’t go “look, here’s the jumbo jet, we can re-populate the world, it’s going to change demographics, people can move around where they want to in a very efficient fashion.” You see the world events as they’re happening, and you realize it’s been affecting us right along, but you don’t wake up one morning, and say, “oh my god, this is going to change my life.” I don’t remember anything or a change that occurred during my lifetime when I knew that the next day something was going to change my life. Just because some things are here one day, it doesn’t mean that tomorrow everything’s going to change forever.
Every good idea or every bad idea has to have a birthplace somewhere, or it wouldn’t change anything. I think we need to continue to move forward and have the type of environment that is gonna create thinkers who look towards the future and try to come up with something that’s gonna be better. However, some of the ideas are not necessarily gonna be better, and they can hurt us just as much as they can help us.
One example, in my opinion, is that medicine is making extreme leaps forward, say in the last ten years compared to where it’s been in the last hundred years, discovery of DNA ect. I sense and I think the economics, the present economics bear me on, is causing the question of: are we going to be able to afford ‘em. Simple example would be prescription drugs. People may be able to take a drug today that’s going to extend their life, help their condition or whatever, but the question I have is: are we gonna be able to afford to buy the so-called new technologies that are being created every day?
I see some problems in the future, every time something new is invented, it’s a two edged sword, it brings some good, it brings some bad. The computer is a good example. It has helped us in many, many ways as far as goes business ect goes. For example, individual production now is way up per person compared to what it used to be years ago. But on the other hand, I think that people themselves are becoming very lazy because of the computer. Instead of relying upon say, an old-fashioned way of finding out about something, they merely go to a computer, push a button, and then whatever the computer brings up they accept as being the answer to the question. I still don’t have a computer, and I think in many ways that the computer is dummying-down our society and I may never use one, and I’ve gotten along fine without one, and I don’t think I’ll ever need to use one.
And of course I would blame some of today’s problems on all of this. I think all the genesis of all the problems we have today are probably the result of the ability to move massive amounts of people in short periods. The dissemination of the information directly relates to the position our country has taken and foreign countries too. It’s changing how we’re able to approach problems and what solutions we have available for one. So has this helped society overall? Yes and no. My life has been extended according to the numbers in the past few years because of the cures that they’ve had in medicine, but on the same token, it’s cast a huge burden on society. How do you take care of these people for this increase in years now that there gonna live? The current and probably the foremost example would be Social Security. Social Security is now geared to have the ability to pay to the current recipients for a for a period of time, but when the new people come on, the uhh Social Security is starting to break down. This is all being created not only by how many new names are being added to the Social Security list, but how much longer they’re gonna live, therefore how much longer Social Security is going to has to make the payments.
So these two things, the ability to move mass amounts of people and the dissemination of information, has brought about this change and a global economy, and I say economy when I mean that all the countries of the world now have to contend with one another. They have to…well, you know the sort of conflicts we’ve had because we have a difference of opinion because of the way somebody in some country is doing something. And if we didn’t have the ability to move armies in airplanes, or we can tell someone what’s going on in our lives, these things would never happen.
However, I don’t think anybody can look at present day and make a determination whether it’s been good or bad for our individual lives. I think you can only make that decision after you look back, and that’s the definition of history. Until a period of time has passed and we’re able to look back at all the facts, then you’re able to maybe draw a conclusion as to whether its been good or bad. But, sometimes, while it’s happening and while it’s in the present, I’m not so sure everybody can make an accurate decision or give an accurate discussion of whether or not it’s going to have been good or bad as far as how it affected us.
-Interviewed by Ross Nelson