We continue our publication of excerpts from Steve Talbott’s new book. Today: what to think of transactional efficiency as the be all and and all of development.

Praises for the Internet’s efficiency were from the beginning so extreme, so exhilarated, so full of revolutionary expectation (“frictionless capitalism”!) – and, in their own narrow terms, so undeniably justified – that we should have been alarmed.

A single-minded drive toward transactional efficiency always puts the meaning and value of the transactions at risk. If we have no aim separate from efficiency, we have no way to tell whether we are going in the right or wrong direction, and nothing by which to gauge
our efficiency. So considerations of efficiency must always be linked to our goals and values. We can only be efficient if we have something to be efficient about – and that something will necessarily lead us away from perfect efficiency. Perfect efficiency would reflect the fact that there is no resistance to be overcome, no work to be done – and therefore no meaningful goal to be attained.

The concern with efficiency alone reminds me of the airline pilot who announced to the passengers, “I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that our electronic instruments have failed, there’s solid cloud cover beneath us, and we have no idea where we’re headed. But the good news is that we’re making record time.”

In more concrete terms: any two spouses and any two friends can testify that the drive for mere efficiency is the quickest way to dissolve a worthwhile human bond. If you make a goal of efficiency, people will have the unpleasant habit of distracting you and getting in your way.

This is trite. Everyone knows it. Everyone already knew it when the Net was coming along and being celebrated for its efficiency. So why were the praises of efficiency not more effectively counterbalanced by expressions of concern for the “inefficient” goals and values that might be lost sight of? It appears there are some dots we just prefer not to connect.

(Abridged from “The Internet: Reflections on Our Present Discontents”, chapter 21 in Devices of the Soul by Steve Talbott.)