In the ages-old tradition of Regionalism, this website makes no attempt to keep up with flashy technological 'innovations'; New Regionalism, therefore, is intentionally low-tech – after all, even 'Flash' (we're now told) has had its day.

So here we opt for content over form. In the 'post-literate' society, of course, this poses a challenge. The age of Twitter has already created a cultural aversion to anything more than three lines of text; unfortunately, the Devil is in the details.

Our cultural 'fine print', which almost no one ever reads, is to be found in books that no longer appear in book shops or on the shelves of local libraries; and even if they did, it is unlikely they would ever be signed out. Some of the more important works, such as The Impact Of Science on Society, have virtually disappeared in printed form (though, happily, this text is now available online). Others, such as The Philosophy Of Modern Music, by the editor's admission, appear to have been suppressed after the release of the first edition. This book, at least, has found its way back into print, but who, other than the specialist, reads material of this kind? Social Theory and Public Relations seem so dull, in our entertainment based culture, that virtually no one but students moving into related fields will read them; and thus, this shadowy world remains in the shadows. Nevertheless, anyone curious enough to have been enticed here, we hope, will read on.

An extended commentary, on Smart Phones and Blockchain technology (alluded to on the main page), can be found in part 2. Anyone who doesn't already know about Blockchain soon will, and it is important you read this alternate view first (or early on) as the media and popular press will not present this perspective. Click here to jump ahead, but we hope you will continue reading. This latest cultural Revolution – the Digital Revolution – is having an impact no less profound than that of the Industrial Revolution, so it may be helpful to have a little background first:

Regionalists are not Luddites. We do not suggest anyone smash their 'machines', and it must be said, even the Luddites did not object to all machines; just those that disrupted the communities in which they lived – take this as you will. The Threshing Machine (which was the device they most objected to) served to perpetuate the infamous land clearances (in another way), forcing the peasant class from the land and into the cities, where they would become virtual slave labour in the new factory system. The questioning of technology takes many forms, but Regionalists today continue this tradition of questioning, for the good of everyone. We remind people now, at the beginning of a new chapter in the Digital Age (labelled, justifiably perhaps, the 'Blockchain Revolution') of the warnings issued, and then promptly forgotten, in this era of cultural amnesia.

We continue to ask, therefore: "Who does this technology really serve?"

It isn't likely that anyone could stop the development of technology (or that we would want that even if it were possible); although Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking and others (who presumably know a little more about such things than the rest of us) express concern over of the danger posed by artificial intelligence and 'smart machines'. There is some technology, they tell us, that we should make a conscious decision not to advance.

Since we can't close the lid on this particular 'Pandora's box', maybe we can at least slow down the process; enough, perhaps, that the public might have time to consider the potential consequences. This too will be a matter of choice, so let us look 'back to the future' (as they say) and revisit the world that advocates of technology then, suggested we'd all be enjoying by now.

The 1950s Jetson future, sadly, seems no closer; even the dream of a two day work week – which wasn't too much to ask, given all the efficiencies technology promised – seems even farther away now than the hover car. And (even more annoying) I still don't own a vacuum cleaner that will vacuum by itself.

Increasingly, technology offers solutions to problems the last wave of technology caused, as the race to maintain an edge gets even more intense. This was the basis of Alvin Toffler's 1970 work, Future Shock, which said that the human mind was incapable of adapting quickly enough to new technologies, and that the rate of change would only increase. It isn't just a case of keeping up, of course, because adapting is not the same as understanding; the unseen consequences are not immediately obvious to anyone – except, perhaps, those who developed the technology and thought through all of the possible consequences years in advance. Senator Frank Church's Comments on NBC in 1975, in the wake of the Church Commission, might well be revisited again today, in this age of social media.

In a world that enthusiastically embraces every new gadget to come along, it seems more important than ever that someone continues to ask questions; this has always been the role of the Regionalist artist. It may be for this very reason that virtually no one knows anything of the world's most influential and long-lived art movement; in a world conditioned to look for a technological solution to every problem, the notion that technology might be the main source of many of society's problems, is not going to be popular - particularly as the media itself is dependent on technology. 'The medium,' as Marshall McLuhan told (warned) us 'is the message'.

So don't shoot the messenger who brings – not bad news, necessarily, but – news that contradicts almost everything we hear, all day, everyday, everywhere. Who else but artists, after all, would dare take such a position? It was artists (though this historical detail is not widely known) who questioned technology in the past, then found ways for people to resist the power that inevitably shifted to those who controlled the new technologies.

The inexorable drift toward a global technocracy was predicted, and described in detail, a long time ago; almost 100 years ago now. Although technology is a word that generally evokes positive emotions, most people are rather more ambivalent about the notion of technocracy; and for good reason. Technocracy, first of all, is not democratic. Dependence on technology is dependence on those who own, control and administer that technology. As Theodor Adorno, Walter Lippmann, Edward Bernays, Marshall McLuhan and many, many others, describe how populations are 'managed' invisibly by cultural means (Adorno's 'Culture And Administration' is a case in point); populations are similarly managed, of course, by technology. The concerns that surrounded the idea of technocracy, when the idea emerged in the 1920s and 30s (at the time of the American Regionalists), are more relevant now than ever before, because this 'state' is no longer just theoretical.

Artists are more wary than most of the claims made by proponents of technology – just as they are of the processes and systems insisted upon by bureaucrats and officials of any kind – the cold rationality of systems mirror the left-brain's perspective on (and approach to) the world, and this is not the artist's vision of the world. Reason, the right-brain counterpart to rationality (a distinction not made by the left), incorporates a larger context – the gestalt – and understands that systems all too easily become a box for our minds, limiting our thoughts and restricting possibilities. For artists, in particular, this is a guiding principle. As Bertrand Russell warns in his unsettling, 1952 work, The Impact Of Science On Society:

The idea that technology will solve all of the world's problems seems ludicrous; it is a leap of faith the right-brain is not prepared to make. There are consequences to everything and, as the opening comment suggests, the more tasks we hand off to technology, the more incapable we become of performing those tasks ourselves and the more dependent we become on this technology.