How Every Great Invention Turns Into Its Opposite
Money became debt, school became work, and people became objects
Human inventions often end up at cross purposes with their original intentions — or even at cross purposes with humans ourselves. Once an idea or an institution gains enough influence, it changes the basic landscape. Instead of the invention serving people in some way, people spend their time and resources serving it. The original subject becomes the new object.
Or, as we may more effectively put it, the figure becomes the ground.
The idea of figure and ground was first posited by a Danish psychologist in the early 1900s. He used a simple cardboard cutout to test whether people see the central image or whatever is around it. We now know the experiment as the drawing that can be seen as a white vase if you look at the middle of the image or as two black faces in profile if you focus on the periphery. The model of perception was useful to psychologists, who were attempting to understand how the brain identifies and remembers things.
What fascinates people to this day is the way the perception of figure or ground can change in different circumstances and cultures. When shown a picture of a cow in a pasture, most Westerners will see a picture of a cow. Most Easterners, on the other…
