Living in Utopia

I can't say I would care to be a resident of Utopia as it was described in the book.  Mind you, if I were allowed to change a bunch of things then I'd be all for it.  Of course, a lot of the things I didn't care for, such as making women subordinate to men and no provision for privacy, are due to societal changes that have taken place since the book was written.  I also find the idea of not having a place to call my own a bit unsettling.  Honestly, I find it easier to give up personal property than the idea of home.  But when you get right down to it, most of the things I was the most uncomfortable with were things that were products of society at that time.

If More had suggested that women in Utopia were treated the same as men, that would have seemed very odd then.  It might have even affected the popularity of the book, since logically most men would not have wanted women to get any crazy ideas.  And until it was mentioned in class, it had never occurred to me that privacy just wasn't a thing then.  So if most of the problems I had with Utopia originated from the author's society, what would Utopia look like if it had been written recently?

I find myself thinking first of the internet, probably because I spend a lot of time on it.  I feel that Utopia would have to have widespread access to the internet; otherwise I couldn't consider it a free society, and if it isn't a free society then it isn't a utopia.  What's more, the internet (or at least interconnectedness) allows for higher efficiency in many areas of work.  A catastrophic accident created a food shortage?  No need to send a runner to all nearby towns hoping they have a surplus, we'll just hop on the government website and see who has the most food to spare.

Leisure time was a vaunted and attractive part of Utopia.  Of course, now we have a good amount of leisure time.  Does this mean the new Utopia will have even shorter workdays?  With the advent of technology like the combine harvester, considerably fewer people would be needed to run the farms. More and more factory work is automated.  And as for spending all that leisure time, the internet provides vast opportunities for both entertainment and learning.

Advances in food production and crop yield mean that starvation should never be a concern.  After all, the world produces enough food today to feed everyone; distribution is the problem.  In Utopia, that issue would be eradicated.  This means that Utopians could either devote less land to food production, or could reap a surplus of food and trade it to their neighbors.

The modern world is a complicated place.  I know I've only scratched the surface of the ways Utopia would be different if it were designed today.  I'd love to hear what everyone else thinks.

2 out of 5