Don't expect the companies that make or intensively use technology to do more in helping society as a whole make sense of what's going on.
Seemingly every day, there's news about yet another technology company getting into trouble with customers, competitors, or the law. Google's collecting passwords and email traffic from home WiFi networks. Facebook's keeping people's data and photos long after they've canceled their subscriptions. And the one I personally experienced two years ago, to the tune of $750 in fraudulent charges and days on the phone with my bank: The payment system in Apple's iTunes store is -- or was, anyway -- as leaky as a sieve.
The missteps and the oversteps, the data losses and the data thefts, they never stop. Yet, all the while, masses of people line up overnight to buy the newest smartphone, live more of their lives on the wild and wooly Web, and surrender more of their identities to companies working somewhere in the entirely virtual "cloud."
What's going on here? Nobody really knows, I have come to conclude.
Computers, the Web, mobile devices, wireless nets, big-data analytics -- all of these developments are fast erasing old boundaries, rewriting long-standing rules of business and personal etiquette, overturning economic assumptions, changing laws, and putting many, many people on edge. Sure, technology's fun, technology's cool, technology's where to get a job and to invest your money, but technology's also tipping over and turning inside out the world as we've known it.
As the New York Times pointed out the other day, everybody right now is dizzied and dazzled by digital technology, perhaps nobody more so than the companies actually serving it up as fast as they can to an endlessly rapt and voracious audience. These companies have no better idea about what's right or wrong, what's acceptable or not, than the rest of us do.
So, don't expect them to pause for even a nanosecond and try to explain what they're trying to accomplish with their flood of products and services or what they expect those products will do to society or the world as a whole. The relentless economics of computing drive these suppliers to constantly test boundaries and try to get away with as much as they can as quickly as they can. They all know, even if they'd rather not admit or discuss it in such terms, that if they don't push hard and win ever more turf, some competitor will. And that, history shows, can rapidly lead to game over.
In short, we are living through a remarkable moment in history. Today, technology (and its close companion, innovation) is the water society swims in. It's enormously difficult to grasp or gain any perspective on. Technology -- by which is mainly meant digital technology -- is widely accepted as the answer to every problem under the sun, from spurring economic growth to making health care affordable to fixing the schools to halting global warming to reigniting marriages. Indeed, for every problem technology may have caused (e.g. highway congestion) it's typically another dose of technology (e.g. smart highways and driverless cars) that's viewed as the best solution.
For some, such as digital piano maker and "singularity" theorist Ray Kurzweil, technology will -- not may, but surely will -- solve the "problem" of mortality itself.
Some of us are old enough to remember a time when serious calls were put forth to place limits on technology. Books with titles such as Small is Beautiful and Tools for Conviviality were widely read, discussed, and acted on. (Ironically, to a large degree, this inspired the personal computer.)
When Congress actually voted against funding the US development of a supersonic passenger plane, there was hope in certain circles that the political process might actually keep technology in check and guide its evolution.
Today, such limits are virtually impossible to discuss. More technology is better, end of story. This laissez-faire attitude may or may not come to bite us in the rear end somewhere down the line. For now, it seems, all we can do is hang on for the ride.
@cpafern, I never should have watched Caprica or Start Trek episodes with the holodeck, all I can think of when watching is that one day people are going to prefer the simulation to the real thing. Want to go to the Grand Canyon, do a virtual tour to avoid the heat, rocks in your shoes, bugs and the smell of burros. On the plus side I'd very willingly work from a virtual office this way since I'm not at work to experience the environment but the face time with fellow employees is important.
@John, I agree that we're simulating more and more of the material world but I dread the day we're all sitting around in pods looking at landscapes rather than going outside and seeing the real thing. Hopefully we learn when to stop with the simulation.
I see the computer (ie. IT) as a giant simulation machine, and slowly but surely, and with accelerating speed, we are simulating more and more of the "old" traditional, material world. And once the material world is simulated, its activities can be driven at higher and higher speeds, with less friction and more control and greater precision, and all that forces people to react faster and struggle to keep up, which in turn calls for more technology. It is a vicious, or virtuous cycle (depends on who's asking) that may or may not eventually slow down or stop.
IN any case, there is a huge landrush going on to simulate and thereby capture more and more of the world as we once knew it.
@nasimson - I agree completely. As the world evolves technology has evolved and has grown in an expontial manner. With the advent of the internet and the technologies that have been wrapped around it there has been an explosion of services and devices that have come from it.
The internet is changing the way we communicate and we're loosing that "human touch" with people. Its very interesting to see the children of today when they're 30 and how they're lives have changed due to constant access/communication.
By the way, Tools for Conviviality is available for reading on the Web, here (HTML) and here (PDF). And elsewhere. It is one of my favorite books, really opened my eyes to what technology is, how it can help or hinder people, how to think about it and its relation to a just and pleasant society. Written in 1973, it doesn't really touch on the computer, but it is very enlightening all the same. Author is Ivan Illich, who is mainly famous for an earlier book called Deschooling Society. Tools calls for politically defined limits on tools, aka technology, such as setting a speed limit that would permit bikes and ban cars. Radical stuff, but it makes sense: Bikes are available to virtually everyone, while cars are such that not everyone can use one, especially in cities. There would be too much parking space required and endless traffic jams, etc.
Yes, indeed, Google should have been on this case right from the beginning, and especially so in Germany where, because of its totalitarian past, privacy issues are much much more sensitive than what we deal with here in the US of A. (In Germany Amazon, for instance, is not permitted even to retain a list of the items you previously purchased for more than a month or so.)
But I imagine these companies are pushing so hard and so fast in so many directions, they just hope to see what they can get, and then, if they have to rollback a bit, they do, but they still have a net gain to show. Amazon is particularly good at playing this game, I have seen it written.
@John, I agree that Google has to do more than say "Don't be evil", their WiFi sniffing debacle was a good example of a bad idea being carried out to the point of potentially doing great harm to the public. Was that their intent? I doubt it but someone along the line should have said, hey wait a minute why are we collecting files from personal computers as we drive by their houses?
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