Okay, full disclosure. This isn’t a real professor. It’s a character I made up in my novel (to be finished hopefully by Spring 2022).
The character is a professor at UC Berkeley and one of his books is called Technological Foregone Conclusions. Below is the Introduction to this guy’s book, excerpted from my novel. Hope that makes sense.
*All plot points and characters subject to change due to the fact that I’m still writing the book and editing, revising, chopping it to pieces, etc.
Why did I write this book? That’s the question all authors have to wrestle with and explain, to themselves first and then to the audience they’re trying to reach.
Why now? Why me? What is there new to say? When it comes to technology, so much has been written by men and women I’ve admired. Ever since the technological revolution of the 1980s, the advent of computers and their radical rewriting of American society, many minds probably greater than mine have wrestled with what was happening. The late Neil Postman, authors and thinkers like Sherry Turkle, Jerry Mander, Marshall McCluhn, Jaron Lanier, Edward Snowden, Cal Newport, and even, I dare say, Ted Kaczynski, and his writings (not his actions). These and others led me to question in a greater and more profound way the end-result of this technological roller coaster we’ve all found ourselves on.
It has been said that the greater part of solving a problem is figuring out the right question. This has been my struggle over the last decade since I began teaching on technology and new media at the University of California, Berkeley. What is the question? What is the problem we’re trying to solve with technology? What are we after? Where are we headed if we continue down this track?
I’ll admit. I was worried back then and I’m just as worried now. But after seeing so many young students come through the door of my lecture hall, and talking in depth and in closed-door debates with my peers, some of whom share my questions and concerns regarding technology’s role in American society, and watching trends, I became increasingly convinced that we were no longer even asking ourselves the right questions. I listened to people, particularly young people, talk about technology, or noticed the things they didn’t talk about, as well as older generations, and began to notice a pattern.
Technology had become a foregone conclusion.
Neil Postman warned against the new media of his time, television, among other technologies, but he died in 2003. And the Internet, social media, smartphones and streaming services have all far surpassed the relatively mild influence television had in the 60s, 70s and beyond. And what was Postman’s legacy? I have met many, many adults, and even more young adults, who have never heard of Postman. Yet his books (most popular being “Amusing Ourselves to Death”) are still read by some today, maybe more than I realize, and they are just as relevant. Of the smaller percentage who have read and grappled with his ideas and warnings, how many of them did so out of entertainment, the very thing Postman himself warned about? How many read to see what all the fuss was about? How many read and changed their habits? Changed their view in the longterm about how they digested media and what they digested?
I began asking myself, where were the new thinkers giving us the right questions? Where were the technology skeptics who could act as a counterbalance to society’s ever-quickening drift into a world controlled and molded by technology?
Who was steering the ship? And who was watching for potential icebergs? Or were we all now assuming that everything will work out for the best, that we will magically and coincidentally avoid all icebergs?
In whose hands was the rudder of technology? Anyone’s? Or was it now a Frankenstein monster, out of control, technologically rampaging through our towns and cities leaving societal death and destruction in its weight?
While this question may seem extreme to some of you, even most, that’s my point. I believe the technological foregone conclusions we appear to have drifted into—one of them being accepting all technology as beneficial—should be challenged. And I believe they can be challenged, in a healthy way.
I am not a Luddite. It is obvious that technological advancements in society have brought good. But what if they can be proven to bring evil, at least some of them? Do we have the courage to cast them off, change them or even take legislative action to ban certain ones? If we even had the power anymore to flip a kind of kill switch on any of the technologies that now seem to bind us, what would that even look like?
In other words, if we have eaten from the technological tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which side are we spending more time eating from? Good or evil? If we, as humans, are both Jekyll and Hyde, that is, we have some of both in us, which one is driving our technological advancements—Jekyll or Hyde? And what costs are coming with the blind acceptance of technology? What price are we paying?
I believe history holds the key to setting the proper path and role of technology in our society. And, as a recovering realist, who has spent the better part of my adult life growing into an idealistic view of the world, I still have questions and real concerns about where we are headed.
Will the arc of technology bend toward good?
Can we control technology in a way that is healthy for all?
What is the singularity when it comes to technology, the point where something becomes out of control, where the creation has gotten ahead of its creator? And how will we know if we’ve reached this singularity? Who’s measuring this? Are there any brakes on technology, any checks and balances? If so, where are they and, again, who holds that power?
Besides discussing these questions at length, I also explore the modern myth, or idea, that there has always been a resistance to new things, that the modern questioning or slight pushback against technology is just another manifestation of our human tendency to be afraid of change. “They said the same thing at the invention of pen and paper, the bicycle, the printing press, the telephone, and those things didn’t usher in any kind of apocalyptic events.” The nothing-new-under-the-sun argument. While this may ring of truth, it’s not founded in truth. I argue that, by looking at the actual history of new technologies, there is a big difference in impact when one compares the bicycle and the smartphone. I show that the myth of there-are-always-techno-skeptics, and that those previous techno skeptics turned out to be wrong, is an overly simplistic way of understanding history and the development of technology. Put another way, a bicycle is not a telephone is not a smartphone. These are not apples-to-apples comparisons, in fact, not even apples-to-oranges. They are more like comparing watermelons to kiwi fruit.
I make the case that the more accurate way to compare technologies of the past to modern-day technologies is to think in terms of “natural-world technologies” vs. “virtual-world technologies.”
Every technology, I believe, no matter the period of its invention, should be examined on its own merits. What does it solve? And not unlike modern pharmaceuticals, what problems is the cure bringing that were not there before?
And is it worth exploring the possibility that, again, like pharmaceuticals, we are solving the “disease” of life with technology that then brings with it side effects that can then only be solved with more technology?
My time working in and around Silicon Valley, inside the belly of the beast, has also given me a unique perspective into how these technologies were developed.
I don’t believe we’re doomed. I’m not as pessimistic as I might sound. I do have hope for our future.
Finally, I ask, what is technology? And what is its main goal? Are we simply trying to make ourselves more relevant, heard, valued, through social media connections? Are we trying to save civilization? Or simply become a more global world? More connected?
What is the main goal of technology? And what is its main promise? Luxury, convenience, the American dream, security, peace, happiness? While it’s not my intention to get too philosophical—I will save that for the actual philosophers—I do think our society would be healthier if we were engaging with some of these questions in a more meaningful way.
I certainly don’t have all the answers. But in summary, in my time teaching and studying these issues, I have come to believe that there are a number of technological foregone conclusions that should be questioned. And that questioning will, I hope, bring about a healthier conversation about technology’s role in society and even possibly lead us to, possibly not yet the solution, but hopefully to the right question.