Kevin Kelly har fortsatt sitt utforskande av teknikdeterminismen, alltså ifall tekniken i sig har en riktning dit den utvecklas, och i så fall vilken riktning detta är.
Det är en komplex frågeställning, men jag tycker väl ändå att Kelly gör en rätt bra insats i ett välskrivet inlägg, där han efterfrågar verktyg för att kunna på något sätt säga vilka delar av teknikutvecklingen som är oundvikliga, och vilka vi skulle kunna påverka.
Where is the source for the wisdom to discern the difference between the inevitable stages of technological development and the volitional forms that are up to us? What we would really like is a technique which makes the inevitable obvious.
I think that tool is our awareness of the technium's long-term cosmic trajectory. By placing technology in the context of a natural extension of biological evolution rising from the big bang, we can perceive how those macro imperatives play out in our present time. In other words, technology's inevitable forms derive from the dynamics that characterize all extropic systems — the dozen or so attributes I describe as "what technology wants." These are: an increase in complexity, diversity, specialization, efficiency, consilience, socialization, structure, ubiquity, opportunity, beauty, sentience, and evolvability. All these values are increasing on average in sustainable systems like life, evolution, and the technium.
Kelly ger ett roligt exempel på hur vidden på två hästars bakdelar styrde en del av designen på rymdfärjorna -- via romarnas vägbyggen och de första järnvägarnas spårvidd!
Förutom Kellys bidrag kan jag rekommendera en titt på Mick och Fourniers artikel "Paradoxes of technology" från 1998, som går in på hur tekniken hjälper oss och hindrar oss på samma gång:
- Control/chaos -- Technology can facilitate regulation or order, and technology can lead to upheaval or disorder
- Freedom/enslavement -- Technology can facilitate independence or fewer restrictions, and technology can lead to dependence or more restrictions
- New/obsolete -- New technologies provide the user with the most recently developed benefits of scientific knowledge, and new technologies are already or soon to be outmoded as they reach the marketplace
- Competence/incompetence -- Technology can facilitate feelings of intelligence or efficacy, and technology can lead to feelings of ignorance or ineptitude
- Efficiency/inefficiency -- Technology can facilitate less effort or time spent in certain activities, and technology can lead to more effort or time in certain activities
- Fulfills/creates needs -- Technology can facilitate the fulfillment of needs or desires, and technology can lead to the development or awareness of needs or desires previously unrealized
- Assimilation/isolation -- Technology can facilitate human togetherness, and technology can lead to human separation
- Engaging/disengaging -- Technology can facilitate involvement, flow, or activity, and technology can lead to disconnection, disruption, or passivity
Och liknande tankar återfinns i en text av Neil Postman om teknikförändringar, som jag tror också är från 1998. Jag citerar bara sammanfattningen, men man bör läsa själva texten för att förstå hur de olika stegen fungerar:
And so, these are my five ideas about technological change. First, that we always pay a price for technology; the greater the technology, the greater the price. Second, that there are always winners and losers, and that the winners always try to persuade the losers that they are really winners. Third, that there is embedded in every great technology an epistemological, political or social prejudice. Sometimes that bias is greatly to our advantage. Sometimes it is not. The printing press annihilated the oral tradition; telegraphy annihilated space; television has humiliated the word; the computer, perhaps, will degrade community life. And so on. Fourth, technological change is not additive; it is ecological, which means, it changes everything and is, therefore, too important to be left entirely in the hands of Bill Gates. And fifth, technology tends to become mythic; that is, perceived as part of the natural order of things, and therefore tends to control more of our lives than is good for us.
Man kan själv placera sin uppfattning om teknikdeterminism på skalan som löper från påverkbarhet till att teknikens evolution inte kan hejdas -- vad är din uppfattning? Vad krävs för att vi ska kunna styra samhället mot en utveckling där vi kan bli lyckligare än om vi inte försöker förändra utvecklingen, och är det alls önskvärt att försöka styra?
/Simon
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