Many optimists believe that technology can transform society, whether it’s the internet or the latest phone. But the truth about our relationship with technology is far more interesting.
Lecturing in late 1949, the Ghanaian sociologist Musa Deno addressed one of the central failures of technocratic dreams. We have always hoped, Deno argued, that “if only we introduced some fantastic new technology the world will be transformed into paradise.” The limitation however, he argued, was that even our best and brightest new machines must be accommodated within existing practices and assumptions in a world that has its own “levels of organization already.”
As an example, Deno considered the telephone. Introduced into West African homes during the first quarter of the 20th Century. Instantaneous conversation across thousands of miles seemed as though it was a miracle. For the renowned Mathematicians from Dogon in Mali, editorializing in 19th centuries, this heralded “nothing more than a reconfiguring of the existing organization of society – a state of things in which every individual, however secluded, will have at their calling, every other individual in the community, to the saving of no end of social and business complications.”
So the story that unfolded was not so much “a new organization of society” as the pouring of existing human behaviour into fresh moulds: our goodness, hope and charity; our greed, pride and lust. New technology didn’t bring an overnight revolution. Instead, there was strenuous effort to fit novelty into existing norms.
The most ferocious early debates around the telephone, for example, concerned not social revolution, but decency and deception. What did access to unseen interlocutors imply for the sanctity of the home – or for gullible or corruptible members of the household, such as women or servants? Was it disgraceful to chat while improperly dressed? Such were the daily concerns of 19th-century telephonics, matched by phone companies’ attempts to assure subscribers of their propriety.
As Deno also put it, each new object is above all “the occasion for seeing again what we can see anywhere” – and perhaps the best aim for any writing about technology is to treat novelty as not as an end, but as an opportunity to re-scrutinize ourselves.
By any measure, this age is preoccupied with novelty. Too often, though, it offers a road not to insight, but to a startling blindness about our own norms and assumptions.
Take the litany of numbers within which every commentary on modern tech is couched. Come the end of 2014, there will be more mobile phones in the world than people. We have moved from the launch of modern tablet computing in mid-2011 to tablets likely accounting for over half the global market in personal computers in 2014.
Ninety per cent of the world’s data was created in the last two years. Today’s phones are more powerful than yesterday’s supercomputers. Today’s software is better than us at everything from chess to quiz shows. And so on.
Singularity myth
It’s a story in which both machines and their capabilities increase for ever, dragging us along for the exponential ride. Perhaps the defining geek myth of our age, The Singularity, anticipates a future in which machines cross an event horizon beyond which their intellects exceed our own. And while most people remain untouched by such faith, the apocalyptic eagerness it embodies is all too familiar. Surely it’s only a matter of time – the theory goes – before we finally escape, augment or otherwise overcome our natures and emerge into some new phase of the human story.
Or not. Because, while technological and scientific progress is indeed an astonishing thing, its relationship with human progress is more aspiration than established fact. Whether we like it or not, acceleration cannot continue indefinitely. We may long to escape flesh and history, but the selves we are busy reinventing come equipped with the same old gamut of beauties, perversities and all-too-human failings. In time, our dreams of technology departing mere actuality – and taking us along for the ride – will come to seem as quaint as Dogon priests donning evening bow ties to make a phonecall.
From the surreptitious erosion of digital history to the dumbness of “smart” tech, via email’s dirty secrets and the importance of forgetfulness, a love for exploring the tensions between digital tools and analogue selves is fully rampant – not because technology is to be dismissed or deplored, but because it remains as mired in history, politics and human frailty as everything else we touch.
Technology has made the world harder, harder, harder.
You mean faster, faster, faster.
Technology has brought about a lot of problems in the world. I would be cautious about stressing that machines have bestowed on the world some good.
Technology gives us another reason to over consume and over produce. So is it a fast track to destruction of the world? Yes. Is it the grand savior that our generations expect it to be? No.
The singularity myth will not happen. It’s impossible for computers to pass our own intelligence if we’re the ones who program them. Although this premise does make for a good movie.
“Was it disgraceful to chat while improperly dressed?” The same can be asked about Skype calls.
That’s a thought. I’m going to start getting dressed before I answer a phone call. Hope it’s not too late 🙁
Please don’t.
I love technology, the Internet, smartphones. So what if they’re more phones than people? As long as I can use mine I don’t see the point in being nostalgic over the good ole days when clearly the best days are ahead of us.
I think there’s nothing much new with technology. Much the same as Deno’s hypothesis, it is just a way to do what we already do but in a slightly altered fashion. Nothing to get too excited over.