Surprised the article didn't mention Neil Postman, especially Five Things We Need to Know about Technological Change (1998):<p>> The first idea is that all technological change is a trade-off.<p>> This leads to the second idea, which is that the advantages and disadvantages of new technologies are never distributed evenly among the population.<p>> The third idea, then, is that every technology has a philosophy which is given expression in how the technology makes people use their minds, in what it makes us do with our bodies, in how it codifies the world, in which of our senses it amplifies, in which of our emotional and intellectual tendencies it disregards.<p>> Here is the fourth idea: Technological change is not additive; it is ecological. ...A new medium does not add something; it changes everything.<p>> I come now to the fifth and final idea, which is that media tend to become mythic. ...[Using] the word "myth" to refer to a common tendency to think of our technological creations as if they were God-given, as if they were a part of the natural order of things.<p><a href="https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs492/papers/neil-postman--five-things.html" rel="nofollow">https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs492/papers/neil-postman--...</a>
The economist Ha-Joon Chang noted that the spread of domestic household technology, such as washing machines, piped gas, refrigerators etc. has had a more dramatic effect on human social organization than the internet and computers have had (as of ~2010 or so). The role of domestic servants was essentially eliminated as a result, and women who'd traditionally served in that role were able to find employment outside the home as a result (which also created the daytime child care industry).<p>The first automatic washing machines were introduced in the USA in 1937; a decade later women played important roles in wartime manufacturing during WWII, and by 1970 universities like Caltech finally opened their doors to female students.<p>It's possible that some new technology - AI-assisted robotic automation in particular - could have a similar societal impact by eliminating many jobs and concentrating wealth in the hands of the owners of the manufacturing lines, although this would seem to be a self-defeating outcome as fewer people would be able to purchase the output. An alternative result would be something like an average 30-hr work week with no change in economic earnings for the vast majority of people.
> A GPS device on your phone is designed to get you where you need to go, and it does that. It was not designed to weaken your sense of direction and make you dependent upon it to feel safe in urban or rural areas. Yet it also does that.<p>It frustrated me so deeply when Google removed the compass from their maps application in order to add some buttons to report speed traps or whatever. For a couple years there, the only way to keep any sort of orientation while driving in unfamiliar areas was to make the map always point north regardless of where I was driving.<p>But, remarkably, enough people complained that they brought the compass back.
I heard Daniel on a podcast, so I will summarize my understanding of the theory for potential readers: technology is a tool which leverages resource extraction and control, and the people who wield that tool define what values are normative within society; those who disagree do not control resources, and so the value system reflects (and rationalizes) those who control the tools.
Isn't this a fairly trivial insight though?<p>Same as saying that everything anyone, or any organization, does is political.<p>Which may be the literal case, but we have to maintain some cutoff threshold to make the phrase meaningful and tractable to think about.<p>Otherwise, scratching the left or right side of your nose may be a political statement and preferring a trackpad or a mouse may be a statement regarding values.<p>"Technology that has Y net impact on more than X number of people is not values neutral" may be a better phrasing.<p>And the challenge will be to find broad agreement for X and Y.
<i>In Accepting an honorary degree from the University of Notre Dame a few years ago, General David Sarnoff made this statement: “We are too prone to make technological instruments the scapegoats for the sins of those who wield them. The products of modern science are not in themselves good or bad; it is the way they are used that determines their value.” That is the voice of the current somnambulism. Suppose we were to say, “Apple pie is in itself neither good nor bad; it is the way it is used that determines its value.” Or, “The smallpox virus is in itself neither good nor bad; it is the way it is used that determines their value.” That is, if the slugs reach the right people firearms are good. If the TV tubes fire the right ammunition at the right people it is good. I am not being perverse. There is simply nothing in the Sarnoff statement that will bear scrutiny, for it ignores the nature of the medium, of any and all media, in the true Narcissus style of one hypnotized by the amputation and extension of his own being in a new technical form. General Sarnoff went on to explain his attitude to the technology of print, saying that it was true that print caused much trash to circulate, but it had also disseminated the Bible and the thoughts of seers and philosophers. It has never occurred to General Sarnoff that any technology could do anything but add itself on to what we already are.</i><p>Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (p. 11)
> Smartphones were designed with the values of communication and access to information in mind. The smartphone has become central to human existence because humans highly value communication and information.<p>No they were not. The author uses "values" too liberally. Those features were in mind but the only value behind the decision to pursue these features is profit from the producer perspective and convenience from a consumer perspective. The same basic principles of supply/demand economics govern commercial technology.<p>The smartphone is not central to human existence. Billions don't even have access to the internet, hundreds of millions don't have electricity. Even if you take the west alone, most people believe it or not function just fine without smartphones. Both the entertainment and communication aspects are available on laptops. Even without the internet many americans still use dvds! Voice calls and sms. I go out of my way to succesfully avoid using smartphones for any work related purposes (and I work in infosec) successfully. I use uber/uber-eats, airbnb and many other popular apps but they all merely add a convenience. I still eat at restaurants, used taxis and car rentals in recent memory as well as hotels. I do use GPS a lot but I have no problem using a paper map.<p>Regarding the overall premise of the article: bicycles enabled the women rights movement and cars enabled suburbia and "white flight" and many other features of modern western life. These are effects not values as is with the internet and smartphones. I argue that tech is values neutral unless profit and convenience are what you mean by values. People spread conspiracy about climate change, flate earth and anti-vaccine theories on the same smartphones and internet people use to do the opposite. In other words, technology is usually created out of convenience. Even nuclear tech was created because it was more convenient to use it to win a war than fire bombing and invasion campaigns. Just like bicycles were created because they get you there faster than walking, not specifically to enable women. Make things that are profitable because they solve an in inconvenience and maybe good willed people will be enabled to do good with it.<p>The author mixes effect with values.
I find it interesting that the author did not list “writing” as one of those technologies that is not value neutral.<p>Writing basically allowed the creation of the bureaucratic state. Without writing/record keeping, large organizations are pretty much impossible.
This is a fun illustration of the sociological argument for social constructivism, that we shape the technology we use into having the social effects that we desire. Interesting to compare it to the other longstanding idea of technological determinism, how we shape our society around the technology produced.<p>Knowing which side is producing the social effects could go a long way to alleviating the stresses new technology has built onto our societies. I Would be excited to see who would actively work or fund such a project and whether it would actually produce any results.
> A GPS device on your phone is designed to get you where you need to go, and it does that. It was not designed to weaken your sense of direction and make you dependent upon it to feel safe in urban or rural areas. Yet it also does that.<p>I never had any reliable sense of direction and felt safe in urban or rural areas :-] Now we have affordable GPS devices and that's awesome. The only bad thing about it is Google/whoever always spying on your location.
Technology is not values neutral.<p>For example, this chicken collection system from hell:<p>(warning: viewer discretion is advised)
<a href="https://youtu.be/sH3BZu7Qez0?t=398" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/sH3BZu7Qez0?t=398</a><p>Clearly there is engineering involved, but you can see how the design has no regard for the chickens.
"Future technologies must be designed according to methods that take human value and experience seriously enough to be constrained by their limits - such as sanity, dignity, and justice."<p>This would require an incentive for long-term systems thinking and cooperation.<p>Turning a profit at the expense of human sanity, dignity and justice is far easier, which is the definition of success today. It's hard to make money without unintentionally causing harm, intentionally doing it however makes it easier. Unless there is an effective oversight, but there rarely is, especially for new markets.<p>Like Y Combinator here, and many other venture capitalists turning a profit on cryptocurrency scams. They are doing harm, but they can't say no to opportunities, that would just create more incentives for their competitors to say yes. Inflicting a few of the thousand cuts routinely inflicted on society is the government's problem anyway. To be fair it can be trully hard to avoid harm, or even figure out what's the harm, if any. Our world is rather big and complex. I'm just saying that there is a selection for not even trying to, because someone else just wouldn't, and it's a competitive advantage not to.
This seems more directed towards parts of Silicon Valley than the rest of the world. The EU recognized that technology = politics long ago, and has been in a race with China on defining global norms.<p>The "GDPR effect" will be seen in many other areas in the coming years, and I (as a EU technology-focused diplomat) feel that most US corps haven't realized the scale of what's lurking around the corner.<p><a href="https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/digital-services-act-package" rel="nofollow">https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/digital-se...</a>
<a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-european-union-ai-act-next-steps-and-issues-for-building-international-cooperation-in-ai/" rel="nofollow">https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-european-union-ai-act...</a>
This sounds like the usual conflation of "technology" and "social movements adjacent to technology."<p>Digital computers are technology, smartphones are a social movement.<p>The internet is technology, Reddit is a social thing.<p>GPS (the system that gives you a fix using satellites) is technology, everyone relying on turn by turn navigation is a social movement.