In mean-spirited response to the executive summary of a report I haven’t read, here is a bad-minded slap down. Pew,the people who write generally solid reports on US Internet usage, ‘surveyed 742 top technology thinkers and stakeholders and gave them a series of “future scenarios” involving the internet and digital technologies to comment on in order to get a consensus on the future’.
And this is what the cheerleading tech crowd believes will happen by 2020:
“# A low-cost global network will be thriving and creating new opportunities in a “flattening” world.”
Yes, that’s right, the world is getting flat. I may actually vomit. But really, folks, i2020 is only 14 years away and most countries are burdened by dinosaur telcos, authoritarian governments, largely rural populations, highly inconvenient geography and a long list of far more serious things to worry about. The only flat thing here is the 2D world vision.
“# Humans will remain in charge of technology, even as more activity is automated and “smart agents” proliferate. However, a significant 42% of survey respondents were pessimistic about humans’ ability to control the technology in the future. This significant majority agreed that dangers and dependencies will grow beyond our ability to stay in charge of technology. This was one of the major surprises in the survey.”
I wish we bloody well would get eaten by AI, nano, 7th dimensions, smart viruses or anything else the SF writers we love so much here at CT can dream up. Can it be any worse? (Yes, I am having rather a bad day.)
“# Virtual reality will be compelling enough to enhance worker productivity and also spawn new addiction problems.”
Not on dial-up, it won’t. Which is what most of the world will be very lucky to have by 2020.
“# Tech “refuseniks” will emerge as a cultural group characterized by their choice to live off the network. Some will do this as a benign way to limit information overload, while others will commit acts of violence and terror against technology-inspired change.”
The benign part of me wonders ‘where do I sign up?’, while my inner savage thinks – sneerily, misandrously and in bad faith – that these nerds have been jerking off to survivalist literature and third rate SF political analysis, and wouldn’t know a molotov cocktail from a hole in the ground.
“# People will wittingly and unwittingly disclose more about themselves, gaining some benefits in the process even as they lose some privacy.”
See, this is the one that got me off on this narky rant in the first place. I have been reading this crap for fifteen years now and it’s, well, complete crap. (And in fact it’s the very same crap that got me into this career in the first place, for worse or worse.) Here’s a life lesson for ya, west coast libertarian boy. In the real world, that is to say outside of your Econ and Law class, people are not ‘trading’ their privacy for cinema tickets or beer or the convenience of location-based spam. They are grumblingly parting with it just to be able to do the simple stuff of life. Stuff like making a phone call, travelling on a plane, buying a book, putting up a website.
There’s not a whole lot of upside to having your history leeched away from you as you go about your business – it’s just something you put up with. It’s constant, it’s inescapable, and the best thing is that most people don’t care about it very much. But it’s not a trade. It’s not give and take. It’s take and take. Now we can argue till the cockroaches outlast us about how necessary, important and generally indispensable data collection is. But let’s not pretend that constant, casual accretion of personal data is like a shiny new disintermediated tech toy, or some kind of exchange between free wheeling rational agents with another gig to go to if this one doesn’t work out. Coz it ain’t.
Which is really a long-winded, shirty way of saying ‘technology just helps us to do stuff. It’s not the story. The stuff is the story.’
Which means it may be time to turn off the computer. Sleep well, tech boy.
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Maria 10.05.06 at 11:39 am
For a slightly less misanthropic take on life as we know it, you could always wander over to the Ukraine blog. I’m only back 2 days and already it feels like another life.
Moleman 10.05.06 at 12:03 pm
See, I think this is the worst:
Tech “refuseniks†will emerge as a cultural group characterized by their choice to live off the network. Some will do this as a benign way to limit information overload, while others will commit acts of violence and terror against technology-inspired change.
The thing that bugs me most about the techno-utopian folks is their damn stubborn refusal to ever accept that reasonable people could dislike or even be ambivalent to what they want. Everyone gets slotted into three groups- luddites who can’t hack it in the new techno-awesomeness, violent loons who like smashing pretty stuff, and the heroic tech-heads who always know what’s going on and rush to grab the latest toy. Never any room for folks who just aren’t all that excited by ubiquitous broadband. It’s like an extremist political movement based around nicer appliances- all moderates are collaborators! They hate us for our HD-TVs!
Cheryl Morgan 10.05.06 at 12:15 pm
And this isn’t happening already? There’s a series of ads being run on UK television at the moment for a car insurance company whose only selling point is that they are cheaper because they have no call center. You can’t talk to a human being, you have to do everything through the web site. My mother is forever complaining to me that various service companies are offering her new services or special offers that she can only get through their web site which, as she doesn’t own a computer, is of little help to her.
cm 10.05.06 at 12:28 pm
It’s but one outcome & constituent of technocracy. Check out the following pieces of literature. The fact of their online availability illustrates that the net-as-a-tool aspect extends to use for criticism of the excesses of tech.
Gene I. Rochlin — Trapped in the Net: The Unanticipated Consequences of Computerization
Stephen L. Talbott — THE FUTURE DOES NOT COMPUTE–Transcending the Machines in Our Midst
Jim Harrison 10.05.06 at 12:55 pm
Whatever happens is not going to be a function of a single variable, which is why it is as easy to project technological dystopias as utopias. For example, the Internet vastly increases the ability of governments to monitor the activities of their citizens. It’s like the TVs in 1984 that watch the watcher, except that there really aren’t any memory holes anymore. Perhaps we’ll develop new political and legal safeguards to prevent the abuse of this technology. I have my doubts. The legal scholars who get the most air time seem to think of rights to privacy as frozen anachronisms as the QWERTY keyboard, inconveniences that have to be worked around. Habeas corpus and other rights have their defenders, but when’s the last time anybody proposed extending rights to respond to the greater technical ability of governments to surveil and control?
Barry 10.05.06 at 1:03 pm
Jim: “It’s like the TVs in 1984 that watch the watcher, except that there really aren’t any memory holes anymore. ”
What’s frightening is that recent US political history shows that having a memory hole isn’t that necessary. Many people will create their own personal holes, with media assistance.
lemuel pitkin 10.05.06 at 1:26 pm
What’s fun is to go back and look at the predictions tech boys were making a few decades ago. Betcha there’s more than a few grown-up Heinlein fans among the “top technology thinkers,” too.
joe o 10.05.06 at 3:11 pm
From Lemuel’s link:
>It is utterly impossible that the United States will start a “preventive war.” We will fight when attacked, either directly or in a territory we have guaranteed to defend.
Tracy W 10.05.06 at 4:06 pm
the internet and digital technologies to comment on in order to get a consensus on the future’
Why would you want a consensus on the future?
It’s not like consensuses have any track record of improving forecast accuracy.
What they are trying to predict is inherently unpredictable, as it depends on the discovery of new knowledge, which is not predictable ahead of time. (Because the only way it’s predictable is if you’d already discovered it, in which case someone can build on your discovery and discover something else new).
The future will be unexpected. Rather than presenting a bunch of guys with some future scenarios, it would have been more interesting and possibly more informative to have them come up with their own scenarios, independently.
Scott Martens 10.05.06 at 4:19 pm
Yes, in case it wasn’t obvious, it’s raining in Belgium.
Georgiana 10.05.06 at 4:24 pm
I’m all for a shirty response to such stuff and nonsense. I love my gadgets and IT keeps me in clover but seriously, these claims are absurd. One is the implicit claim that digital technology is revolutionary. As revolutionary as access to clean drinking water, basic sanitation, vaccines and antibiotics? (Cough.)
Two, the connectivity imagined also doesn’t account for areas that suffer from regular electrical outages and use satellite internet connectivity, for example. Use dial-up in those conditions, and even transferring files can be troublesome.
As for whether we or technology are in control, somehow we’ve managed to survive, despite still losing people to fires, car crashes and other dooms offered courtesy of earlier technologies. And yet, the refusenik statement is perhaps strangest of all. Given my toaster, thermostat and toothbrush contain computer chips, would ridding myself of a computer make me a refusenik? Does it matter that some items work without, but have enhanced functionality thanks to, technology (the toothbrush, my current car)?
And most importantly, the report probably ignored a prime source of innovation: clever users, for example those moving money internationally using cellphones.
lemuel pitkin 10.05.06 at 5:18 pm
A more serious point is that by any reasonable standard, we are living in an era of relatively slow technological change. Compare 1850-1900-1950-2000 in medicine, housing, transportation, energy, military, communications, whatever — the changes in the first two 50-year periods are much bigger than the third one. Computers are the one exception, obviously, but that hardly outweighs all the rest.
Jill 10.05.06 at 5:59 pm
As one of the participants in the survey, I am taken aback by the responses here. The report (which I *have* actually read in full) is not a cheerleading document by any means. There is instead a recognition that the changes brought on by technology have both negative and positive consequences and policy makers should examine both carefully.
With regard to Maria’s reference to dial-up access, the top priority among these 742 “thinkers and stakeholders” was funding of the extended network to ensure wider access.
With regard to Moleman’s comments, it is very clear that there is tremendous ambivalence in this population regarding the changes wrought by technology. It hasn’t been determined whether the wider access to knowledge will be governed by rule of law or by social contract.
The report should be read in full before you pass judgement. For the record, by the way, I am NOT a “west coast libertarian tech boy”. I’m a 50-year-old, grey-haired information professional working for a small not-for-profit organization. And while I’ve read Robert Heinlein, he’s by no means a favorite author. I far prefer Ursula K. LeGuin.
Martin James 10.05.06 at 6:17 pm
A few quibbles.
Re Maria,
1. Isn’t it a trade of privacy to comment on a blog such as this one?
Having money to spend and having tastes different from the median, I am gladly willing to exhange privacy for a chance at goods that better fit my preferences. Unsurprisingly, a greater share of my money seems to be going to entities that obsessively survey customers.
Re Lemuel
I agree for the most part on technology, but would you really trade the medical advances of 1850 to 1900 for those of 1950 to 2000? And I think you are devaluing space travel somewhat in the transportation category.
I also think you are devaluing somewhat of the depth and breadth of the adoption of the technologies. Yes radio and telephone were available before 1950, but in terms of minutes of phone calls the growth is tremendous.
But on your side, why does no one ever mention education on the technological change list. The technology for learning things doesn’t seem to have improved much. Are the profesors now better than those of yore? Hardly.
Seth Finkelstein 10.05.06 at 6:32 pm
[Posting part of a blog post I wrote on this]
I am apparently one of the “Many top internet leaders, activists and commentators participated in the survey” (they said that, not me!). So I’m self-interested in pointing out that if one goes beyond the prefabricated punditry of the press release, and digs into the details, a lot of smart people can be found quoted in the report. Sure, there’s the Usual Suspects who say we are about to enter a New Era where we’ll go down a rabbit hole, err, I mean a black hole, and enter Wonderland, umm, the Singularity. But there’s also another perspective to be found, such as the following:
Scenario Two: English displaces other languages
And Seth Finkelstein, anti-censorship activist and author of the Infothought blog, wrote that this scenario is “much too ambitious. There will still be plenty of people who will have no need for global communications in other languages, or who choose to communicate only within their local community.”
Scenario Three: Autonomous technology is a danger
Programmer and anti-censorship activist Seth Finkelstein responded, “This is the AI bogeyman. It’s always around 20 years away, whatever the year.”
Scenario Four: Transparency builds a better world
“Between ‘agree’ and ‘disagree’ I’ll pick ‘agree,’ but I think it’s more accurate to say it could make the world a better place overall,” wrote Seth Finkelstein, EFF Pioneer Award winner. “The difference between the Open Society and the Police State is political, not technological.”
Think of it as the “balance” journalistic structure applied in futurism (“Are We Going To Live Forever? Opinions Differ”).
Brandon Berg 10.05.06 at 6:51 pm
Not on dial-up, it won’t. Which is what most of the world will be very lucky to have by 2020.
I’m not sure what your point is. Yes, it’s likely that much of the world will have only dial-up Internet access, if any. But that doesn’t change the fact that there will be hundreds of millions of people in the developed world who will have high-speed access to an Internet with fourteen years’ worth of added features. Most of us are more interested in how technological changes will affect our own lives than about how they’ll affect the lives of rural Nebraskans and Botswanans.
They are grumblingly parting with it just to be able to do the simple stuff of life. Stuff like making a phone call, travelling on a plane, buying a book, putting up a website.
I can easily make a phone call, buy a book, or put up a web site anonymously. And that I can’t travel on a plane anonymously is more a function of government regulation than of airline policies. So “libertarian boy” doesn’t strike me as a particularly appropriate epithet to use here.
thetruth 10.05.06 at 11:26 pm
I can easily make a phone call, buy a book, or put up a web site anonymously.
No, you can not make a phone call anonymously. You are simply a fool.
Brandon Berg 10.06.06 at 2:53 am
If they have technology to figure out who placed a particular call from a pay phone, it’s news to me.
Harald Korneliussen 10.06.06 at 2:55 am
Lemuel, that link was hilarious.
The transcendence of english is an interesting prophechy, which alas is completely unlikely. Many languages now have more speakers, and while english has an economic and cultural hegemony, that is by no means certain thirty years from now.
Now, speaking as one who has learned your language from childhood, and who bought the english translation of “Critique of pure reason” because the norwegian was too hard to get and the original was to hard to read… your language is hard, and the spelling is worse. I’ve seen some tragicomic communication attempts from a chinese on an english board, only to realise that the person in question was a professor in english at a chinese university. I think that global embrace of english is about as likely as global embrace of Esperanto (kaj ni chiuj scias ke tio ne estas tre vershajna, chu ne?)
abb1 10.06.06 at 4:13 am
A more serious point is that by any reasonable standard, we are living in an era of relatively slow technological change.
Exactly.
Note the morse code – the idea of converting analog signal into digital.
Slocum 10.06.06 at 6:45 am
A more serious point is that by any reasonable standard, we are living in an era of relatively slow technological change.
That must be why most of the predictions consist of things that have already happened:
# A low-cost global network will be thriving and creating new opportunities in a “flattening†world.
Duh. A low-cost global network is why tech-support people on the other side of the world already wait to answer your questions about your new microwave oven.
# Virtual reality will be compelling enough to enhance worker productivity and also spawn new addiction problems.
Already being done (e.g. 3d VR environments of buildings not yet built). And obviously VR (in the form of 1st-person video games) is already very addictive to many. In fact, given the near photo-realism of VR now, I don’t forsee this changing much (further increases in realism will bring diminishing returns).
# People will wittingly and unwittingly disclose more about themselves, gaining some benefits in the process even as they lose some privacy.
Ya think? In the future, there will be blogs…
Sheesh.
Dan bednarz 10.06.06 at 7:01 am
Techies exist inside their highly insular thought comminity –perhaps because they spend too much time online in dialog with one another and scoffing at the Luddites.
All of this futurism is premised upon an adequate supply of energy and an ecologically functioning planetary system. It looks as though techies have no coecern for the laws of the biosphere or thermodynamics. More colloqualiiy, they appear not to know the first thing about peak oil and our total relaince on fossil fuels and the threat of golbal warming.
Maria 10.06.06 at 10:39 am
I think it’s kind of funny how many of us ‘power users’ of the Internet / aka bloggers and commenters are allergic to tech utopianism. (even when casting aspersions on a mere exec summary)
Slocum 10.06.06 at 10:51 am
All of this futurism is premised upon an adequate supply of energy and an ecologically functioning planetary system. It looks as though techies have no coecern for the laws of the biosphere or thermodynamics. More colloqualiiy, they appear not to know the first thing about peak oil and our total relaince on fossil fuels and the threat of golbal warming.
Eh, no, I can’t agree there, since the energy requirements of computers and communication networks tend to be dramatically lower than the ‘real world’ alternatives (telecommuting rather than physical commuting, video conferencing rather than airline travel, delivery of weightless ebooks and music rather than the production and shipping of paper books or plastic CDs, and so on).
Jim Harrison 10.06.06 at 11:11 am
As Mao says, “Nothing develops absolutely evenly.” We may end up freezing to death in caves, but I bet we’ll have great TV’s.
Yuri Guri 10.06.06 at 12:02 pm
Not on dial-up, it won’t. Which is what most of the world will be very lucky to have by 2020.
Not necessarily. Impoverished countries that have no and/or very little infrastructure at all (Africa, etc.) can actually begin with broadband/satellite up-link instead of dial-up and jump ahead instead of going through the same evolutionary stages of the advanced countries. In fact, this is happening in many locations.
luci 10.06.06 at 4:06 pm
Impoverished countries […] can actually begin with broadband/satellite up-link instead of dial-up
I know embarrassingly little about technology, but I also thought this was the case – like cell phone use blowing up across the developing world, ahead of land lines, can’t the same be done with internet access?
John Quiggin 10.06.06 at 5:29 pm
On Lemuel’s point, what we’ve seen over the last thirty years or so is exceptionally rapid tech progress in one sector of the economy combined with very slow progress (relative to the previous 100 years or so) everywhere else. AFAIK, there’s no historical parallel to the 2^15 to 2^20 improvements we’ve seen in a range of computing technology, so anything that can be done by computers is massively cheaper and easier – anything that’s been done for a decade or so is effectively free.
But in all other respects, things have really slowed down. When was the last decent labour-saving innovation in the household, for example. I’d nominate the microwave oven.
lemuel pitkin 10.06.06 at 7:43 pm
In purely quantitative terms, you’re right — even the replacement of steamships with the telgraph improved communications speed by only, what, 2^7^. But does it matter? Computing speed in itself is neither a consumer good nor an input into any production process.
On the larger point we agree. The end to major medical breakthroughs is especially striking, given the huge investments there. It’s interesting to compare the leading causes of death in 1900, 1950 and 2000. In 1900, the top ten include tuberculosis, gastrointestinal diseases, and diphtheria — all vanished from the list by 1950. The 1950 and 2000 lists, on the other hand, are basically the same.
Martin James is right that 1850-1900 does not see such dramatic changes, but I don’t agree on space travel — the key technologies are products of the 1940s, and have advanced remarkably little in recent decades.
Has anything good been written about the significance of the slowing pace of technological change? Technology writers tend to have biases running heavily in the other direction…
Tracy W 10.08.06 at 4:03 pm
When was the last decent labour-saving innovation in the household, for example.
People are getting little vaccum cleaners that clean floors by themselves (either that or several bloggers have entered into a conspiracy to pretend that they have such vaccum cleaners.) Once they come down in price, I am definitely getting one of those.
Martin James 10.09.06 at 9:34 am
Lemuel,
If you are going to give space travel to the 1940’s, then don’t you need to given all the genetic modification we are going to do to the 1950 to 2000?
Direct ( as compared to through breeding) genetic modification of living things, including humans, is certainly a momentous technology.
lemuel pitkin 10.09.06 at 10:47 am
Fair point, Martin. If genetic modification pans out as a practical technology, this period will look different. Color me skeptical, tho — practical genetic modification to date consists of getting organisms to synthesize some new protein throughout their body. Hopes for more complex modifications rests, I think, on a misunderstanding of how genes and development actually work. I’ve just been reading Developmental Plasticity and Evolution by Mary Jane West-Eberhard — a great, great book. One point that comes home very clearly is that the notion of “genes coding for traits” is a vast simplification of the way organisms actually work. So I think a lot of the hopes for genetic modification will remain in the realm of science fiction.
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