Five Things We Need to Know About Technological Change

Technology and media critic Neil Postman gave a talk back in 1998 about the problems with technological change. The transcript can be found here.

This paragraph is a good summary of Postman's view (I've emphasized the key bits):

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.

I disagree with almost all of it, although I'd still recommend reading it because it gives an idea of where techno-sceptics are coming from.

My view is that almost all technological improvements will bring positive effects along with some negative side effects. If there were no positive effects we wouldn't adopt it in the first place. The negative side effects shouldn't be ignored but in the long term we will find ways to mitigate them, either with social, regulatory, or more technological change.

For example, let's consider the introduction of electricity. Undoubtedly electrification of homes was an incredibly positive thing; hardly any of us would want to go back to using candles for light and wood fires for heat. However early electrification of homes probably did have some negative effects. Electricity can be dangerous, and early adopters probably didn't understand its dangers well enough. But eventually we learned how to use it safely (don't drop your toaster in the bathtub), safety regulations were introduced (no exposed wiring in appliances), and technology improved (fuses). Who today would want to go back to a world without electricity?