Technology, our tools, not our answers [second draft]

During the second seminar of the Bigger Picture project, we were in a discussion that regarded Angela Saini's keynote lecture about "The Technological Fix". In her talk, she claims how today we place a great deal of blind faith into technology, and that we seem to take in the illusion that what science offers is the truth, and that through development of technology we will solve all our problems. She argues that this isn't the case, and that we must be cautious of developments in the scientific world. She held a very good attitude about how we must treat every new discovery with a great deal of circumspection until proven otherwise.

Many people in the room seemed to be in disagreement with her cautious optimism. The tutor especially appeared to rile up and drive forward the belief that technology today is perhaps causing more harm than we suspect; the room started to snowball with a one-sided overview of how we're losing touch with each other, or losing the human hand in the many processes of today. This made me think about how we are all connected to technology: Is it possible to separate the human from the technology?

Technology is one of the reasons we are so successful as a species, for when we feel we do not have the ability to do something, we create a solution: We create an axe to chop down a tree because we don't have the teeth to chew through one. Tools as we typically see them are physical extensions, from the hammer, to the use of trains, but extensively we are seeing advancements in tools that create mental extensions of ourselves, from the book to the internet.

It was much to my dismay that the many students who were criticising technology only focussed on the potential negative impacts - no, we don't know if this reliance of technology will have a very negative effect, but I feel that this is a form of cowardice that is stagnating our progress as a species. I will reason that it is down to the speed with which we are developing these technologies that we don't have time to understand and pinpoint what troubles could lie ahead, and that there is a risk that our poking and pricking of things we don't understand could destroy us, but as Saini argues, it is through these botched attempts that we make progress of some kind. Without this bravery, we will end up shunning anything with great potential, for the fear of losing what we already have and are comfortable with.

However, at the same time, we can't give into blind faith that in order to fix our problems we have to invent a solution. There is a consensus that we need to achieve a balance and compromise that does not risk the destruction of the world, but at the same time, does not hinder our progress to improve things - the worry of using technology as a quick fix, which invariably ends up causing more problems, but through these problems we find solutions.

Currently, I see that the problems we are still facing is being distracted by a misunderstanding of new technologies, and that we avoid tackling the root of the problem by creating other problems. Technology is not to blame - it is inherently a neutral thing - it is down to how that technology is applied, and so far, we only have ourselves to blame.







How is technology connected to humans?

Should we be so paralysed with new solutions that do not have an apparant danger.
- but do we need this solution when we should spend the time to fix the root of the problem.

The worry that we see technology as a quick fix - rather than changing the actual problem

Tackle the root of the problem - individualism, brought on by the way the capitalistic economy is structured. The sense of entitlement.