Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.csd.uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!nanotech From: brucec@demiurge.wv.tek.com (Bruce Cohen;685-2439;61-028) Newsgroups: sci.nanotech Subject: Re: Utility Fog (Really: predicting technological effects) Message-ID: Date: 8 Sep 89 02:01:00 GMT Sender: nanotech@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Wilsonville, OR Lines: 51 Approved: nanotech@aramis.rutgers.edu In article JoSH writes: > >[I would go so far as to say that "we" have virtually never correctly > anticipated the effects of a major technological innovation, indeed > our hindsight as to the effects of accomplished innovations isn't > even very good. My feeling is, we have a pretty good record in > understanding and controlling physical developments, as far as their > effect on the physical environment is concerned. I have no great qualms > about continuing to develop along those lines at a relatively unrestrained > pace. > The technology we do not understand, and that is modifying our world > far faster and more drastically, is ideas/information/social. We do > not know whether a society is stable in the long run with television, > for example... We have a hell of a lot slimmer chance of "anticipating > the results of such moves" as a hypertext publishing medium than of > playing with the grass. I don't agree: I think the problems are equally complex, and equally hard to solve. We can anticipate physical developments when the cause/effect relationships are straightforward; we're terrible at it when the systems have complex feedback loops. Consider: the argument over the Gaia hypothesis is currently centered around the question of whether some hypoothesized feedback loops even exist; forget about the question of their quantitative attributes. How can you predict a system whose composition you don't know? Biological evolution has produced a complex web of interrelationships whose nature we are only just discovering; we certainly don't have any consistent, detailed models of the kind which allow prediction. And just as in the prediction of social systems, it's often the completely unexpected tertiary effects which cause the most perturbation. In the social system, a classic example is the effect of the automobile on courtship customs and the (possibly) consequent decline of the extended family (I don't have a reference for this theory, but I've heard it often enough that I suspect a lot of people believe it. Does anyone know if it is still in vogue in sociology circles?). In the biological/ecological system, a good example is the, at first parasitic, then symbiotic relationship between certain microbes and the primitive ancestors of the eukaryotes, which resulted in giant cells capable of evolving into multi-cellular organisms and colonizing large parts of Earth which were hostile to the individual partners of the symbiosis. > --JoSH] "Small men in padded bras don't look the same falling from high places." - R.A. MacAvoy, "The Third Eagle" Bruce Cohen brucec@orca.wv.tek.com Interactive Technologies Division, Tektronix, Inc. M/S 61-028, P.O. Box 1000, Wilsonville, OR 97070