Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!mintaka!olivea!samsung!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ncar!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!casbah.acns.nwu.edu!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Keeping the Faith in Technology Message-ID: <15820@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 6 Jan 91 08:41:20 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Organization: TELECOM Digest Lines: 104 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 10, Message 4 of 4 [Moderator's Note: Robert W. Lucky is executive director of the research communication science division at AT&T / Bell Labs and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He recently gave a speech before the academy, and I thought you would enjoy sharing some excerpts from that speech in this issue of the Digest. PAT] ------------------- Feeling overloaded? Many of us are, and not only from eating too much at holiday parties. Fax machines, cellular telephones, electronic mail, voice mail, telephone answering machines, phones in airplanes, pagers and other devices have us drowning in messages and phone calls. Computers bombard our lives with more information than we can absorb. Listen to the groan of people as they program their VCRs or read best-sellers like "Everything I Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten," and one sees this anxiety about the stress of modern life. Complexity is a fundamental residue of the Information Age, and it is rising steadily -- in technology, business, social systems and the daily rituals of life. It is a trend that deserves more serious attention. The telephone network was easily understandable and manageable only a decade ago. Now it has slipped beyond the comprehension of any single person. The collapse of a significant portion of the AT&T network a year ago underlined the vulnerability mired in this complexity. Other large interconnected systems are found in transportation, the air traffic control system, and the military. Computers that contribute to these systems also provide tools to control them, but one of the most important problems of our time is whether we as human beings can manage such extraordinary complexity successfully. As an engineer who has helped develop the technologies of the Information Age, I believe that our species is up to the task of managing even a bewildering level of complexity. That is an optimistic view, and an experience I had recently made me painfully aware of how out of touch it may be with that of other Americans. I appeared as a guest on a television talk show about the future. After speaking glibly about a world made more pleasant by robots, high-definition television and the like, I was roundly criticized by the other guests, who insisted that the world's prospects are bleak. The environmentalist on the show was strident in his recitation of statistics on pollution. The educator spoke of the decline of literacy. The economist talked about global starvation, and the former police officer sitting beside me on the sofa warned of the inevitability of drugs and crime. When I held to my viewpoint that technology would make the world better, the others looked at me with scorn. What does a technologist know about such things? That's a reasonable question for Americans to ask of people like me, since we produced this technology and have a dubious record of predicting its impact. Few of the engineers who developed the videocassette recorder imagined that every town today would have a video retail store. The inventors of optical disks concentrated on video applications, never guessing that compact audio discs would displace vinyl records. So techology produces complexity and is unpredictable, yet engineers like myself remain optimistic about its application. As a consequence, we make progress where none is expected. Unaware that cities are a hopeless cause, we design successful urban transportation systems like BART in San Fransisco or the Washington Metro. Oblivious to the hopelessness of the educational crisis, we pursue technological aids to education. This single-minded pursuit of solutions may be hopelessly naive for the world of the future, and there's no question technology can produce bad outcomes as well as good ones. But I think most Americans would be better off if they shared our approach of viewing technology as an ally in a world of creeping complexity rather than as the enemy. Technology and simplicity are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I believe technology increasingly will free us to focus on matters more worthy of our human intellect, producing a world in which art, religion, music and philosophy coexist with amazing technical advances. Technological products are only tools, and they can be used to make life less, as well as more stressful. The real solution to our frazzled lives lies not with rejecting technology but with harnessing it in new ways to manage information overload, quiet the beepers and calm our nerves. We need to retain faith -- not so much in technology as in our own power as human beings to make it work for ourselves. -------------- [Moderator's Note: My thanks to Mr. Lucky for sharing his thoughts with the National Academy of Engineering, and for permitting excerpts to be presented in this forum. There is very little I can add except to stress his final words: Keep having faith, keeping looking forward to the future. Telecom is not what it used to be, even a decade ago when this Digest first began publication. Who among you who are long time readers here anticipated what we see around us today? Who among you can tell us accurately about the year 2000? As Moderator of the Digest, I find it extremely difficult to keep up with all the changes in telecom -- and I should be keeping up. But it is hard. Keep the faith, keep looking forward to the solutions and understanding -- or would you say wisdom? -- we'll need in this new decade. PAT]