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From: chris@com50.c2s.mn.org (Chris Johnson)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Keeping the Faith in Technology
Message-ID: <15982@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 10 Jan 91 16:23:03 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 25, Message 9 of 9


In article <15827@accuvax.nwu.edu> cyberoid@milton.u.washington.edu
(Robert Jacobson) writes:

>Technology is easier to keep faith in when one has a hand in its
>design and development.  When, as is most often the case in Western
>societies, technology is invented by large, seemingly faceless
>corporations or government agencies and foisted on the general public
>for better or worse, "faith" is an understandably rare commodity.  I
>appreciate Mr.  Lucky's optimism and self-confidence, but his examples
>of technology that "works" -- BART as a remedy for transportation
>congestion, and educational technology as a remedy for poor scholastic
>performance among students -- are insupportable.  BART has complicated
>the Bay Area transportation situation, not fixed it.  And educational
    ...
>democratic.  I am surprised that the general public is as tolerant as
>it is of we technologists' experiments with its world.

While this is straying from the topic of telecommunications, and into
the politics of technology and more, I can't sit by and let Mr.
Jacobson remain unanswered in his indictment of technologists.

First and foremost, it might be that techonology is invented by
seemingly faceless corporations and technologists within, but it is
the business end of such organizations that "foist" those products
upon the public.  In other words, the fact that every community has a
video-rental store as a "result" of the invention of the VCR, or that
Compact Disks have virtually eliminated the vinyl LP, has a lot less
to do with the invention of the technology and a lot more to do with
marketing, advertising, and business ideas for making money in
general.  

If record companies did not see a great potential profit to be made,
and did not push the Compact Disk in the market place, you can bet it
would be relegated to the rare ranks of the high-end audio
affecionado.  For example, just where is Digital Audio Tape (DAT)
these days?  It's invented.  It works.  You can even buy it!  But the
record companies are all opposed to it because they are greedy and
can't see a way to make a good profit from it.  As a result, it's a
pretty rare thing.  I have two compact disk players.  I have zero DAT
decks.

This only reinforces the idea that technological innovations are only
tools, and it's the use to which they are put which makes all the
difference.

I also take issue with Mr. Jacobson's remarks about such things as
BART.  He claims it complicates the Bay Area transportation situation.
Perhaps.  But if BART disappeared tomorrow, the transportation
situation would be a whole hell of a lot more complicated.  It has a
huge daily ridership.  And from my experience, the Bay Area has one of
the better mass-transit systems in the country, precisely because of
the integration and variety of types: busses, trains, and BART.

I'm not as aware of the circumstances in Washington D.C. (having left
that area just before the Metro opened), but everything I've ever
heard about the system there was praise of the highest sort, even from
people who were regular riders of other subway systems in the U.S. and
even abroad.

It's also my opinion that Mr. Jacobson's remarks about educational
uses of technology are taking problems out of their context.  The
educational institutions of this country have a lot problems, and most
of them are sociological in nature and very interrelated.  Whether or
not technology will be able to help solve those problems in a dramatic
way, versus in a minor way (which I am sure they will) is yet to be
seen.  Lack of use of available technology in schools hardly points to
a fault in the technology itself, however.

I'd say a pretty strong case could be made that we have one of the
best telephone systems in the world, also because of the technology
that built it.

Perhaps Mr. Jacobson is not as much a luddite as my response is making
him sound.  But I want to bring the focus on technology issues to
where the decisions should be and are presently being made as to
whether the new inventions bring the society good.  Those places are
political (public policies, eg. do we want to encourage nationwide
networks?) and business (marketing and selling, eg. how can we use
this new invention to make money, versus how will selling this new
invention affect society?).  Technologists frequently have ideas in
mind for uses of their inventions that are nothing like how the
general public ends up seeing them.  Should technologists stop
creating new things unless they have that control?  Or just stop in
general, for fear they may be misused or have adverse affects
(particulary since the societal affects are impossible to predict)?

I don't think so.


   ...Chris Johnson          chris@c2s.mn.org   ..uunet!bungia!com50!chris
 Com Squared Systems, Inc.   St. Paul, MN USA   +1 612 452 9522