Technologists are always portrayed as future-oriented, on the cutting edge of the major questions of the age. But if we examine this ubiquitous representation of the "innovative" and "disruptive" world of technology, this characterization couldn't be much further from the truth. These fields are on the cutting edge of making money and selling you something, but not much else.
Notice how the power of technological innovation is always described not in terms of potency but of potential. It's always the future of technology that will revolutionize the world. But just how revolutionized have we been?
Sure, the landscape looks a lot different today than it did 100 years ago. We've seen changes and innovations commensurate with what one might expect of 100 years' worth of human existence. But is it truly "revolutionary" to have quicker and more efficient ways of encountering the same old human problems? Even something as breathtakingly consequential as the domestication of electricity, something that today none of us could imagine our lives without, has solved only minor problems in the grander scheme of human development: has electricity decreased poverty or helped enable it? Has it eliminated warfare and sectarian difference, or has it helped us develop new tools with which to battle out our differences?
I recognize that I'm pushing it here; I'm not a luddite, and I'm not anti-electricity. I'm not anti-technology or anti-innovation. What I am is skeptical of the grandest claims of technofuturism: the idea that it's technologists who are on the cutting edge of solving the world's major problems.
This grand claim of technofuturism suffers from a major fallacy: the idea that facts can do things.
In my circle of educated liberals, I'm continually perplexed by how perplexed others are that data and facts can't change people's minds. Every so often we'll see a scientist writing with self-righteous indignation about how despite overwhelming scientific evidence of man-made climate change, all these ideological morons (that's what they mean, though they don't write it this honestly) still won't get on board. The same goes for articles making the same claim about religion: if only these Bible-thumping mouth-breathers could wake up to the facts, they'd abandon their stupid religion. Almost laughably (if it weren't so sad), the same people making these complaints double down on their faith in the transformative power of facts, citing more research on why people aren't moved by fact. Their next il/logical step is to try to find ways to better understand why people don't respond as readily to facts, in hope of one day being able to move the earth and transform human kind simply by saying 'this is the case' (which sounds strikingly similar to 'this is the word of god'). The reporting of such research on why people don't respond to facts as scientists wish they would is presented as itself a scientific discovery, as opposed to a small piece of sound reasoning. Everywhere self-righteous people who are also intelligent fail to understand why facts themselves are incapable of changing people's minds.
I don't think it's a revolutionary insight to understand why this is obviously the case. Knowing that climate change is man-made doesn't answer the very important questions of what values underlie a decision to do something about it versus not, and what policies we should implement to recognize such value conflicts. Likewise, if someone has chosen to have faith in something unknowable as a way of structuring their life, there's not a single scientific determination or technological development that is or ever will be that will change that person's mind on fact alone. The only way anyone could delude themselves into thinking the contrary would be if they believed, as a person of faith, so strongly in the ultimate transformative power of facts and technology that they've beome blind to the obvious.
These fundamental questions of faith, values, ethics, governance, and coexistence are old problems that facts and technology can assist in solving, but can never solve alone. They're problems that have not been "revolutionized" by any technological development, but certainly disrupted and complicated by technological developments. And the people on the cutting edge of these kinds of questions simply aren't scientists and technologists.
If it were the techno-optimists and factmongers on the cutting edge of these problems, they'd be working on something other than, primarily, ways to make money on consumer goods, or ways to blow shit up or protect us against getting our shit blown up. They'd be building me something I've always wanted: my ethics robot.
See, once these cutting-edge geniuses trained their efforts on one of the world's most fundamental problems, they could build me a robot that always knows the right thing to do, simultaneously in any context (universal) but also in every specific context (historical). By bringing my ethics robot to Washington, I could begin using the robot to solve all the world's problems. Do we intervene in Syria, ethics robot? Should abortion be legal, ethics robot? Should we spend more money on penis pill R&D or on food technologies for the food-insecure, ethics robot? What should we do about climate change, ethics robot? Is religion good, ethics robot? Am I a good person, ethics robot?
I mean, if these ultra-visionary technogeniuses can make me an app that tracks my sleep rhythms by listening to my breathing and wakes me up at the right time, or a tv that knows what I want to watch, or telescope that shows me galaxies lightyears away, surely they can solve once and for all time the simple question of what's the right thing to do?
No? Oh well then.
