Technology Review, straw in the wind

First Google alerts, now Technology Review. The August issue of TR (the "Summer 'o Fun" issue) is going to be about the social implications of new technologies. TR's Jason Pontin explains why this is significant:

Technology Review hasn't written about the social impact of technologies so much... [because] our subject is emerging technologies - and until recently, emerging technologies were mostly purchased by corporations and governments. The reasons for this are simple enough. Emerging technologies constituted an extraordinary capital investment, one well beyond the means of most people in their private capacities. Nor did most people see the need to experiment with really novel technologies. Personal computers, mobile phones, information networks - they all appeared first in commercial or governmental settings.

But this is changing: the spread of cheap laptops, handheld devices, affordable broadband access, WiFi, and a dozen other consumer technologies have led to a wonderful explosion of new, social technologies. Prominent among them is what we are calling continuous computing. I suspect that Technology Review will be writing about the impact of new technologies on ordinary society much more frequently.

A very interesting argument.

Is there a downside to the democratization of emerging technologies, I wonder? Our reflex around the Institute-- a place steeped in Silicon Valley appreciation for innovation, combined with lots of reading of science studies, Prahalad, Eric von Hippel,etc.-- is that it's Obviously A Good Thing. But other than the specific bad applications you can find for these-- or any-- technology, is there an argument that the Old Days Were Better?

[props to Sean for the link]

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Comments

[Peter]

I could actually imagine a few downsides here. (a side-note: I actually would riff a bit on the changes in futures markets from open outcry to automated trading - there, the assumption is that newer+faster=better, but it's not entirely clear that's the case in practice). But what you have in mind with your link to TR has to do with the cheap availability of new tech, I think.

So, the problem with cheap and easy (that is, social) technology comes when it is a displacing technology. Google has revolutionized search, but I actually think it makes my undergraduates just god-awful at doing research. They've outsourced their ability to find out stuff to google, so either it is very very easy, or it's impossible. If they want to find out information on a source of literature, or on actual events, they have a hard time doing so.

The irony is that it actually appears as if they are more sophisticated, better at learning, better at finding and mobilizing information. But that only is the case insofar as Google (and others) are on the case. Where google breaks down, it leaves my undergrads pretty helpless.