The Impact of Technology on Society The Origins of Man to Present Day

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The Impact of Technology on SocietyThe Origins
of Man to Present Day

• Dr. David Gibbs
• Department of Computing and New Media
  Technologies
• University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point
• Stevens Point, WI 54481
• David.Gibbs_at_uwsp.edu

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Dr. David GibbsFulbright Fellow 2008University
of Wisconsin-Stevens PointWisconsin, USA

• Dr. David Gibbs
• Department of Computing and New Media
  Technologies
• University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point
• Stevens Point, WI 54481
• David.Gibbs_at_uwsp.edu

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Wisconsin, USA
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Stevens Point, Wisconsin
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Wisconsin Facts

• Population 5,648,124 (2007) (20th)
• Land Area 65,503 sq mi. (23rd)
• Statehood 1848
• First explored 1634 (French, Jean Nicolet)
• Main industries
• Agriculture (milk, cheese, peas, potatoes, beans)
• Industry (paper, machinery, autos)
• Service (insurance, medical, higher education)
• Over 14,000 lakes

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University of Wisconsin Stevens Point

• Established 1894
• Enrollment 8600 combined grad/undergrad
• Comprehensive programs
• Largest major fields of study
• Education
• Natural Resources
• Biology
• Computing

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University of Wisconsin System
26 Campuses 2 Doctoral Institutions 11
Comprehensive 13 Two Year Universities approximat
ely 160,000 students
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Wisconsin Technical College System
16 Districts Blackhawk Chippewa Valley Fox
Valley Gateway Lakeshore Madison
Area Mid-State Milwaukee Area Moraine
Park Nicolet Area Northcentral Northeast
Wisconsin Southwest Wisconsin Waukesha
County Western Wisconsin Indianhead
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About Dr. Gibbs

• Raised on a farm? in rural Wisconsin
• Undergraduate degree in Mathematics, Physical
  Sciences
• Masters Degree in Computer Science
• Ph.D. In Educational Technology
• Teaching Experience
• 2 years secondary school
• 27 years university

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My Family
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Impact of Technology

• Interaction of humans and their
  tools/technologies
• Origins to present
• Present to 2047

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Influences

• Neil Postman
• Technopoly The Surrender of Culture to
  Technology (1993)
• Ray Kurzweil
• The Singularity is Near When Humans Transcend
  Biology (2005)
• Life in America (1955 2008)
• convenience, immediate gratification, pleasure
  seeking, the disappearance of childhood, stay
  young at all costs, quarterly stock earnings
  reports, maxim of efficiency

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Neil Postman

• 1931-2003
• NYU Professor of Communications, media theorist,
  and cultural critic
• 18 books, 200 articles

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Technopoly The Surrender of Culture to
Technology
Author Neil Postman Published in 1993
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Postmans Writings

• Television and the Teaching of English (1961).
• Linguistics A Revolution in Teaching with
  Charles Weingartner (Dell Publishing, 1966).
• Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1969) with
  Charles Weingartner.
• Teaching as a Conserving Activity (1979).
• The Disappearance of Childhood (1982).
• Amusing Ourselves to Death Public Discourse in
  the Age of Show Business (1985).
• Conscientious Objections Stirring Up Trouble
  About Language, Technology and Education (1988).
• Technopoly The Surrender of Culture to
  Technology (1992).
• The End of Education Redefining the Value of
  School (1995).
• Building a Bridge to the 18th Century How the
  Past Can Improve Our Future (1999).

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Technopoly The Surrender of Culture to
Technology

• Technopoly
• Postman coined the term in part because no term
  existed
• Culture
• Patterns of human activity and the symbolic
  structures that give such activity significance.

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Technopoly The Surrender of Culture to
Technology

• Legend of Thamus
• from Platos Phaedrus (a dialog between Socrates
  and Phaedrus)
• King Thamus entertaining Theuth, the inventor of
  numbers, calculation, geometry, astronomy, and
  writing.

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Theuth, to Thamus

• Theuth, the inventor, to the King, on his
  invention of writing
• Here is an accomplishment, my lord the king,
  which will improve both the wisdom and the memory
  of the Egyptians. I have discovered a sure
  receipt for memory and wisdom.

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Thamus, to Theuth

• King Thamus, on Theuths writing
• Theuth, my paragon of inventors, the discoverer
  of an art is not the best judge of the good or
  harm which will accrue to those who practice it.
  So it is in this you, who are the father of
  writing, have out of fondness for your off-spring
  attributed to it quite the opposite of its real
  function. Those who acquire it will cease to
  exercise their memory and become forgetful they
  will rely on writing to bring things to their
  remembrance by external signs instead of by their
  own internal resources.

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What will be the impact of writing?

• King Thamus, on Theuths writing continued
• What you have discovered is a receipt for
  recollection, not for memory. And as for wisdom,
  your pupils will have the reputation for it
  without the reality they will receive a
  quantity of information without proper
  instruction, and in consequence be thought very
  knowledgeable when they are for the most part
  quite ignorant. And because they are filled with
  the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom they
  will be a burden to society.

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What are the lessons of Theuth Thamos?

• Cultures negotiate with technology technology
  "giveth" and technology "taketh away.
• It is a mistake to suppose that any technological
  innovation has a one-sided effect. Every
  technology is both a burden and a blessing at
  once.

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What are the lessons of Theuth Thamos?

• Technologies create new definitions of old terms,
  and this process takes place without our being
  fully conscious of it. (memory, wisdom)
• There will always be "winners" and "losers" as
  the result of a new technology.

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What are the lessons of Theuth Thamos?

• Technologies create experts, those with
  mastery.
• Those who have control over the workings of a
  particular technology accumulate power.
• There will always be "winners" and "losers" as
  the result of a new technology.
• At the start of a technological journey, you
  can't simply conspire to be a winner.

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What are the lessons of Theuth Thamos?

• New technologies compete with old ones - for
  time, for attention, for money, for prestige, but
  mostly for dominance of their world-view.
• Technological change is neither additive nor
  subtractive. It is ecological.

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Writing as a Technology

• Why does Postman begin his book with this story?
• Why do I begin this talk with it?
• What does this have to do with any new technology
  today?

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Legend of Thamus

• Thamus was right but only half-right, as was
  Theuth
• Writing is not just a burden it is both and
  at the same time a burden and a blessing.

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Social Aspects of Technology Course

• First written assignment
• entitled Benefits and Harms of Technology
• technology as broadly defined in the assignment
• 6 technologies
• 3 positive, or beneficial
• 3 negative, or harmful
• Oral presentation and defense of those
  technologies in class
• Examples cell phones, television, i-pods,
  nuclear power

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Technology is non-neutral

• ALL technologies bring blessings and burdens.
• CHALLENGE find a technology that is either ALL
  good or ALL bad.
• REALIZATION you cant choose to use a technology
  only for good (or bad)
• MYTH It all depends upon how you use it

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With apologies to Clint Eastwood

• Regarding Technology, NOT the Good and Bad, BUT
• The Good AND Bad, and the potentially Ugly

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Technopoly The Surrender of Culture to
Technology

• A Taxonomy of Culture
• a timeline describing the intersection of
  Tools/Technology and Culture
• Tool-Using rocks, fire, to 1770s
• Technocracy 1770s to 1910
• Technopoly 1910 to present (i.e. 1993)

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The Taxonomy stage 1

• A Tool-Using Culture (rocks, fire, to 1770s)
• Tools either
• solved the immediate problems of physical life,
  such as
• water power, windmills, plow
• served the symbolic world of art, religion,
  politics
• cathedrals, castles

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The Taxonomy stage 2

• Technocracy (1770s to early 1900s)
• A society loosely controlled by social custom and
  religious tradition
• Tools moving Europe from a tool-using culture to
  technocracy
• Clock
• Printing press
• Telescope
• Origins of the scientific method

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The Taxonomy stage 2, contd

• Technocracy
• Began in late 1700s
• 1765 James Watt, steam engine
• 1776, as defined by Adam Smith in Wealth of
  Nations
• Roughly corresponds to the Industrial Revolution
• Communications Revolution began
• Books (now affordable/available), telegraph,
  typewriter, transatlantic cable, photography
• Life began to speed up

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The Taxonomy stage 3

• Technopoly (early 1900s present i.e. 1993)
• The submission of all forms of cultural life to
  the sovereignty of technique and technology.
• Began in early 1900s. When?
• Henry Fords model T (Huxley 632 AF) ?
• 1925 Scopes monkey trial ?
• 1910 Frederick Taylor, Scientific Management
  EFFICIENCY maxims applied to the Interstate
  Commerce Commission hearings between the Railroad
  and Labor force

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The Principles of Scientific Management by
Frederick Taylor

1. the goal of human labor and thought is
   efficiency
2. technical calculation is superior to human
   judgment
3. human judgment cannot be trusted (plagued by
   laxity, ambiguity, unnecessary complexity)

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The Principles of Scientific Management by
Frederick Taylor

1. subjectivity is an obstacle to clear thinking
2. what cannot be measured either does not exist or
   is of no value
3. the affairs of citizens are best guided and
   conducted by experts

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Why did Technopoly prosper in America?

• The American character.
• The genius and audacity of American capitalists
  (to say nothing for the resources available which
  they might exploit).
• Morse, Bell, Edison, Rockefeller, Astor, Ford,
  Carnegie

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Why did Technopoly prosper in America? (contd)

• The success of twentieth century technology in
  providing convenience, comfort, speed, hygiene
  and abundance.
• "To every Old World belief, habit or tradition
  there was and still is a technological
  alternative
• to prayer, the alternative is penicillin
• to family roots, the alternative is mobility
• to reading, the alternative is television
• to restraint, immediate gratification
• to sin, psychotherapy

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Definition of Technopoly

• A Technopoly is a society that believes that "the
  primary, if not the only, goal of human labor and
  thought is efficiency, that technical calculation
  is in all respects superior to human judgment ...
  and that the affairs of citizens are best guided
  and conducted by experts." (p. 43)
• In 1993, Technopoly existed primarily in America.
  
• Where does it exist today?

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Taxonomic Stages of the Interaction of Culture
and Technology

• To summarize
• Tool-using
• Technology is integrated into the culture
• Technocracy
• Technology attacks the culture
• Technopoly
• Technology becomes the culture and efficiency
  is the paramount goal

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Provocations

• We make our tools and forever after they shape
  us. Marshall McLuhan
• The medium is the message. McLuhan
• Men have become the tools of their tools.
  Henry David Thoreau

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Truisms(Wordnet an obvious truth)

1. To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a
   nail.
2. To a man with a pencil, everything looks like a
   list.
3. To a man with a camera, everything looks like an
   image.
4. To a man with a computer, everything looks like
   data.
5. To a man with a grade sheet, everything looks
   like a number.
6. To a man with the scientific method, everything
   is solvable by science or engineering.

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An Observation

• Each technological advance increases the
  efficiency of its predecessor. (Thats why its
  accepted as an advance.)
• NOTE that the scientific method is itself an
  improvement in efficiency over its
  predecessor(s).
• NOTE that natural selection takes place between
  competing technologies.

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Gibbsian Truism

• Technology serves to distance people.
• Warfare fists, rocks, spears, arrows, guns,
  cannons, chemical warfare, airborne bombs,
  missiles, biological agents. NOW air drones,
  robots as proxy battlefield soldiers, ABMs fired
  from the other side of the world.

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Gibbsian Truism

• Technology serves to distance people, 2nd
  example.
• Communications between humans gestures, spoken
  language, smoke signals, glyphs, cursive writing,
  printing press, telegraphy, radio, telephone,
  television. NOW Internet (email, blogs, text
  messages), chats, virtual worlds (2nd Life).
  SOON total VR immersion

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Gibbsian Truism

• What technology makes easy to do, we tend to do.
• (A corollary of a law of human nature known as
  the path of least resistance.)

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Creation of Because-You-Can

• TAKE the truism
• What technology makes easy we tend to do
• ADD
• Capitalist zeal, replete with marketing
• AND YOU GET
• Because You Can Technologies (BYC)

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What is a (BYC)? Because-You-Can

• When the only possible answer to the question
• Why would they create that?
• is
• Because you can!
• you have identified a BYC.

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BYC Examples

• Screaming monkey phone call
• Gene bank your pet only 1500
• No tears onions
• Segway

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What typifies Technopoly?

• These phenomena typify Technopoly
• Information overload
• Scientism
• creation of expertise
• and a result
• the disappearance of childhood

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The Information Revolution leads to Information
Overload

1. Printing press Gutenberg 1450
2. Telegraph Morse, 1844 (U.S.)
3. Photograph Herschel and Daguerre, 1840s
4. Broadcasting radio 1920s, TV 1950s
5. Personal computer 1980s
6. Internet, WWW 1990sgtgt volume, speed, cost,
   multiple formats

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sipping from a fire hose

• What techniques do you use to manage information
  and info tools?
• mandatory quiet periods? (devices turned off?)
• Take a day off, e.g. Sunday?

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towards Scientism

• Technopoly values efficiency, information,
  predictability, and reliability.
• The scientific method was developed via the
  discovery of natural law, i.e. "nature's laws".
• The combination of the two applied to social or
  human situations is "Scientism."
• What is problematic about this?

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Scientism

• Social scientists believe that the study of human
  behavior, when conducted according to the
  rigorous principles established by the physical
  and biological sciences, will produce objective
  facts, testable theories, and profound
  understandings of the human condition.
• Examples

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The Disappearance of Childhood

• Childhood was socially constructed, as a result
  of the printing press
• In the middle ages humans became adults at 6 or
  7 (when they could speak)
• Starting with the reformation literacy
• Books gt reading writing gt schools curriculum
  gt school children
• A new class of human, with special status and
  protections from all things adult.

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The Disappearance of Childhood, contd.

• Childhood is disappearing, as a result of mass
  media primarily television
• TV is non-linguistic primarily de-coding images
  (turn off the volume some time)
• Requires no skills and develops no skills
• Unrestricted access, liberal doses of all things,
  including those thought of as adult
• Erases the dividing line between children and
  adults

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Observations in support of The Disappearance of
Childhood

• Apparel
• Sports recreation
• Emphasis on youth culture (for adults)
• Emphasis on being older (for youth)
• Social statistics of adult behaviors of children

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Regarding the graphical predominance of modern
mass media

• TV, movies text is dead
• The early Internet text is not dead
• txt msgs o ys it is
• The more recent Internet If its not dead, its
  co-existing.
• Speaking computers (in monotone) Yes, text is
  dead.

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Technology and Malta

• Education
• Health Care
• Government
• Information Access
• Commerce

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Technology and Educationin Malta

• Times of Malta February 15, 2008
• Talking point Great Teachers

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Technology and Health Carein Malta
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Technology and Governmentin Malta
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Technology and Commercein Malta
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RFID ChipsRadio-frequency-identification

• Components
• Chip (with unique ID)
• Antenna
• Reader

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RFID chips (syn tags, transponders)

• Passive Tags
• No internal power source
• Activated by a reader
• Active Tags
• Contain a battery, thus larger
• Used in electronic toll gathering (right),
  parking lots

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Parking Lot with RFID
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Whats on the chip?

• EPC electronic product code
• EPC and RFID
• 96 bit code i.e. 296, or 7.92 x 1028 unique ids
• How BIG a number is 1028?

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ASIDE How BIG a number is 1028?

• Innumeracy is rampant in America
• Estimation is a forgotten skill
• Understanding probabilities nonexistent
• Excessive exposure to big (or small) numbers
  results in numbness, apathy
• David Beckham contract with LA Galaxy
• 130m
• U.S. population
• just over 300 million
• U.S. national budget, proposed, Feb. 4, 2008
• 3.1 trillion, or 3.1 x 1012

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More big numbers

• U.S. National Debt
• Over 9 trillion and increasing 1.5bn per day
• Number of days a human lives (on average)
• 28,105 (77 years X 365 days)

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How BIG a number is 1028?

• There are 7.5 x 1018 grains of sand on earth
  (according to Howard C. McAllister, University of
  Hawaii) http//www.hawaii.edu/suremath/jsand.
  html
• How many things can be tagged with 1028 unique
  ids?
• Everything? Clearly, some folks think so
• The Internet of Things

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Early applications of RFID

• automatic highway toll collection
• supply-chain management (for large retailers)
• pharmaceuticals (for the prevention of
  counterfeiting 46bn annual losses)
• e-health (for patient monitoring)

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RFID anywhere, everywhere

• More recent applications
• sports and leisure (ski passes)
• tracking cattle (carcasses)
• personal security (tagging children at schools)
• access to bars like the Baja Beach Club in
  Barcelona
• military ID (dog-tags, etc.)
• login to your computer! (at right)

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RFID in public private sectors

• RFID in E-government
• drivers licenses
• passports (immediately hacked in the U.K.,
  where 3m were issued)
• currency
• RFID readers are now being embedded in mobile
  phones
• Nokia, released RFID-enabled phones for
  businesses with workforces in the field in
  mid-2004
• launched consumer handsets in 2006.

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RFID trackingvaluable assets

• Pets www.homeagain.com
• Livestock www.digitalangel.com
• Vehicles www.saco.co.za
• Ore (ore?) www.saco.co.za
• Asset Tracking www.saco.co.za
• Man Tracking www.saco.co.za

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RFID and humans

• Kevin Warwick, University of Reading professor
  and self-proclaimed first cyborg
• Chip planting for fun (opening doors) oops
  also for profit
• Chipping as a serious business
• Senior citizens
• Infants

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The movement needs leaders

• Tommy Thompson, former Bush cabinet member
  (former Wisconsin governor), member of the board
  of Applied Digital to get chipped (July 2005)
• No he wont (December 2005)
• Legislation passed by his former state (June 2006)

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Retail Purchases?

• Put items in your cart
• Walk out!
• (provided you have an RFID yourself embedded or
  otherwise)
• And he causeth all, both small and great, rich
  and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in
  their right hand, or in their foreheads.
• And that no man might buy or sell, save he that
  had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the
  number of his name. Rev 13 16-17

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RFID

• Good
• Market-supply management
• Simplifies some pressures (toll booths, secure
  passage, queues in checkout lines)
• Bad
• Big-brother, done to ourselves by ourselves
  (what technology makes easy to do we tend to do)
• Ugly?
• What uses havent we even thought of?

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Summary of the Age of Technopoly

• Taxonomy
• Tool-using (integrate)
• Technocracy (attack)
• Technopoly (become)
• Efficiency is paramount
• Scientific method is a belief system
• Subordination of human thought to expert and
  machine decisions

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Discussion Questions

• Let us accept Postman's taxonomy, if only for the
  sake of this question, in which cultures have
  moved from tool-users to technocracy to
  Technopoly.
• What do you see as the next phase?
• What elements of Technopoly will be strengthened?
  Weakened?
• What will be a defining characteristic of the
  next phase?

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What to do, what to do?

• Reverse the truisms in your own life
• Stop distancing people (HOW??)
• Dont always do what technology makes easy to do
  (DIFFICULT!!)
• Remember the human what do you value? In
  daily life? In others?
• Remember the sacred theres a reason those
  belief systems have been around for millennia

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What to do? Postmans version

• "A resistance fighter understands that technology
  must never be accepted as part of the natural
  order of things, that every technology - from an
  IQ test to an automobile to a television set to a
  computer - is a product of a particular economic
  and political context and carries with it a
  program, an agenda, and a philosophy that may or
  may not be life enhancing and that therefore
  require scrutiny, criticism, and control."

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Next Presentation March 5The Impact of
Technology on Society Present Day to 2047 and
Beyond

• 2047? Why 2047?
• The projected date of the Singularity.
• a future period during which the pace of
  technological change will be so rapid, its impact
  so deep, that human life will be irreversibly
  transformed.

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To the Singularity

• Three technologies in succession, Genetics (G),
  Nanotechnology (N), and Robotics (R), forming the
  GNR revolution will pave the path to the
  Singularity.
• The Singularity will represent the culmination
  of the merger of our biological thinking and
  existence with our technology, resulting in a
  world that is still human but that transcends our
  biological roots.

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To the Singularity, contd.

• The Singularity will allow us to transcend the
  limitations of our biological bodies and brains.
  We will gain power over our fates. Our mortality
  will be in our own hands. We will be able to
  live as long as we want (a subtly different
  statement from saying we will live forever).