This started out, a few years
ago, as a retiree's research project. Over several years, my research
began to show me that our technical discoveries have created so many
different categories of technologies that I find it very confusing
to pick a time, place or product that started us on our way to
today's almost universally controlled computer programmed world.
Finding
my way through a myriad of discoveries is not an easy chore. There
were many "beginnings" with many of them happening at the
same time but in a different place under different circumstances. How
do I determine which one is more important? Or, if two discoveries
happened simultaneously, does this create two distinct paths that
technology will take? If so, again, which one is more important? How
should they be recorded in history? Which discovery had the most
influence on our society and Culture?
In
school I was taught that the main challenge for writers is to have an
objective
point of view
(The narrator describes actions and dialogue without providing
insight into characters' emotions or motivations). Those things that
we, as individuals, hold to be important varies with our
individual human experiences. To illustrate this point, I'll take
something from the Acknowledgments of George Dyson's book, Turing's
Cathedral:
“...I
was walking home with my father, physicist Freeman Dyson, from his
office at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey,
when I found a broken fan belt lying in the road. I asked my father
what it was. "It's a piece of the sun," he said.
My
father was a field theorist, and protege of Hans Bethe, former
wartime leader of the Theoretical Division at Los Alamos, who when
accepting the Nobel Prize for discovering the carbon cycle that fuels
the stars, explained that "stars have a lifecycle much like
animals. They get born, they grow, they go through a definite
internal development, and finally they die, to give back the material
of which they are made so that new stars may live." ... To an
engineer, fan belts exist between the crankshaft and water pump [of a
combustion engine]. To a physicist, fan belts exist, briefly, in
intervals between stars.”
How
do we, as writers, determine the importance of a new discovery or
improvement in technology? Or, maybe I should ask if writers like me,
those who have had a career in technology, have the proper emotional
detachment to make a proper determination of importance.
This
in turn, leads us to another challenge in recording our technical
heritage in a meaningful way. That challenge is the "objective
point of view" itself. If we disregard our human emotions, we
run the risk of disregarding or downplaying our experiences. We are
also downplaying society and culture. Society is one of the major
drivers of new technology, with culture determining a specific
society's acceptance of technology.
When
we write about technology with a strictly objective point of view it
becomes disjointed and disconnected from our society. Modern
technology is bridging the gaps between societies and closing the
gaps between language and geography. Modern technology, more than any
previous technology, is bringing all of humanity together faster with every new discovery.
That
is why I am writing about "Our Heritage of Technology."
Heritage refers to knowledge, customs, traditions, practices and
characteristics that are passed on from one generation to the next
(history is inferred). We study our technical heritage to gain access
to the laboratory of human experience (like Dyson's engineer) and
library of human derived knowledge (like Dyson's physicist). When we
study our technical heritage we acquire usable habits of mind, as
well as data about the forces, ideas, customs, traditions, products,
rules, regulations and climatic events that affect our lives; we
emerge with simple awareness, relevant skills in research and
critical thinking that give us an enhanced capacity for making
informed decisions about new technical discoveries. We also begin to
understand there is more than one way to view the effects of an
object, algorithm or code on society and culture.
Our
technical heritage is the legacy of anecdotal, theoretical knowledge,
personal experience, physical artifacts and intangible attributes of
a society (such as folklore, traditions and culture) that are
inherited from past generations, maintained in the present and
bestowed upon future generations. Technical heritage includes
tangible artifacts (such as telegraph, telephone, radio, television,
computers and other artifacts), intangible culture (such as folklore,
traditions, social customs, electronic protocols, algorithms and
knowledge), and natural history (including culturally significant
advents and events of nature and climate that trigger a technical
want or need) such as earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes and
floods.
Heritage
is not just history embellished with stories; it is historical truth
through the eyes of the writer and the interpretation of the reader.
Heritage can have more than one view and those views are based in the
individual experiences of the writers and readers. That's why there
are so many arguments about who built the first computer, who created
the first computer program and now, whether artificial intelligence
is good or bad for society.
The
question of what technology is important also seems to differ
depending on your association with technology. Different associations
such as academic, engineer, technician or user, yield different views
of what technology is and how it influences human life.
Academics
develop knowledge and insights gained from research and applied
imagination into theories, methodologies, protocols and
mathematics to prepare guidelines for further development,
testing and implementation at the engineering level.
Hardware
and software product engineers work together to apply theories,
knowledge, mathematics, specifications and limits developed by
academics; to build a machine that performs a user defined
function. In many cases, engineers feed data back to the academic for
refinement. The academic then sends refined data back to the engineer
to be applied to the machine. The circle of feedback and refinement
continues throughout the life of the machine or software, evolving as
humans do.
A
system engineer builds on the product engineer's creation and defines
communications methodologies and protocols (developed by academics);
defines communications media specifications to match product engineer
equipment specifications; defines geographic and media limitations
and applies this to a system that allows communication between
products and/or users. The system engineer may at times feed data
back to the product engineers and/or academics for refinement. The
circle of feedback and refinement continues throughout the life of
the system, evolving as humans do.
The
user sees technology as a tool for completing a task. The user does
not have to know the theory, knowledge and mathematics behind the
machine and/or system, it's installation or how it communicates (if
it does) with other machines or systems. The user only has to know
how to operate the human-machine interface to apply it to a task at
hand. The human-machine interface evolves as the user evolves.
The
technician views technology as an integrated system of hardware,
software and human-machine interfaces. Technicians focus on hardware
and software functionality, machine and system performance and user
interaction. Their expertise must allow them to navigate both the
complexities of technology and human-machine interoperability to
ensure that technology and humans operate efficiently and
effectively. The technician evolves as the hardware, software, system
and human-machine interface evolves.
Simply
put, human needs, driven by evolving human societies, drive
humans to develop knowledge which is used to create
machines and systems to meet their needs. Because society
changes humans and their needs, their machines, software and systems
must either evolve with humans or die. The evolution of technology,
in turn, causes humans to evolve through the realization of new
needs.
Lastly,
there is the hacker. A hacker does not always address human needs nor
follow engineering guidelines or corporate rules and regulations.
Hackers imagine, build, tinker and refine products and systems for
fun or the enjoyment of the challenge. I thought long and hard about
mentioning hackers, but they are and have been a part of the
evolution of technology since the beginning. Many of the early gaming
and desktop computers were born through the curiosity and imagination
of hackers. The Linux operating system was born out of the need and
imagination of a collage student who needed a computer but did not
want to pay Microsoft for an operating system.
Personally,
I see technology as a product of society. We (American society)
create technology to fill needs that grow out of wants. Those in
wealthy societies such as the United States, have a lot of technology
and we are constantly creating more. Those living in poor societies
are satisfied with the technology their ancestors used because they
can not afford the academic, labor and material costs associated with
technology creation.
What's
your view of technology?
Why
is studying the evolution of technology important? Human
evolution is driven by the recombination of genes. Human creativity
is driven by a recombination of curiosity and imagination. Technology
evolves through the application of our ever evolving human mind
to a recombination of data gained from research,
imagination and uses for the products of human creativity.
This
statement suggests that nature, as created and governed by God, can
be imitated by humans through their own art and creativity, allowing
them to create artificial beings or machines that mimic life. It
highlights the relationship between natural and artificial life,
emphasizing human ingenuity in replicating the functions of living
organisms.
Imagine,
if you will, a world without computers, cellphones, or AI . What
picture would your imagination paint? From first grade through high
school my tools were: a notebook full of lined paper, a pencil, pen
and eraser. I learned from a human teacher writing on a blackboard or
lecturing and I studied by reading books. Twenty years later when I
finally entered college, I had to have a computer, an internet
connection and an email address. Much of my instruction came across
the internet. Twenty years after I graduated from college, it is hard
to purchase anything, pay a bill, take an airline flight, or even
order dinner without a cellphone (handheld computer).
In
the introduction of his book The Universal machine, Ian Watson said
“In less than one lifespan the computer has transformed almost
everything in our society.” In less than one lifespan, our culture
and society have changed so quickly that our comprehension of what is
‘normal’ can not keep pace with the ever-evolving technology
which is driving evolutionary changes to our culture and society
(just look at what cellphones have done to our society). Our culture
has become whatever is ‘trending’ on social media and Netflix.
Our society has gone from the interaction of humans, to interfacing
with social media. Has our technology, which started out as a tool
for mankind, become its ruler?
As
long as man has been alive, he has dreamed of making a better world
for himself and future generations. It is man’s dreams, needs and
wants that spark his imagination and the thought processes that
eventually produce technology. In the past decade, technology and
humanity have evolved in step with each other. A change in one has
caused a change in the other. Has our human created technology made
our world better or have we become as Ray Kurzweil predicted in his
book, The Singularity Is Near:
"One with our technology?"
Technology has
empowered us to solve complex challenges, it is also challenging us
to rethink the very essence of humanity. Today we say that our
machines can think, learn, and create. Can they? Are they in fact
intelligent? To truly enjoy the benefits of technology while
retaining our humanity, we must be deliberate and mindful in our
approach to creating and using technology. As we develop systems, we
must answer deep philosophical questions with ethical answers. Such
as, what
does it mean to think,
what
is intelligence,
how
does one become intelligent
and what
does it mean to be human?
These debates will help us evolve not only technically but morally;
helping us to prioritize human values and connections in our lives
rather than isolating individuals and devaluing their importance to
society.
In order to answer philosophical questions that
will influence the technological discoveries of our future, we need
to understand fundamental questions about how technological
discoveries of the past have influenced society, culture, ethics and reason.
Knowing the how and why of past technological discoveries and their
influences on humanity, opens new roads to new discoveries, both now
and in the future.
