Everyone’s a critic…
I’m constantly reminded of how poor a writer I am in my constant struggles to finish original work (a forthcoming series on Vendor Relationship Management I’ve been trying to pen for a month now is a good example). There’s something about a blank canvas — I’m just a deer in the headlights.
For my only class this semester, we’re encouraged to blog about, that’s right, technology. We’re also encouraged to submit to the class listserv. Penning thoughtful and intelligent posts or emails — not so easy. I’m a critic, good or bad. I don’t write as much as I react (hopefully still in a thoughtful and intelligent way). So in the spirit of blogging material for the class, I figure the best fotter will be my replies to class listserv items. It gives me something to write about, and, oh yeah, precious class credit. So here’s the first student email sent to the listserv and my responses:
I thought we had an interesting class last night.
The one thing I didn’t get to mention was that, along with the Luddites discussion, there is active ecoterrorism which is related but different.
Between Earth First!, the Earth Liberation Front, the Animal Liberation Front, etc, he’s touched on a great example of how seemingly functional members of Western society find ways to justify violence against innocents. I wouldn’t call them Luddites (as they actively embrace technology for a number of their activities), but certainly related (Primitavists?), in that they’re violent, fringe factions of society.
That said, I think the important thing we missed in the class discussion was that in order to effectively attack technology in its current form, they’ll have to have more than a layman’s understanding of technology. Our communications infrastructure is incredibly malleable and federated. It would be next to impossible to take down by brute force (which is all the “technoskeptics” could muster). There are some scenarios that could wreak havoc from the inside (such as poisoning the ICANN root servers), but each and every one of these attacks would have to be undertaken by a real geek.
The only vector for a Luddite attack then would be to fund a group of real anti-Luddites — strange bed follows, but money talks…
I really wanted to touch more on artificial intelligence, because I think that was a common theme in some of these futuristic scenarios. I pray artificial intelligence never hurt humanity in any way, as a matter of fact I think we’re doing fine with out it. But IA was a common theme in so many movies like the matrix and T1-T3, as discussed, that we should be concerned.
Just because it’s permeated popular culture doesn’t lend it any credence in reality. Sure, it’s a sexy story, but as pointed out in the Pew study, until someone can coherently explain a plausible method for keeping a human from unplugging a machine, or otherwise disabling it with even the most simple of devices (EMP, for instance), I don’t think we have too much to fear.
I think our predictions about the future are to big, as evidenced by the shortcomings of 2001, a space odessey, which had enough work for a doctoral dissertation put into the movie and the shortcomings of the world fairs, which have said kissing would be banned as unhygienic and strawberries the size of your fist. This lead Tom Brokah not to make any predictions himself when he planned futurist. To further my point, as so many people said, “no hover cars,” but there was a second minute special on personal flight machines that may be within price range eventually.
Yeah, yeah — they keep saying that. Unlike hover cars, inexpensive personal flight is a practical eventuality, but don’t hold your breath — and not because of the tech! The FAA has a pretty solid track record of kowtowing to the airlines — this would be the very definition of disruptive technology — you don’t think the airlines will let their old business models go that easily, do you?
I think I may have opened up more cans of worms than I quenched, and I do pray for a happy future.
I don’t think anyone needs to pray. We may not be able to predict the future, but we can certainly take solace by looking into the past. These doomsday scenarios never pan out — and by some coincidence, these people pushing them almost always have something to sell…