A Technological Skeptic
Chris Bissell
Professor of Telematics
Open University
Telematics?
• French in origin
• Combination of French words for
telecommunications and computer
science
• Word never took off in English
• So, it’s really ICT
• But should a Prof of ICT be skeptical
about technology? … well, it’s my job!
This brief talk will
• Outline some models of the way
technology and society interact
• Look at some historical claims for
revolutionary technologies (I’m a historian
of technology)
• Adopt a skeptical approach to overly
technical solutions
• At first this may not seem to have much to
do with this Workshop, but please bear
with me for a few minutes …
A naïve model
• Science -> Technology -> Social change
– Theory of electricity -> Power stations -> …
• “Technological determinism” … “Autonomous
technology”
• Agreed by vast majority of contemporary scholars
as far too simplistic … but
• Still widely believed in politics, media, etc
• For example, you simply need to roll out
technology (one PC per class; one laptop per
child; an iPhone for every housebound person;) …
And all will be well!
Social shaping of Technology /
Social Construction of Technology
• Movements dating back to 1970s
• Important conference in Twente, The
Netherlands, in 1985
• General notion that technological
developments cannot be divorced from
social context which at least shapes them,
at most is heavily involved in coconstructing them
• Opposed to technological determinism
Technological Utopias 1
Achievements of science: the power it bestows
on mankind. – Illustrations of the energy and
adaptation of steam in subserving human
purposes: its applications and benefits. –
Locomotion by steam: its effects in developing
enterprise. - Electricity: its probable destination
as a channel of intelligence: general ideas of its
power as an agent of communication. - The
electric telegraph: its wonderful properties;
annihilates time; unaffected by position
Michael Angelo Garvey, 1852
Technological Utopias 2
An agent was at hand to bring
everything into harmonious cooperation
... triumphing over space and time ... to
subdue prejudice and to unite every part
of our land in rapid and friendly
communication; and that great motive
agent was steam.
Charles Fraser, addressing the
Mercantile Library Association of
Charleston, South Carolina
Technological Utopias 3
God and man have linked the nations together. No
nation can longer be indifferent to any other. And as
we are brought more and more in touch with each
other, the less occasion is there for
misunderstandings and the stronger the
disposition, when we have differences to adjust in
the court of arbitration, which is the noblest forum
for the settling of international disputes.
President McKinley, at the Pan-American
Exposition, Buffalo, September 1901
If not steam and electricity, then
…
• TECHNETRONICS! (Zbigniew Brzezinski,
1970)
– greater devolution of authority
– massive diffusion of scientific and technical
knowledge as a principal focus of American
involvement in world affairs
– the elimination of the “twin insulants of time
and space”
– reduction of social conflicts [...] and a move to
a pragmatic problem-solving approach to
social issues
So, let us be cautious
More recently, analysts have tended to highlight what they
see as a radical transition from an industrial society to a postindustrial, or information, society brought about through the
actions of the digital computer and the internet. In this
context, some economists have developed the idea that
economic history has been shaped by a few ‘general-purpose
technologies’. The central ones are successively steam
power, electricity and now ICT. How seriously should we take
these claims for these technologies, and for their significance
in these particular periods? The answer is that such accounts,
for all that they reflect what we think we know, are not as well
founded as might be supposed.
David Edgerton, The Shock of the Old, 2006
But you can’t deny the information
revolution, surely!
• Beware of revolutionary talk!
• We’ve already seen some of the claims for
steam and telegraphy
• Even canals were thought of as
revolutionary in their day
• Technology changes; society changes;
technology and society interact; it’s a
complex business
Tales of the unexpected:
technological changes are highly
unpredictable
• SMS (texting): never intended as a
consumer tool
• Telephone: never intended for social chat
(isolated women in rural America
reprimanded by telephone companies)
• Internet: from defence network to
YouTube, Facebook and Twitter
An age divide?
• ‘Digital natives’ versus ‘digital immigrants’
• A ‘net generation’
• Anecdotal evidence and a recent research
project demonstrates there are many
– Older ‘early adopters’
– Younger ‘sparse users’
• Generalisation is dangerous!
What is really new?
• the new technologies give users the
means to generate, seek, select, obtain,
modify, and share content on a scale that
does seem to be different from earlier
technologies
• there are distinct ‘postmodern’ aspects to
this: erosion of authority; the decline of the
‘canon’ and the ‘grand narrative’; a certain
‘relativism’
What is really new?
• there is a significant blurring of the public and
private, both in the use of hardware and in
the software of social networking sites – for
example, the increasing use of such media
as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter by
government, educational institutions and
private companies
• the danger of the ‘cult of the amateur’, in
which the traditional professional expertise of
journalists, editors, librarians, academics,
etc., is called into question or bypassed
Discussion points
• The novel features of the ‘new
technologies’ are just as important to older
people as to other sectors – both positive
and negative aspects
• There is a danger of technological
determinism – successful technology for
older people must stress user involvement
in design, even co-construction
Discussion points
• ICT for older people: How much
education, how much adaptation?
• If adaptation, software and / or hardware?
• The manufacturer side
– Market size
– What’s in it for them?
– Bespoke solutions?
– User control of adaptation