Advice: Tech Forecasting

From: Spudboy100@aol.com
Date: Fri Jun 13 2003 - 19:27:24 MDT

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    http://www.techcentralstation.com/1051/techwrapper.jsp?PID=1051-250&
    CID=1051-061203C

    I spend a lot of time writing about science and technology, and my general
    thrust has been one of promoting and defending science and technology. By most
    standards, I am a technophile. Yet I find myself concerned by some of the
    commentary presented by my fellow technophiles in various forums. In particular,
    they (or we, because I don't think I'm immune to these tendencies) tend to take
    expansive views about technology's potential to transform humanity and the
    world, even when there is vast uncertainty about what that potential is.

    My concerns crystallized after I read Arnold Kling's TCS article " which
    argued that the march of technology is rapidly making the work of humanists
    (experts on literature, philosophy and so on) irrelevant and obsolete. I debated
    Kling in a few comments posted below his article, and the debate soon focused on
    questions about technology and the Vietnam War.

    But my broader objections were to the triumphal and sweeping tenor of his
    article. In subsequent weeks, Kling has written several TCS pieces on current
    issues in health care and education - and I have been tempted to post comments
    asking why we should worry about such pedestrian issues, given that technology
    is about to transform humanity anyway. (I decided to avoid such petty sniping,
    of course.)

    Speculating about the future of technology is part of any technophile
    commentator's job description. But when technophiles assert, confidently and without
    caveats, that vast change is in the offing, several dangers arise. One is that
    technophobes will get undeserved material for presenting alarmist views, as
    has been occurring in the debate over human genetic engineering. Another
    concern is that overselling the product will lead to disappointment when the
    promised results don't arise, fueling further public disenchantment with technology.
    In addition, techno-hype can simply be a distraction when dealing with serious
    issues involving technology.

    In light of all this, I would like to suggest some guidelines that could be
    helpful to technophiles in thinking and arguing about technology. These are
    heuristics to be considered, not inflexible principles, and they are reminders to
    myself as well as to others:

    Extrapolate cautiously. The Wright brothers' original airplane in 1903 flew
    at about 30 miles per hour. Just under 50 years later, two military aircraft
    flew at over 1,600 miles per hour, more than twice the speed of sound. In the
    mid-1970s, the supersonic Concorde began flying commercially, and military jets
    pushed over Mach 3. Now, nearly 100 years after the first Wright flights, the
    top military speeds are stable, and the Concorde is being mothballed. The
    gains seen in the first half or three-quarters of the first century of flight
    would have been a poor predictor of where aviation would be in 2003.

    Remember failed predictions. Numerous technologies have failed to live up to
    early expectations or speculations. Nuclear fusion and artificial intelligence
    both fall into that category. Some hoped-for technologies, such as flying
    cars or underwater cities, have failed to materialize at all. Meanwhile, the
    important technologies that have emerged often have done so with little
    expectation. In the late 1960s, the original Star Trek presented Ricardo Montalban's
    villain Khan as a product of "selective breeding," rather than of the gene
    splicing that emerged as a real technique the following decade.

    Think negatively sometimes. Economists are adept at considering costs and
    constraints. Physicists are good at it, too, being quick to notice, for example,
    when a proposed energy device violates the laws of thermodynamics.
    Speculations about future technologies become more credible when they take into account
    possible physical, economic, social or political hurdles to their
    actualization. Technologies also may carry crucial tradeoffs against other technologies or
    goals. Hydrogen fuel-cell cars and electric-battery cars are unlikely both to
    become major forms of transportation (even if either one ever does).

    Consider low-tech options. Not everyone has the inclination or the means to
    be on the technological cutting edge. Being focused on technology, technophiles
    may overlook alternative methods that, for better or worse, might come into
    use. During the conflict in Somalia in the 1990s, U.S. intelligence efforts
    were frustrated by the enemy militias' use of low-powered radios (and lower-tech
    drums) invulnerable to satellite interception.

    Visit Monument Valley. This scenic Arizona-Utah area of mesas and buttes is
    worth the trip. But it's also an interesting metaphor, as used by physicist
    James Trefil in his book Are We Unique?: A Scientist Explores the Unparalleled
    Intelligence of the Human Mind. Trefil argued that any future intelligent
    computers would likely be very different from humans; they might outthink us in some
    ways but fall short in others - much as Monument Valley's structures differ
    from each other, rather than being adequately ranked by height. The Monument
    Valley metaphor provides a valuable perspective on the possibility that genetic
    engineering or other techniques could create "posthumans." But it's also a
    helpful way of thinking about technology in general. Innovations do not
    necessarily outperform, in every way, everything that came before.

    Beware the horseshoe. It is sometimes suggested that the political spectrum
    is like a horseshoe, in which the extremes are much closer to each other than
    they are to the center. A similar argument could be made about the spectrum of
    opinion regarding technology. Among both technophiles and technophobes, there
    are fervent believers in the proposition that technology is about to radically
    change the world and humanity. The disagreement is mainly about whether this
    is a good thing. If you are a technophile who shares certain key assumptions
    with technophobes, that doesn't necessarily mean you and they are wrong in
    those assumptions. But it's a possibility you might want to consider.

        
        



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