The effect of technology on society
In 2006 we discussed “The impact of technology on us*” so
maybe it was time we had a second look at the subject. This time round I want
to have a look at the impact on society when technology fails. I do not mean
when our phone dies on us, but rather when the promised technology reaches the
point when it becomes unfit for purpose and consequently have an impact on
society.
Once again our function is not to look for the facts, nor to
verify the facts, that’s the function of scientists and investigators. We are
concerned with looking at the thinking and claims of those who make claims and promises
about technologies. One of the problems with those who try to investigate what
others are doing, thinking or researching, is that we are limited to the
information we have access to and is available. For example:
“Big tobacco kept cancer risk in cigarettes secret: Study” By
Ryan Jaslow - September 30, 2011 / CBS News (at https://www.cbsnews.com/news/big-tobacco-kept-cancer-risk-in-cigarettes-secret-study/
) This short article claims that, “tobacco companies have known for 40 years
that cigarette smoke contains cancer-causing particles, but deliberately hid
the information from the public.” The problem with this situation is that forty
or fifty years ago society had a different mindset from us today. To begin
with, at least in theory, we can say that today there are more academically educated
people, with analytical skills and complex data handling, than in the 50s or
60s. Today we can feel the outrage if people withhold vital information from us
on such a product, but what are we supposed to feel if we are not aware that
others are acting maliciously?
The consequence of producing cigarettes at an industrial
level meant that more people had access to this drug and thus feeling high (similar
to alcohol). The perceived benefits of smoking seem to out weight the rational
thinking about possible harm caused, which in any case are long term events.
Basically we understand feeling good much better than understanding that
something that makes us feel good might actually be harmful. Empirical evidence
it seems is more powerful than rational analysis.
Moving on, technology might have serious effects on society,
not because of some sort of deception, but because of some sort of empirical
value returns. I am thinking of antibiotic resistance. There are many academic
papers written on this topic, and as many YouTube videos, but you can start with
this video: Antimicrobial Resistance: The End of Modern Medicine? with Dame
Sally Davies - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H_Ox1vVnTc
. What interests us here is not only the bias we seem to have that if something
is doing “good” then we ought to pursue it, but what seems to me a certain
degree of lack of foresight by those who are responsible for creating and
managing antibiotics. I am particularly thinking that at some point someone
ought to have made the link that if something is fighting a biological system
such as bacteria that bacteria might go into natural selection mode and thus
become resistant to antibiotics. Sure, maybe we are not as clever at creating
the antibacterial of the millennia as the bacteria are at surviving our
antibiotics.
This thinking is not anything special, what might be special
is that what would be the situation today if they did consider at the
scientific level the evolutionary effect in such drugs. What we know for sure,
however, is that bacteria are not clever they are just good at what they do. Maybe
society and human beings are rather reckless and stupid by over prescribing and
over use of antibiotics. I leave you to check out the horrors of antimicrobial resistance
from the video. Technology has failed here not just because of misuse of
certain solutions, nor maybe because our limited knowledge of the world, but maybe
because we fail to see the big picture and fail to recognise the real nature of
the threat: in this example the threat is not only the bacteria but the effectiveness
of natural selection.
Sometimes technological failure is good news (somewhat). My
favourite example of someone who failed to look at the big picture and compounded
the situation by lack of understanding of technology is the failure of Hitler’s
technology opinions. My favourite examples are Hitler’s obsession with large
battleship such as the Bismarck and the really bad judgement of insisting that
the Me262 jet fighter be converted into a bomber for the Eastern front.
The Bismarck was the most powerful battleship at the time
and this class of ships were built to destroy the Atlantic convoys. What went
wrong for Hitler and good news for us was that the ship was so advanced and efficient
killing machine agiant modern technology, but what it couldn’t deal with was
the Swordfish biplane which was a WW1 generation plane made with canvas and
wire. This plane was so slow and flew so low that the defences of the Bismarck could
not destroy these planes efficiently, and one of them managed to cripple the battle
ship with a torpedo. The rest is history. It is ironic that one of the most
effective solutions against bacterial infection is using soap and water to
prevent infection. Advanced technology, it seems, is not immune to bad
assumptions and never underestimate the effectiveness of old technology.
The Me 262 was the first operational jet-powered military aircraft,
which first flew as a jet in 1942. In mid 1943 Hitler wanted to develop this
jet as a bomber; the plane was not built as a bomber. The consequence of all
this delay was that had this fighter been introduce in 1943 and used against
allied bombers, Germany would have been guaranteed full mastery of the skies
over Europe in a matter of months. QED. But the good news does not stop there. Today
cheap air fares and fast air travel are possible because of the swept wings
concept was inherited from the innovative design of this powerful jet fighter
from WW2. Sure 20/20 hindsight is a
marvellous skill but stupid is always stupid. There is no doubt that technology
fails, but nothing makes technology fail than human failure.
A similar Hitler type of stupid mistake was achieved by the
Americans in what in 1958 was supposed to be the best fighter-bomber of all
times, the F-4 Phantom. This was a sort of Me262 story all over again: the
powers that be decided that future air combat would be done by missiles and so
they did not fit a cannon/machine gun in the airframe. As a consequence at the
start of the Vietnam War many of these aircraft were lost to enemy machine gun
fire from enemy aircraft many times due to failure of the American missiles. This
was eventually fixed and it was also the germ seed of a famous film of elite
pilots in the US Navy. You know the film, but from what I know there were no
females involved; today they fixed both these oversight in the military!
In built obsolescence is a well know feature in consumer
technology, and if manufacturers fail to build this obsolescence correctly,
humans will certain cause enough damaged to goods that will need replacement. As
I have shown humans are a key cause of technology failure; but it is also true
that technology is the result of value judgments. And sometimes we get those
judgments wrong as well, not necessarily out of malice but maybe for other
human factors.
What is clear, however, is that when we use technology, such
as trains, planes, medical equipment, we should not only be afraid because the
owners paid the lowest possible price for the technology. But also what false assumptions
and invalid thinking went into the technology?
*The impact of technology on us
Best Lawrence
