Advances in communication technologies are certainly nothing new, and neither are the controversies that surround them. Alexander Graham Bell is widely credited as the inventor of the telephone, but many believe he stole the idea from Elisha Gray. Guglielmo Marconi is known by many as inventor of the radio, though this too is disputed by those who claim that Nikola Tesla had the idea first. Regardless of what actually happened in these instances, there were great thinkers who became household names and indelibly linked to a new gadget or technology. This does not seem be the case today. Though the thinkers are no less great, their names are unknown to most. Unless you are a tech-savvy consumer who follows all of the latest developments, you probably don't know the name(s) of the person (or people) who actually invented the gadget. Does the name Tim Berners-Lee ring a bell to anyone? The MIT professor credited for inventing the World Wide Web is probably not a household name.
In their book, Technological Visions: Hopes And Fears That Shape New Technologies, Marita Sturken and Douglas Thomas write in their introduction that technology is a "force unto itself and beyond human control" (p. 4). This idea lends credence to the notion that it is an autonomous entity that not only "transcends history" as Sturken and Thomas suggest, but also transcends the individual mind or minds. Perhaps this is one reason why the thinkers behind these advancements are either unknown, or disputed at best. This theory is perhaps a little abstract and off-topic, but again it ties in with the notion that technologies, specifically those linked to communication, seem to pop out of nowhere, all on their own, as if waiting to be discovered. Also noted in this introduction is the idea that the history of any technology can only be fully understood when looked at in context with other technologies when they first came out. In this way, one can see how closely linked they are with the cultural and socio-political dynamics of their time and how they only could have arisen at that exact time.
So, does technology's ostensible transcendency have any ties to how a great number of people conciously drag their feet when it comes to adopting the latest and greatest thing? Or do these folks simply have difficulty keeping up with the frenetic pace at which technology advances? Or could it be a combination of the two? Does technology advance at such a pace that it can't keep up with itself? I have a friend that refused to embrace the internet phenmomenon until around 2003 or so. He kept telling me that he was waiting for it to get "good enough." To this day I still have no idea what his definition of "good enough" was (I suppose I could just ask him), but even then it made me wonder if the internet had come around so quickly that it predated itself, or that it had come around so quickly that it took civilization that long to catch up to it. Again, it's probably a combination of all of these possibilities. From my perspective, I think about how long it seems to take for me to embrace the latest wonders of modern technology and realize that there is probably more out there than anyone knows.
"Does technology advance at such a pace that it can't keep up with itself?" I think in a lot of cases, yes, it does. I am hesitant to become an "early adopter" because I've seen people adopt a technology, only to have it disappear a few months later. I had many friends get ipods right when they came out and now they can't get replacement batteries or other parts because Apple doesn't make that model anymore. In cases like these, it is better to wait for something to stick around.
ReplyDeleteNeil:
ReplyDeleteI liked your post. You question whether technology can advance at such a pace that it can't keep up with itself. I'm not sure. As you say, Tim Berners-Lee was the inventor of the internet but this was quite some time ago, technologically speaking. It took a lot more innovations to ultimately make it possible for all of use to use it - from servers to browsers to phone wires with the capacity to handle site downloading for it to become ultimately useful for all of us. So what was invented a long time ago needed more inventions to make it become ubiquitous. I think what can't keep up with itself is our expectations. Now schools are supposed to incorporate all this technology at once to yield perfect students and grades. Unrealistic expectations that are going to take a while to materialize.
Technology seems to be progressing at a much faster rate than it used to. It took years to go from black and white to color TV and a few decades to go from color to high-def, now we have 3D just a few years after High-Def became the standard.
ReplyDeleteI liked your points about technological change in your post. I think as technological changes boom every year, so do its apparent users. I think that a good example is cell phones. Now a day’s people are using their phones for just about everything you can imagine from tracking local places to eat to browsing the Internet on the go. Compare this to the Zach Morris bulky cell phone of the early 90’s from Saved by the Bell, and you just might laugh inside.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you mean by your last phrase, "From my perspective, I think about how long it seems to take for me to embrace the latest wonders of modern technology and realize that there is probably more out there than anyone knows?"
ReplyDelete