Our Weird Expectations of Technologies
Society's expectations of new technologies can be weird, funny and wonderful. But they are important to how we end up adopting a technology.
I’ve written a fair bit on how human societies adopt technology, why we fear and love it and how culture is always the ultimate decider of any revolutionary technology. But what about what we expect from some technologies?
With so much hype around Artificial Intelligence (AI), specifically Generative AI (GAI) and more robots opening more doors into society, literally and figuratively and other world-shifting technologies, perhaps it’s time to explore our expectations around digital technologies impacting our world today. And why our expectations are rarely met, which is probably a good thing.
For example, in the 3rd century A.D., some Romans felt that sundials were ruining youth. In setting up our expectations regarding the telephone, the NY Times over a century ago thought we’d be able to talk to the dead. That expectation died out quickly.
We often think that a technology is invented by a singular human, because that’s how we tend to celebrate them when society becomes aware of them. Or we give celebrity status to individuals around certain technologies. Public figures have long played a role in setting society’s expectations of a technology. We see this today with Sam Altman and OpenAI or Jensen Huang, the founder of Nvidia. Both brilliant people, but neither invented the technologies they promote.
Steve Jobs will likely remain best known for the launch of the iPhone. Yet he didn’t invent it. Often times, two or more people invent a technology at the same time yet one wins the credit. Such as Alexander Bell inventing the telephone in 1876. It was also invented by Phillip Reis in 1861, a water-based variation by Elisha Gray in 1876 and a similar device by Antonio Meucci in 1854. Bell just happened to get to the patent office first. Too bad Gray couldn’t have called them first.
Many technology inventions however, are a group effort and often based on the combining of previous technologies to result in a new product. Smartphones today contain cameras, microchips, GPS and in case you forgot, as I often do, a telephone.
Once society becomes aware of a technology, aside from our fear or love of the new technology, also comes our expectations of that technology. What it might do for us as an individual (especially in more individualistic cultures) and what it might do for society as a whole. Now and in the future.
Fear and love are visceral, highly emotional reactions to a new technology. Through both of these reactions we initially tend to either anticipate the end of society as we know it or some dystopia, or some wonderful future utopia with lots of puppies and kittens. Though neither ever comes to fruition.
We also react in a sociocultural way, in both individualistic and community oriented cultures. So what drives and informs our expectations around a technology? Quite a lot. Largely because technologies are part of what it means to live and experience life as a human. If you don’t have the technology of fire at -50C you’re probably going to be a frozen lump in the morning. And on it goes.
When social media came on the scene, democracies, for example, expected autocracies to collapse and we’d have lots of fireworks shows to see every year. That didn’t quite happen. As the internet entered society the inventors expected everyone to create and do amazing things. Then someone discovered that someone else on the internet was wrong and no one realized it was a dog.
Expectations of technologies run across all aspects of culture; politically, economically, societally, aesthetics, customs, norms and traditions. They vary by types of cultures, geographies and environments. This is largely why predictions of what a technology will do to and in our world are so often incorrect. Or funny.
Like we expected that the introduction of autocorrect on smartphones would help us all communicate and understand each other better. That too, went a wee bit sideways, sometimes in funny ways, sometimes not. Today we even have “techno-comedy” on social media from YouTube to TikTok and Reels. Humour plays an important role in both setting expectations and helping us, at a societal level, take stock of when it fails to meet our expectations.
If a culture has had bad prior experiences with technology, it will be more risk averse to new technologies and vice versa.
Some technologies can have profound impacts on cultures, transforming cultural identity, increased cultural transmission and cultural heritage.
If one society has expectations of a technology, but doesn’t see them being met for their particular sociocultural system, either due to availability or economics, it may innovate on it’s own. We saw this in Kenya, who pioneered mobile payment systems with M-PESA in 2007. Kenya inspired mobile payment systems into developed nations.
Expectations often shift over time as well. Half a century or so ago, advances in aeroplanes and cars gave us the expectation that very soon we would have flying cars. We sort of do, but not in the way we were lead to expect.
While technologies often don’t meet our expectations, this still plays an important role in how a technology eventually takes its place in our societies. As a given technology moves through the phases of awareness, evaluation and adaptation, our expectations change and evolve.
The more impact a technology has on cultural elements, especially norms, customs and values, the more expectations we are likely to have and the more visceral our reaction those expectations aren’t met.
Cryptocurrency, for example, was going to upend the global financial system and make us all billionaires. It did, for a few, who turned out to be fraudsters. Our expectations were shattered and societies visceral reaction was to largely freeze out any mention of crypto and laugh it off.
Our expectations of many medical technologies however, had sometimes been exceeded, such as immense improvements in cancer treatments and less than a year to create a vaccine for COVID.
In the area of digital anthropology, understanding cultural expectations of technologies helps us look ahead to the future of technologies, how they might evolve, where new products may come from and what the sociocultural implications may be from industry to public policy formation. Although we can only truly understand expectations historically, data and such give us clues.