Technology & Why It Fascinates Us
We have long been both fascinated and terrified by new technologies. Why? What is the reason for our fascinating and why we love the hype.
It was promised to be a spectacle unlike any other before it. The most advanced technologies in the world to be showcased. It would be a wonder and held in a building that itself was a spectacle of modern engineering and architecture. The year was 1851. The building was the Crystal Palace. And what a show it was!
The Crystal Palace Exhibition was perhaps the first large-scale event promoting technology advancements in modern society. Perhaps far deeper in our history, we celebrated the latest advancement in the bronze axe at local gatherings? If stock markets had existed, shares in copper and tin mines would’ve been through the roof!
In the mid1950’s, Ford launched the Edsel, touting it as the most advanced yet affordable car ever made. It was marketed with great fanfare. Lot’s of media coverage and for the time, significant marketing budgets. It was riddled with mechanical problems and never quite adopted by the consumer market.
The concord supersonic jet was indeed a marvel of engineering. It flew from 1969 until it’s last intercontinental flight in 2003. The only problem was that it was rather expensive to both operate and take a flight on.
We have long been fascinated with new technologies, especially ones where we so quickly see possibilities, opportunities and, ideally, a better life ahead. Why are so often fascinated with them and sometimes, frightened?
Humans long ago figured out that our best partner in life, alongside biological evolution (although we didn’t really think about that 100,000 years ago or so) was culture and part of parcel of culture has always been technology. From stone tools to Artificial Intelligence and instant coffee.
Human culture too is unique. In anthropology we call this cumulative culture. We build knowledge over generations. Knowledge, shared, is what we use to evolve technologies as well and many technologies are cumulative. Your smartphone is the accumulation of several technologies; chips, GPS, batteries, camera, software and so on.
All of our modern technologies are the result of having created general purpose technologies; writing, language, electricity and so on.
Technologies can also be seen as a symbolic representation of what can be our might be. This may well be a significant reason for why we get so excited about new technologies.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the most recent example of a technology that has both held us in enthral and frightened the daylights out of us at the same time. But AI has been around for over 50 years now in various forms. In fact, there is no singular AI entity, it’s an umbrella term for a suite of technologies. But there wasn’t anything that captured the public imagination.
Until Generative AI came along. And suddenly we had something we could grasp. Text and perhaps what captured our imaginations even more, was images and videos. And physical products, tools, came along as well. The Humane pin and the rabbit r1 device. Suddenly, we could truly grasp AI as a relatable concept. It was symbolic.
In the 1950s, we were truly captivated in our imaginations with the promises of a marvellous, almost utopian idea of the future. Self-driving and flying cars. Daily trips to our cottage on the moon. Robots cleaning our houses.
It all landed at a perfect time too. The world was rebuilding after the second world war, plastic was everywhere and could do anything. A generation was being born that would accumulate vast amounts of wealth.
Of course it didn’t all quite play out that way. Self-driving cars remain tantalisingly close. The only robot in our homes is a vacuum cleaner. Some symbols of a technological future of wonder haven’t quite come true.
But it has long been that way. While we may be somewhat more skeptical today and cautious, we still are often fascinated, if somewhat jaded at times. The symbols of a future promise today are often through the technology giants.
The late anthropologist David Graeber, often called the anarchist anthropologist, suggested that part of the reason for these technological promises of wonder not fully coming to life is due to the structure of our societies, specifically bureaucracies in governments and large corporation.
Perhaps in part he is right. But not the sole reason. It’s more complex than that. Flying cars likely will come to being in more uses than they are today, but there is the reality of technology limitations. It is the same with self-driving cars. They’re getting there but technology needs to advance as well.
Then there is the societal and cultural aspect. If society broadly feels that a technology may cause too much disruption too fast or if really just doesn’t appeal to us, it can be rejected or delayed. It also takes a while to get to broader sociocultural acceptance.
We also become enamoured with technologies and their promise because technology is a part of what it means to be human. They represent for us, what we can achieve as a species, not just the promise of what could be, but the reality of what we have done.
We look back and through the great arch of history, we see that our life is better and though there are some downsides to some technologies (weapons, mis/disinformation) we also realize that technology is better in the long run.
Even if a much hyped technology fails, that isn’t a bad thing. Lessons are learned. Google Glass failed to delight us, but it found acceptance in manufacturing and healthcare. Now, Augmented Reality (AR) glasses are making a bit of a comeback. A technology may flop at the time, come back later, or be combined with another technology later and be successful.
While AI has certainly been the latest technological innovation to capture our collective imaginations, we may also be at a sort of plateau technologically. In my next article I’ll explore why this may be so and why that also might be a good thing.