Part Three: Technology is Not the Answer

Humanity and technology have been intertwined from the earliest times. Many will recall how this evolving relationship was brilliantly portrayed at the beginning of Kubrick’s film, 2001, when an ape-like hominid threw a weaponised bone up into the air that dissolved into an elegantly turning space station. Popular histories often associate successive waves of new tech as evidence of ‘progress’ and ‘growth.’ Similarly, it’s often said that technology is neither ‘good’ nor ‘bad’ but capable of being used either way. Such views, however, don’t get us very far in part because they fail to engage with the default triumphalist myth of human development. Moreover, there’s plenty of evidence to show that technologies exert shaping influences upon their inventors and users, often in unexpected and unusual ways. It may be more helpful to think of these processes as cultural journeys that evoke an unfolding series of questions. —> Continue reading…