Research Notes

Here be Monsters. Is Technology Reducing Humanity?

Richard King, Monash University Press, 2023

Intro. The fetish of progress

What most proponents fail to appreciate are the social, economic and political considerations under which tech innovation occurs. We came to see ourselves as intricate, largely autonomous systems no different from complex machines. We began to see life in informational terms. … This ethos of manipulation runs through the technosciences (15).

How do technologies relate to our fundamental humanity? (17) Some of the interventions entertained in Silicon Valley (SV) or the biotech sector would be dangerous if they came to fruition. More dangerous still is that we allow them to be entertained at all (21). Stephen Asma suggests that we interrogate technical developments as incubators of the worldview that allows technology hubris to reproduce and spread. … The danger of seeing ourselves as machines to be re-wired… (23). Download here…

The Psychology of Silicon Valley,

Katy Cook, Palgrave, 2020

Notes compiled by Richard Slaughter, 2020

Of the many sources I’ve consulted on this subject, Cook’s 2020 book rates as one of the very best, and most helpful It looks beyond the marketing of shiny devices and the self-interested pronouncements of ludicrously wealthy oligarchs to the less- than-honourable motives, values and self-understanding of those involved. The following brief excerpt from the conclusion provides as good a summary as any.

“We are standing in the midst of an unprecedented transition, standing at a crossroads, the stakes of which are incredibly high… No one company or individual orchestrated the more nefarious impacts of tech knowingly. The negative consequences of tech are the result of the social and economic systems in which the tech industry operates and are unintended side effects of tech progress. So we:

Need to understand what went wrong in the first place;

Understand the psychology and values driving the industry … (believing) that the world can be a better place; and,

Ensure the industry moves forward with better values and healthier psych norms (which, in turn) requires a revisioning of the tech industry’s ethical foundations.

 … Greed is one of the chief values in the industry we should aim to eliminate, along with speed and misogyny. The importance of growing our emotional intelligence and awareness, which are cornerstones of progress and psych development. (We also need) a more sophisticated model of thinking about how to improve tech (which includes) the capacity to think systematically and across disciplines.”

Read more…

Social interests and types of foresight

One of the tenets of Critical Futures Study (CFS) is that in any account of futures or foresight work social interests need to be taken fully into account. Indeed, one of the structural deficiencies in early American work was its singular difficulty in opening to this dimension. But it was a fact then, and it remains one now, that such interests provide a good deal of the driving force, motivation and social resource(s) for futures and foresight work. (Read more)

Academic publishing 

A metascan of futures journals (for SoPiFF project) 2009 can be found here.

The case of Foresight

Read the abridged version published by the APF in Compass here