Message-ID: <9610081155.AA09211@lan.vita.org> Date: Tue, 8 Oct 1996 07:55:19 EDT From: Gary Garriott <mailto:garyg@VITA.ORG> Subject: Re: Tech & Values To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L <mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU>
I quite agree with Tom Abele's posting, though I would point out that Goulet in "The Uncertain Promise" anticipates problems with "prediction" in his chapter on "The Dynamics of Technology":"Of central importance is the ambiguity inherent in technology both as social reality and as artifical nature...In one important respect technology is unlike nature, for it changes very rapidly. Its mutations are recorded in years and decades, not centuries or millenia."
I saw this first-hand last year after visiting the Ecuadorian village where I spent four years as a Peace Corps volunteer in the late sixties-early seventies. Streets are now paved, home construction is new, the formerly grass airstrip is now asphalted, there is automatic internatioanl direct-dial telephone, the small hydro power plant I worked on no longer exists, having been replaced by connection to the national grid, new regional (dirt) roads, etc. Probably little of this is directly related to the "relentless march" of technology alone, but rather to the town's strategic military position near the disputed border area with Peru.
I wasn't there long enough to be able to assess whether life is better for most residents including how all these benefits have been distributed, but I sure heard a lot of grumbling about the electricity, since local control no longer exists -- when the rest of the country suffers blackouts, so does the village. Sounded to me like they had it better 25 years ago in that respect.
Goulet doesn't have the nonlinear, dynamical vocabulary I think Tom is referring to, but I think the point is that the creation and use of technology is always consistent with somebody's vision whether for private economic gain, larger political objectives, even the public good (hopefully). The more "somebodies" there are who are equipped to articulate (or question) such visions, the less chance there is for things to go wrong.
Bottom line: we have to know what we want individually and collectively and that's where technologies like the Internet can help.