Technological developments are triggers for social changes
It has been always like this: If a new technology appears, it offers both chances and challenges. Chances to solve some problems of mankind come always along with the challenge to use it responsibly. If you look back in history, you'll find many examples, where inventions resulted in revolutionary changes of society.
6000 BC
One of the earliest known examples for this phenomenon is the invention of irrigation around 6000 BC in Mesopotamia. It triggered the following chain reaction:
- Farmland became more efficient allowing a higher population density
- Higher population density results either in self-extinction, mass exodus or a better organization. The Mesopotamians were smart enough to choose the latter.
- Suddenly there was some essential infrastructure (the irrigation channels), which had to be maintained. People who maintain irrigation channels cannot work on the fields at the same time, so the division of labor had to be invented
- If you have division of labor, you need trade
- If you have trade, you need money
- If you have money, you need mathematics
- Money and trade hardly work if you don't invent some alphabet
20th century
The beginning of the 20th century was characterized by by lots of revolutionary advances especially in electronic communication (radio and TV), transportation (cars and airplanes) and manufacturing (mass production). Some of the results follow:
- Ordinary people could more easily stay informed about political affairs. Without a well informed population modern democracy is impossible.
- What we call a global society today, became possible through electronic communication.
- Many cultural genres, e.g. music styles, are no longer local (or national) phenomena but global ones.
- In years where the weather sucks (from the farmers points of view) people no longer have to be afraid of famines (today's famines always have political reasons). This feeling of safety has a large impact on human mind and society.
Irresponsible uses of 20th century technology were European dictatorships (which utilized the then new electronic mass media for propaganda) resulting in 2 World Wars (made possible by the newly invented cars and planes).
The biggest challenge of the 20th century was not to start a nuclear war. Before, all weapons ever developed were eventually used. The atomic bomb was never used in a war by any nation except one.
Beginning of the 21st century
The beginning of the 21st century was characterized by masses of ordinary people beginning to use the internet. Many argue, that the internet is just another means of communication like the ones we had before. This is completely wrong imo. All mass media we had before were unidirectional (few content producers serve many consumers). The internet is multidirectional (every content consumer can also be a producer). This is a completely different topology of information flow with possibilities far beyond everything we had before. Just look at some examples of what was achieved by now:
- People write an encyclopedia, which is larger, more up-to-date but not more incorrect than any paper-encyclopedia you could buy before.
- 1000s of computer nerds spending their nights in front of their PCs wrote one of the world's best OSes.
- In times of war or unrest, gagging orders no longer work
- No matter what absurd theories you believe, you'll always find like-minded people.
- Some internet movies become more popular than some commercial Hollywood productions.
Some things I see coming:
- Internet communities can make big achievements even though they are mostly self organized. Politicians are afraid of self organizing structures because they fear to become superfluous.
- People, who work voluntarily on self-organized projects, will no longer feel the need to be ruled by politicians.
- Big record companies will die out, because they terrorized their customers and ripped off musicians. Even Paul McCartney let Starbucks merchandise an album already. Also they still follow the obsolete model of few producers serving many consumers. Only small manufacturers of vinyl disks will survive (at least as long as there are DJs who know how to use them).
- Traditional newspapers will become superfluous because they cost money and the 12 hour delay due to the printing time will be unacceptable for most people.
- Traditional radio and TV-stations will die out because people don't want to read programming schedules anymore. They want to see and hear what they want when they want.
- With no unidirectional mass media left, controlling the information flow will become impossible. As a result, Dictators and conspirators will have a hard time.
1. They learn that their undertaking is doomed to failure and try to arrange with the new conditions before it's too late.
2. They will continue trying and the WWW will move from today's client-server model to strongly encrypted p2p technologies like freenet.
I personally would prefer option 1, but in either case they'll lose.
Challenges
As said before, new technologies also bring new challenges:
- Computer expertise becomes more and more important for ordinary people. In the last century, learning to read and write was already a good start of the career. Today, knowing to use a computer mouse is at least as important.
- The fact that in the internet everyone can be content provider naturally results in a large percentage of bullshit. The preselection of information, which was done by editorial offices of the traditional mass media, must now be done by the consumer. The advantage of unfiltered information comes along with the task to decide yourself.
If you agree with what I said, you'll like this movie.
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