I was just listening to Science Friday on the radio this afternoon. (Yes, I actually listen to the radio! I was making lunch for myself in the kitchen and I didn't want to sit at a computer.)
The discussion on the program was about Net Neutrality.
So, I'm a visionary, deep thinker, etc. What did I think? I think about how much we human beings love to create and invent things but we often do a poor job of managing them!
Many of the world's problems, including pollution, extinctions, and health hazards are largely due to we humans developing something (the bulldozer & chain saw, new chemicals not found in nature, etc.) without keeping a careful eye on where things could go wrong. We just charge ahead.
Today, we've developed an incredible amount of sophisticated technology that many folks in ordinary walks of life have very little hope of managing because we don't know how it works! We have long since lost touch with what it takes to produce a simple can of soup on our grocery store shelves. Just that one simple item took hundreds of steps to make, with participation of dozens of industries, all the way from mining (the metal) to fertilizers for the crops, people to harvest them, process them, make the inks to print the label, glue it on, seal the can, box it up, truck it to warehouses, distribute it, track it all for accounting, and on and on.
All along the way, there are side effects that impact things such as immigration policy, pollution of rivers, destruction of habitat (mining & farming), fossil fuels to power all this, salt in the diet, and on and on. All for one simple can of soup, right?
When you get to today's smart phones, computers & the internet itself, so-called "cloud" computer services, "free" services such as Facebook, Twitter, etc., what are the side effects? All these things have a gigantic impact, by now, on the entire economy, our culture, addictive behavior (as social media is rigged to keep us logged in all the time), and so on.
How well are we managing all this? Not very well, I argue. First we make these things, then deploy them, then sit back and wait for the effects to come home to roost. By then, what we created has spread far and wide. Electricity, once a "luxury" for a few (when most people still used candles, oil lamps, or gaslight for artificial light), quickly became a necessity. Now if the power goes off, everything stops, and people's very lives are threatened. Look at Puerto Rico, as one example.
We build buildings, then later on realize we have to widen the roads and build more public transit, just so people can get to them. We're supposed to predict such needs, but it's clear that we're not very good at it!
Now, we're at a crossroads. The "infrastructure" we now depend on for our very lives is under review! Net neutrality is just one of many other issues (think continued use of fossil fuels, our broken medical system, and so on). I'm not saying we need to go backwards in time and live in caves. I am saying that we're faced with developing an entire new approach (paradigm) to how we develop and deploy technology in society, world wide.
And, yes, ... full disclosure. I'm keeping this blog on a web site I designed using Weebly. I have no idea where all this data is stored and have never met the people who reply to my questions to customer service. I don't buy canned soup, but I purchase plenty of other items at the supermarket when I have no idea where exactly they come from ... or what was done to make them that I might not think is wise. So I'm struggling with this as much as perhaps you are!
The discussion on the program was about Net Neutrality.
So, I'm a visionary, deep thinker, etc. What did I think? I think about how much we human beings love to create and invent things but we often do a poor job of managing them!
Many of the world's problems, including pollution, extinctions, and health hazards are largely due to we humans developing something (the bulldozer & chain saw, new chemicals not found in nature, etc.) without keeping a careful eye on where things could go wrong. We just charge ahead.
Today, we've developed an incredible amount of sophisticated technology that many folks in ordinary walks of life have very little hope of managing because we don't know how it works! We have long since lost touch with what it takes to produce a simple can of soup on our grocery store shelves. Just that one simple item took hundreds of steps to make, with participation of dozens of industries, all the way from mining (the metal) to fertilizers for the crops, people to harvest them, process them, make the inks to print the label, glue it on, seal the can, box it up, truck it to warehouses, distribute it, track it all for accounting, and on and on.
All along the way, there are side effects that impact things such as immigration policy, pollution of rivers, destruction of habitat (mining & farming), fossil fuels to power all this, salt in the diet, and on and on. All for one simple can of soup, right?
When you get to today's smart phones, computers & the internet itself, so-called "cloud" computer services, "free" services such as Facebook, Twitter, etc., what are the side effects? All these things have a gigantic impact, by now, on the entire economy, our culture, addictive behavior (as social media is rigged to keep us logged in all the time), and so on.
How well are we managing all this? Not very well, I argue. First we make these things, then deploy them, then sit back and wait for the effects to come home to roost. By then, what we created has spread far and wide. Electricity, once a "luxury" for a few (when most people still used candles, oil lamps, or gaslight for artificial light), quickly became a necessity. Now if the power goes off, everything stops, and people's very lives are threatened. Look at Puerto Rico, as one example.
We build buildings, then later on realize we have to widen the roads and build more public transit, just so people can get to them. We're supposed to predict such needs, but it's clear that we're not very good at it!
Now, we're at a crossroads. The "infrastructure" we now depend on for our very lives is under review! Net neutrality is just one of many other issues (think continued use of fossil fuels, our broken medical system, and so on). I'm not saying we need to go backwards in time and live in caves. I am saying that we're faced with developing an entire new approach (paradigm) to how we develop and deploy technology in society, world wide.
And, yes, ... full disclosure. I'm keeping this blog on a web site I designed using Weebly. I have no idea where all this data is stored and have never met the people who reply to my questions to customer service. I don't buy canned soup, but I purchase plenty of other items at the supermarket when I have no idea where exactly they come from ... or what was done to make them that I might not think is wise. So I'm struggling with this as much as perhaps you are!
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