Technology is tricky. That’s why we need to think more carefully about risks and follow a more cautious approach
Today, so-called techno-optimists fill the ranks of Silicon Valley billionaires. They proclaim a bright future for humanity delivered by the rapid pursuit of technological advances.
Of course, these techno-optimists are right that technology and science are unarguably among humanity’s greatest assets, and hope for the future. But they go too far, because it is also true that technology always creates new problems even as it solves others – this is also something we’ve learned through science. As a result, naive faith in technology is a recipe for repeatedly achieving a short-term buzz while also incurring long-term costs. Getting the best out of technology requires a more cautious and balanced approach.
Why does technology so often go wrong – even as it gets many things right? The anthropologist Sander van der Leeuwe sketched out an answer about a decade ago, and it seems to be something like a law of nature. When we face a problem, we think about it and build a conceptual model of how part of the world works. We use it to propose a solution to our problem. Based on that understanding, we then act, and the technology we come up with often solves the problem. However, we then typically find that our model – of course – wasn’t actually a complete model of the world. Our simple model left some things out. Not surprisingly, it then turns out that our technology, operating in the real world, has effects on that world that we hadn’t foreseen – unanticipated consequences.
