ia play

A Economist debate from the Freedom and its Digital Discontents series:

If the promise of technology is to simplify our lives, it is failing

Dick Szafranski (of consultants Toffler Associates) focuses on paradox of choice and surplus complexity. He teeters on technological determinism throughout:

“Technology has imposed the encumbrance of over-choice on us”

John Maeda similarly ascribes motive to technology:

“Technology exists to advance and enhance our world in new ways.”

He makes curious choices of ambivalent technologies; hearing aids , Blackberrys, and cars. He also seems to imply that what we have now is technology, past tools were not technologies, and future technologies will have less problems:

“The bad rap given to technologies today will be only temporary….But we are in a transitional period where technologies are brittle not because they are failing per se – they are just new and experimental.

We voluntarily let technology enter our lives in the infantile state that it currently exists, and the challenge is to wait for it to mature to something we can all be proud of.”

Tim Ferriss makes the point that the question is phrased in the present tense (i.e. “is failing” and not “will fail”) and so votes for Szafranski.