Progress, Technology, Culture
By Jade Wang - 17 Apr 2015
How does the technological development of a civilization relate to its culture?
At equilibrium, a society with safe, affordable and widely accessible forms of birth control has different cultural values from one that does not. A society with affordable, ubiquitous, and open Internet access will have different cultural values, productivity, and global impact on other cultures from one that does not. And of course, a society with ubiquitous smartphone cameras will hold its police officers more accountable for human lives than one that relies on human eyewitness testimony.
Ubiquitous. Widely accessible. Democratized. It is not enough for these technologies to simply exist; there is a limit to the impact of a technology that only the wealthy few percent can afford, and a limit on the pressure exerted on that culture to adapt to its new environmental conditions. There is something amazing, akin to a phase transition, that happens when each technology gets democratized past a certain point. It’s like the difference between a society with access to measles and polio vaccines and one that does not. It’s the efficiency of trade in a developing nation with infrastructure to support basic, affordable SMS service versus one that does not.
Those of us working in technology today would do well to keep these things in mind: we don’t just serve deep pockets, we serve humanity. Democratizing access to existing technology is just as important as creating new technology.
The cultural effects of widespread and democratized access to personal servers is left as an exercise for the reader.
- 2015: Why would ordinary people want a personal server?
- 1977: There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home.
- 1946: [Television] won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months.
- 1905: Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote.
- 1878: This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a practical form of communication.
- 1762: One half of the children born die before their eighth year. This is nature’s law; why try to contradict it?
Defining “progress” is also left as an exercise for the reader.
