“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” — Alan Kay
Alan Kay’s famous phrase reads as inspirational. I support the spirit of it entirely as it accords with the American spirit, the hacker ethos, the do-it-yourself revolutionary philosophy. It’s comforting and empowering to think that all it takes is some elbow-grease and ingenuity to make a difference, shape society, right wrongs. And although I certainly don’t intend to discourage cultural participation, I find troublesome implications in that statement.
The first problem is that an invention needs to be adopted before that invention is able to define the future. Alan is proposing a form of technological determinism: he is subtly implying that technology drives society, rather than the reverse. I find this belief dubious. How and why inventions are adopted is controversial; if there were a formula for determining relevant technology, there would obviously be no failed startups, no failed product launches. But we know that the marketplace is a fickle mistress. Sticking to technology, why did CISC win the computer instruction set wars? Why is Outlook a prominent email/personal management client? It’s clear that in the marketplace, sometimes good ideas fail and bad ideas succeed.
Also lacking is any consideration for how the presence of technology affects societal behavior. Taking a cue from Infinite Jest, would it be good to invent a film so entertaining that it permanently paralyses its viewers with the need to endlessly consume it? More practically and perhaps more damagingly: why have we adopted so much technology that we’re living in a fashion that our ecosystem cannot sustain?
Stepping back from computers for a moment, let’s look at inventions and technology as ideas. We tend to look at the physical products, the signifiers of technology, as the technology itself. But technology exists in the idea space; we’re really looking at ideas. Language is a technology. Government is a technology. And so on. Many good social technologies have not been adopted. Say, civil unions. And why is it so hard to deter Americans from creationism? Many wonderful things that are not economically expedient have been invented.
Convincing people to adopt GUIs (One of Alan Kay’s major innovations in the tech-space) is easy. We need to invent a way to get people addicted to ethics, to reason, to justice.
I think you’re taking his use of “invention” too literally. He’s talking about a worldview that the universe is not deterministic to the point that we are unable to define the future. It’s akin to Ackoff’s (Singer’s?) teleological worldview.
But ignoring that, there are many that believe in a sort of technological determinism. Moore’s law shows certain long term trends tend towards inevitability. The invention of some major technologies (such as the computer) happen in parallel, suggesting a sort of innate redundancy of the meme. And I don’t think you can claim technology drives society or society drives technology — if society *did* drive technology, there *wouldn’t* be the modern computer. People had to be sold on this new idea over a long period of time, only in the process did it prove sustainable enough to develop itself to something that even more of society accepted. If you look into Kevin Kelly’s exploration of technology, he might even convince you that society is technology.
In a free market, it’s not that bad ideas can be successful. “Good enough” ideas *tend* to be successful. First to market usually gives you a huge head start in market share, but with success comes a lot of issues. Microsoft had to keep backwards compatibility to the point of insanity and instability in order to stay at the top… all the while, Apple was able to start over and try new things and now has a fairly competitive OS. Apple’s whole story sort of follows that trend. Even though they were first to market with modern PC’s, they didn’t adapt to greater trends. If they weren’t first to market, they certainly would have died, but instead they basically went underground. They stayed alive with niche markets while retooling and learning to eventually become what they are now — again, fairly competitive, if not the leader, in a number of markets.
Learning how to be pragmatic/holistic and include market trends and human behavior is part of designing the future. If you just invent technology, unless it’s inevitable, it’s most likely going to be a failure.
So I feel like I understand some of your concerns, but that you’re missing the point. If you want to see certain good ideas take root, figure out how to make them work or how to make them spread, then take that action. That’s inventing the future.
On Alan Kay’s Technological Determinism
Alan Kay’s famous phrase reads as inspirational. I support the spirit of it entirely as it accords with the American spirit, the hacker ethos, the do-it-yourself revolutionary philosophy. It’s comforting and empowering to think that all it takes is some elbow-grease and ingenuity to make a difference, shape society, right wrongs. And although I certainly don’t intend to discourage cultural participation, I find troublesome implications in that statement.
The first problem is that an invention needs to be adopted before that invention is able to define the future. Alan is proposing a form of technological determinism: he is subtly implying that technology drives society, rather than the reverse. I find this belief dubious. How and why inventions are adopted is controversial; if there were a formula for determining relevant technology, there would obviously be no failed startups, no failed product launches. But we know that the marketplace is a fickle mistress. Sticking to technology, why did CISC win the computer instruction set wars? Why is Outlook a prominent email/personal management client? It’s clear that in the marketplace, sometimes good ideas fail and bad ideas succeed.
Also lacking is any consideration for how the presence of technology affects societal behavior. Taking a cue from Infinite Jest, would it be good to invent a film so entertaining that it permanently paralyses its viewers with the need to endlessly consume it? More practically and perhaps more damagingly: why have we adopted so much technology that we’re living in a fashion that our ecosystem cannot sustain?
Stepping back from computers for a moment, let’s look at inventions and technology as ideas. We tend to look at the physical products, the signifiers of technology, as the technology itself. But technology exists in the idea space; we’re really looking at ideas. Language is a technology. Government is a technology. And so on. Many good social technologies have not been adopted. Say, civil unions. And why is it so hard to deter Americans from creationism? Many wonderful things that are not economically expedient have been invented.
Convincing people to adopt GUIs (One of Alan Kay’s major innovations in the tech-space) is easy. We need to invent a way to get people addicted to ethics, to reason, to justice.