telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) (01/06/91)
[Moderator's Note: Robert W. Lucky is executive director of the
research communication science division at AT&T / Bell Labs and a
member of the National Academy of Engineering. He recently gave a
speech before the academy, and I thought you would enjoy sharing some
excerpts from that speech in this issue of the Digest. PAT]
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Feeling overloaded?
Many of us are, and not only from eating too much at holiday parties.
Fax machines, cellular telephones, electronic mail, voice mail,
telephone answering machines, phones in airplanes, pagers and other
devices have us drowning in messages and phone calls. Computers
bombard our lives with more information than we can absorb.
Listen to the groan of people as they program their VCRs or read
best-sellers like "Everything I Needed to Know I Learned in
Kindergarten," and one sees this anxiety about the stress of modern
life. Complexity is a fundamental residue of the Information Age, and
it is rising steadily -- in technology, business, social systems and
the daily rituals of life.
It is a trend that deserves more serious attention. The telephone
network was easily understandable and manageable only a decade ago.
Now it has slipped beyond the comprehension of any single person. The
collapse of a significant portion of the AT&T network a year ago
underlined the vulnerability mired in this complexity.
Other large interconnected systems are found in transportation, the
air traffic control system, and the military. Computers that
contribute to these systems also provide tools to control them, but
one of the most important problems of our time is whether we as human
beings can manage such extraordinary complexity successfully.
As an engineer who has helped develop the technologies of the
Information Age, I believe that our species is up to the task of
managing even a bewildering level of complexity.
That is an optimistic view, and an experience I had recently made me
painfully aware of how out of touch it may be with that of other
Americans. I appeared as a guest on a television talk show about the
future. After speaking glibly about a world made more pleasant by
robots, high-definition television and the like, I was roundly
criticized by the other guests, who insisted that the world's
prospects are bleak.
The environmentalist on the show was strident in his recitation of
statistics on pollution. The educator spoke of the decline of
literacy. The economist talked about global starvation, and the former
police officer sitting beside me on the sofa warned of the
inevitability of drugs and crime. When I held to my viewpoint that
technology would make the world better, the others looked at me with
scorn. What does a technologist know about such things?
That's a reasonable question for Americans to ask of people like me,
since we produced this technology and have a dubious record of
predicting its impact. Few of the engineers who developed the
videocassette recorder imagined that every town today would have a
video retail store. The inventors of optical disks concentrated on
video applications, never guessing that compact audio discs would
displace vinyl records.
So techology produces complexity and is unpredictable, yet engineers
like myself remain optimistic about its application. As a
consequence, we make progress where none is expected. Unaware that
cities are a hopeless cause, we design successful urban transportation
systems like BART in San Fransisco or the Washington Metro. Oblivious
to the hopelessness of the educational crisis, we pursue technological
aids to education.
This single-minded pursuit of solutions may be hopelessly naive for
the world of the future, and there's no question technology can
produce bad outcomes as well as good ones. But I think most Americans
would be better off if they shared our approach of viewing technology
as an ally in a world of creeping complexity rather than as the enemy.
Technology and simplicity are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I
believe technology increasingly will free us to focus on matters more
worthy of our human intellect, producing a world in which art,
religion, music and philosophy coexist with amazing technical
advances. Technological products are only tools, and they can be used
to make life less, as well as more stressful. The real solution to our
frazzled lives lies not with rejecting technology but with harnessing
it in new ways to manage information overload, quiet the beepers and
calm our nerves. We need to retain faith -- not so much in technology
as in our own power as human beings to make it work for ourselves.
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[Moderator's Note: My thanks to Mr. Lucky for sharing his thoughts
with the National Academy of Engineering, and for permitting excerpts
to be presented in this forum. There is very little I can add except
to stress his final words: Keep having faith, keeping looking forward
to the future. Telecom is not what it used to be, even a decade ago
when this Digest first began publication. Who among you who are long
time readers here anticipated what we see around us today? Who among
you can tell us accurately about the year 2000? As Moderator of the
Digest, I find it extremely difficult to keep up with all the changes
in telecom -- and I should be keeping up. But it is hard. Keep the
faith, keep looking forward to the solutions and understanding -- or
would you say wisdom? -- we'll need in this new decade. PAT]cyberoid@milton.u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson) (01/07/91)
Technology is easier to keep faith in when one has a hand in its design and development. When, as is most often the case in Western societies, technology is invented by large, seemingly faceless corporations or government agencies and foisted on the general public for better or worse, "faith" is an understandably rare commodity. I appreciate Mr. Lucky's optimism and self-confidence, but his examples of technology that "works" -- BART as a remedy for transportation congestion, and educational technology as a remedy for poor scholastic performance among students -- are insupportable. BART has complicated the Bay Area transportation situation, not fixed it. And educational technology -- well, just visit any school (in a "good" part of town) and see all the machinery strewn around, for purposes unknown. Technology is not without its politics, and these are anything but democratic. I am surprised that the general public is as tolerant as it is of we technologists' experiments with its world. Bob Jacobson
chris@com50.c2s.mn.org (Chris Johnson) (01/11/91)
In article <15827@accuvax.nwu.edu> cyberoid@milton.u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson) writes: >Technology is easier to keep faith in when one has a hand in its >design and development. When, as is most often the case in Western >societies, technology is invented by large, seemingly faceless >corporations or government agencies and foisted on the general public >for better or worse, "faith" is an understandably rare commodity. I >appreciate Mr. Lucky's optimism and self-confidence, but his examples >of technology that "works" -- BART as a remedy for transportation >congestion, and educational technology as a remedy for poor scholastic >performance among students -- are insupportable. BART has complicated >the Bay Area transportation situation, not fixed it. And educational ... >democratic. I am surprised that the general public is as tolerant as >it is of we technologists' experiments with its world. While this is straying from the topic of telecommunications, and into the politics of technology and more, I can't sit by and let Mr. Jacobson remain unanswered in his indictment of technologists. First and foremost, it might be that techonology is invented by seemingly faceless corporations and technologists within, but it is the business end of such organizations that "foist" those products upon the public. In other words, the fact that every community has a video-rental store as a "result" of the invention of the VCR, or that Compact Disks have virtually eliminated the vinyl LP, has a lot less to do with the invention of the technology and a lot more to do with marketing, advertising, and business ideas for making money in general. If record companies did not see a great potential profit to be made, and did not push the Compact Disk in the market place, you can bet it would be relegated to the rare ranks of the high-end audio affecionado. For example, just where is Digital Audio Tape (DAT) these days? It's invented. It works. You can even buy it! But the record companies are all opposed to it because they are greedy and can't see a way to make a good profit from it. As a result, it's a pretty rare thing. I have two compact disk players. I have zero DAT decks. This only reinforces the idea that technological innovations are only tools, and it's the use to which they are put which makes all the difference. I also take issue with Mr. Jacobson's remarks about such things as BART. He claims it complicates the Bay Area transportation situation. Perhaps. But if BART disappeared tomorrow, the transportation situation would be a whole hell of a lot more complicated. It has a huge daily ridership. And from my experience, the Bay Area has one of the better mass-transit systems in the country, precisely because of the integration and variety of types: busses, trains, and BART. I'm not as aware of the circumstances in Washington D.C. (having left that area just before the Metro opened), but everything I've ever heard about the system there was praise of the highest sort, even from people who were regular riders of other subway systems in the U.S. and even abroad. It's also my opinion that Mr. Jacobson's remarks about educational uses of technology are taking problems out of their context. The educational institutions of this country have a lot problems, and most of them are sociological in nature and very interrelated. Whether or not technology will be able to help solve those problems in a dramatic way, versus in a minor way (which I am sure they will) is yet to be seen. Lack of use of available technology in schools hardly points to a fault in the technology itself, however. I'd say a pretty strong case could be made that we have one of the best telephone systems in the world, also because of the technology that built it. Perhaps Mr. Jacobson is not as much a luddite as my response is making him sound. But I want to bring the focus on technology issues to where the decisions should be and are presently being made as to whether the new inventions bring the society good. Those places are political (public policies, eg. do we want to encourage nationwide networks?) and business (marketing and selling, eg. how can we use this new invention to make money, versus how will selling this new invention affect society?). Technologists frequently have ideas in mind for uses of their inventions that are nothing like how the general public ends up seeing them. Should technologists stop creating new things unless they have that control? Or just stop in general, for fear they may be misused or have adverse affects (particulary since the societal affects are impossible to predict)? I don't think so. ...Chris Johnson chris@c2s.mn.org ..uunet!bungia!com50!chris Com Squared Systems, Inc. St. Paul, MN USA +1 612 452 9522
cyberoid@milton.u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson) (01/13/91)
Chris Johnson's discrimination between "business" decisions and "political" decisions is naive, though commonly held. There are few business decisions which do not have a political component, whether it is a trivial battle between divisions within a corporation or more serious attempts to alter the balance of benefits and/or power within society. For example, whether we have the "best" telephone system in the world -- something which could easily be challenged by references to other systems, if Chris knew more about them -- is perhaps of secondary importance to the question of who pays for the high level of services available (of which only a few are useful to the bulk of the population). The decision to lower long distance rates and raise local rates (via an access charge) has shifted the burden of paying for the public telecommunications network from large users to residential/small business users, to the tune of about four billion dollars a year or more. But the issue of technological policy is a larger one than the mere redistribution of monetary benefits and costs. It's a question of who gets to make policy. Perhaps I don't have Chris' broad knowledge of technology policy, but as a student of the history of technology for about twenty years, I certainly don't share his sunny optimism regarding the current system; history is not on the side of Chris' argument. Finally, I wouldn't throw around the label of "Luddite" so carelessly. In fact, as Montgomery has pointed out in TECHNOLOGY AND CIVIC LIFE (MIT Press, 1974), the Luddites, who protested the automation of many craft activities, were ultimately successful not in forestalling technology but in mitigating its worst social effects. British working life, for awhile, became the most progressive and advanced in the world, with decent wages and relatively safe conditions, as a result of the Luddites' effect on British law. And this was while Britain was literally taking the world by storm. Bob Jacobson
peterm@sumax.seattleu.edu (Peter Marshall) (01/14/91)
To paraphrase Chris Johnson's earlier reply, it is indeed difficult to sit by and let him remain unanswered. For example: "straying from the topic of telecommunications, and into the politics of technology"? Is Mr. Johnson kidding? Or has he so thoroughly failed to understand the comments he was responding to with such energy? An "indictment of technologists"? Here too, I'm afraid that weren't it either. And what a marvelous job of segregating off the "business end of such organizations." That arbitrary exercise has little to do with the phenomena in question here. See, for example, David Noble's AMERICA BY DESIGN. So-called "technological innovations" as Mr. Johnson uses the term, seems to be more a label than anything else. Nor is his use of the shopworn cliche that "they" are "only tools" worth much as yet another example of the usual reductionism. Thus the old argument premised on "use" by no means "makes all the difference." The comments re: the telecom system go some further distance to beg the relevant policy/political questions too. And although Mr. Jacobson is no "luddite," granting Johnson's apparently shallow understanding of this term, one fails to see how Mr. Johnson is contributing, n/w/s his alleged intention, to focus the issues on "where the decisions should be and presently are being made." I don't see as his assumption that "societal effects are impossible to predict" helps him provide this focus either. Seems it goes in the opposite direction. Given his interest in such "effects," he might find it useful to acquaint himself with what was once called "Technology Assessment," which did not share his assumption. Peter Marshall