Douglas Rushkoff: ONLINE
I signed on to a cause a few weeks ago: a crusade for rational thinking about technology and its role in human affairs. Oddly and amazingly, just that statement alone has proven controversial.
For those who see me as a pro- technology Utopian, or who are devoutly pro-technology themselves, it sounds like I’m about to explain why technology stinks, and why it should be monitored, curtailed or eliminated.
But to those who absolutely object to technology and its increasing implementation, the same statement looks like an excuse to stick more of this dangerous stuff in schools and homes, where children will be needlessly exposed to pornography and workers endlessly exploited by robots. (I have the e-mails to prove it.)
This is the problem that techno-realism (), a new branch of technology criticism, seeks to address. According to the original document, posted on the Internet and announced at a Harvard University conference last month, it’s an attempt to “expand the fertile middle ground between techno-Utopianism and neo-Luddism”.
If anything, I’ve always been somewhat closer to the Utopian end of the spectrum. Because I see technology as an extension of human nature, and because I think human beings are basically well- intentioned, I have maintained faith that as technologies empower real people, the world will get better. Our technologies will help us evolve towards better ways of relating to and taking care of one another.
Back in the early Eighties, when I was spending my time with hackers and other free- thinkers, I saw governments as the enemies in all this. They were the ones who would arrest hackers, control access, even assign Internet protocol (IP) addresses and domain names. The object was to keep the government out.
What so many of us didn’t realise was that the government doesn’t only limit the activities of certain individuals – it serves as a regulator of commercial forces.
With the government out of the way, companies from Wired Ventures to Microsoft were free to declare the Internet a business zone.
Wired and other libertarian organisations did it with philosophy: pushing concepts like the “long boom” of economic growth, “change is good”, and “push technology” itself, this centrepiece of the digital revolution purposefully drew cyberculture towards supporting the goals of business and the laissez-faire right.
Worse yet, without any government presence, the civic spaces on the Internet are collapsing without contest. Usenet faded into oblivion, as discussion groups became crowded with commercials.
Universities and other institutions offering free access to information are in constant need of funds as they race to upgrade their systems to new standards set by industry. The airwaves themselves are auctioned to the highest bidder and private corporations – not science foundations – profit from the registration of domain names and addresses.
This is why I’ve found myself, perhaps a bit reluctantly, joining forces with the kinds of people I formerly thought of as “policy wonks”. It’s the government who, in former eras, built and maintained public libraries and public parks.
Perhaps governments can do the same for the Internet. It’s worth a try, anyway. And as long as their efforts are supported and directed by people who treasure freedom of expression and from oppression, those who might tend to abuse their power can be kept in check, too.
Indeed, I think that techno-realists speak for the vastly unreported majority who believe, quite correctly, that technology will augment human evolution if it is managed in a rational and humane fashion. The simple points outlined in the statement – that information is not knowledge, that wiring schools in itself will not save them, that the government has a role to play on the electronic frontier – all seek to affirm common sense, and dispel blind Utopianism along with paranoia.
Techno-realism exposes the centrifugal force with which the Internet tends to polarise all debates into extremist rants. Like the post at the middle of a roundabout, it gives all of us something solid to hang on to while the world spins faster and faster. c Douglas Rushkoff
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