Customer Reviews

Technology Matters: Questions to Live With

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The title is one that will often elicit the response, "Well Duuuuh!", yet that should not be said with any great emphasis, for the content backs it up. Nye points out that if a society can be insular or universal it is possible for technological progress to be reversed.
He cites the example of Japan, which rejected guns and contact with Western nations. The warrior class "forgot" the knowledge of how to make and use guns in favor of the more pure weapons of swords and the other Samurai tools of battle. However, once the American Commodore Perry sailed into Japanese waters to "convince" the Japanese leadership to open up the country, they understood that the days of isolation were over.
The other example noted is that of Amish communities in the United States. These groups selectively filter new technologies, incorporating only the items that they believe will not dramatically alter their society.
However, these two examples are very much the exception through human history. The Japanese islands remained free only because the western powers made no attempt to control them. It was the only country in Asia that was not made either a direct or de-facto colony of a Western nation in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The Amish maintain their insular culture only because they are part of a society that provides them the legal and social protection to do so.
The global nature of the world has changed the situation; it is now possible for potential new technologies to be introduced slowly or not at all. Given the successes in cloning mammals, it is nearly certain that humans could be cloned. Yet, there appears to be universal agreement to delay or even ban the technology. Several nations possess the technical ability to build nuclear weapons but have decided that it is in their best interests not to do so.
Nye also goes into a great deal of detail over the rise of new technologies and how many were slow to catch the attention of the masses. However, once the new technologies were adopted by large numbers of people, they caused dramatic change in society. The telegraph, telephone and the gasoline automobile were three items that many saw no need for when first introduced but are now staples of the world.
Nearly all technologies have negative consequences and some have been introduced without a complete examination of the alternatives. The nuclear power plants built in the sixties and seventies are an example. I can recall the arguments made at that time in favor of these plants stating that the breeder reactors would create more fuel than they consume. Since then the problem has become what to do with this "waste" that will remain dangerously radioactive for centuries.
The advance of technology is a very complex issue that needs to be met and analyzed in detail before it should be allowed to progress. Nye examines all of the issues surrounding technology introduction and develops an analysis of the problems that provide a glimmer of hope that the future is bright and not hopeless.

I bought this as a required text for a course. But I have to say, Nye's commentary is so much better than that of my professor! It opened my eyes to politics, history, sociology, and psychology as much as it did to technology.

This book outlines a brief history of technology and the social uses of each innovation. The interaction between technology and society cannot be ignored, which is a great consideration in this great monograph. Easily something to consider for the rest of your life.

This book was a required reading for a University course on Science, Technology & Society.

This book provides a very great set of fundamental questions to ask in order to understand the way that society interrelates with technology. In addition, he structures many of his analyses with interesting anecdotes to add flavour to the discussion.

The downside behind this is that anecdotes are often *all* that are given, and the structure of his arguments are so often flustered and lost in a great mist of examples and stories.

In addition, although the book begins by stating that it will remain unbiased, allowing for an open and objective observation of these questions, this statement is quickly tossed out and the author indulges in endless opinions and conclusions made to each of these questions. Put concisely, he provides answers to each of these questions, as if they are "the" answers. He doesn't allow the reader to come to their own conclusions.

What's worse, is that the arguments he makes are riddled with logical fallacies, and are based primarily on anecdotes with very little structure or reasoning.

For instance, in Chapter 3, Nye asks the question "Is technology predictable?". He cites a study that shows that, of over 1000 peer-reviewed papers on the prediction of technologies in the future, 1/3 were correct, 1/3 were incorrect, and 1/3 were yet to be determined. He then went on to conclude that prediction of technology was no more accurate than guessing, or "flipping a coin". Thus, he concludes, technology cannot be predicted.

Not only has he abused the promise of an open, objective analysis, he has invoked an enormous fallacy to prove his point and has shown a complete lack of understanding of even the most basic elements of statistics:

Flipping a coin has 2 possibilities. Predicting the future has millions. A 50% accuracy on guessing a coin flip shows you are simply guessing, and have no predictive capabilities. But a 33% accuracy of prediction for something that has millions of potential outcomes DOES imply predictive capacity.

Another fallacy that he invokes very often is that he uses anecdotes as primary sources of evidence in his arguments. His chapters go something like this: "#1. Ask question about nature of technology. #2. Cite 100 examples, with commentary assessing only a single side of the argument. #3 Answer the question based on those anecdotes."

The problem with this weak-form of argument can be demonstrated like this: Suppose I said that broccoli can cure cancer. I then cite 100 examples of people who ate broccoli and then later got over their cancer. Without showing statistical efficacy or the relationship of these examples to the larger network, none of these adecdotes have any significance. It is thus fallacious for me to assume correlation.

I should say though, that although this book was painful and "face-palming"ly rudimentary to get through, I was still capable of generating a lot of my own ideas and conclusions regarding how technology affects society. In the end, I was happy I made it through.

David Nye in his book, Technology Matters, persuasively makes the case against technological determinism, suggesting instead that culture and technology interact, each evolving in ways affected by the other. I enjoyed the book, especially as an introduction to a large body of literature on technology and society. I came away from reading the book with a strong hope that we learn how better to make technological decisions, for example by improving the use of advisory bodies for government and corporate decision makers.