Technology Challenged: Understanding Our Creations & Choosing Our Future (Paperback)

~ Miguel F. Aznar (Author) "The Hawaiian bobtail squid would be easy prey on bright moonlit nights if it cast a shadow..." (more)
Key Phrases: ecologic evaluation, steel axes, evaluating technology, Yir Yoront, Idaho Power, Thomas Edison (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Anyone concerned about the life and death relationship between our planet's future and technology, should read Technology Challenged. -- Jim Puckett, Coordinator, Basel Action Network

Anyone concerned about the life and death relationship between our planet's future and technology, should read Technology Challenged. --Jim Puckett, Coordinator, Basel Action Network

Only a lifelong learner can be a good captain in our technological world, and this scintillating, optimistic book will help. -- John Smart, President, Acceleration Studies Foundation

Only a lifelong learner can be a good captain in our technological world, and this scintillating, optimistic book will help. --John Smart, President, Acceleration Studies Foundation

With the power to feed the world or to destroy it, technology is worth thinking about. -- Cathy Barlow, Dean, Watson School of Education, University of North Carolina at Wilmington

With the power to feed the world or to destroy it, technology is worth thinking about. --Cathy Barlow, Dean, Watson School of Education, University of North Carolina at Wilmington

Product Description

Technology has transformed our world from the first stone tools through development of agriculture, writing, printing, global transportation, global communication, computing, genetic engineering, and much more. When we used the same technology as our parents and their parents, we needed no more than to know how to operate a few objects. Today, technology's generations pass more quickly than human generations. Further, our choices in education, career, politics, and health are predicated on rapidly changing technology. How do we understand enough about our creations that we can make informed choices? How can we choose our individual and collective future? Stories from the Hawaiian Bobtail squid's use of bacteria to simulate moonlight to an Australian aboriginal tribe's mythology-based evaluation of axes and canoes illustrate a nine-step strategy for understanding and evaluating any technology. By painting a big picture view of technology, Technology Challenged offers context, an antidote to information overload. From that perspective, it reveals the simple patterns underlying all technology, allowing us to see what does not change in a technological world of rapid change.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: KnowledgeContext (June 1, 2005)
• ISBN-10: 0976385805
• ISBN-13: 978-0976385806
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #540,136 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The missing link between what technology is and what it does, June 2, 2005

By	Mark Cathcart - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a great book to help you relate to technology, to understand its cyclic and reusable nature, and to understand the principles that guide it.

Aznar writes in a clear, simple to understand style and uses this to describe the ICE-9 approach to evaluating technology. He makes a big deal out of the nine essential questions on Identity, Change, and Evaluation that go to make up ICE-9 and shows how it can be applied to any technology varying from legostorm which we'd recognise as a technology, to soccer which I didn't.

Today we live in a sea of readily available books, especially in my business, information technology. Mostly, they simply tell you what to do. They very rarely help you understand the technology. Rather, they just say what it is and how to operate it and leave you to make the big jump to understanding it. This approach doesn't work longer term, increasingly as technology gets more complex in its drive for simplicity, we risk losing the skills to understand it.

Aznar asserts, and I agree, that critical thinking on costs and benefits becomes more important as technologies become more powerful and have greater societal impact. This book and the ICE-9 approach will help you apply that critical thinking.

Aznars' knowledgecontext has a pretty good web site that will give you a lightweight intro and the book fills in all the rest! http://knowledgecontext.org/

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Tool, June 2, 2005

By	P. Meyer (Cupertino, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

If you want thoughtful discussions of technology, you already know that such books are rare. Many books are rabidly in favor of new technology, a few draconian in rejection, most treat the subject with religious fervor. Aznar has delivered a book that helps us develop our own understanding, not just more faith. If you want to think for yourself, "Technology Challenged" is a book you'll value.

My favorite chapter in the book is Chapter 9: "How Do We Evaluate Technology?" But before then, Aznar discusses why we should care, why we should apply considered judgment to technology. He quickly gives us examples where technology delivers us both good and bad. He notes: "Unfortunately, the most compelling argument for a considered, critical approach would be a spectacular disaster . . . and that could exterminate us." The argument for critical analysis continues to Chapter 9, when he adds two reasons why evaluation is important. Neither is obvious, both are worth consideration.

The first reason? To communicate with others, and be understood. Simply to say "I like this technology" is not terribly useful. To say "here is something new we can do with this technology" can start some real communication. We need more of that around technology.

The second reason is to understand our own experience and values. His example: China choosing to value walls over ships in the 15th Century. What drives such a choice? Experience (the military risk had been hordes invading overland) and values (Confucian thinking stressed isolation over intercontinental exploration or trade.)

Ultimately, technology is about such choices. What we choose will change, but what we learn from our choices will be the enduring value. Technology Challenged can help guide that learning. The title of the book is a pun. The work inside is a gem.

5.0 out of 5 stars Technology challenged, March 14, 2006

By	Sherri Bates (Long Beach, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This self-proclaimed technologically challenged individual, who is guilty of previously evaluating technology soley for it's immediate effect, found Mr. Aznar's book to be not only very useful, but intensely thought-provoking. Evaluating technology in terms of his nine basic questions, makes it more manageable and less intimidating. My 80 year old mother in law was delighted to discuss this book in regards to evaluating the technological changes that have occured during her lifetime. My 9 year old daughter recently used Mr. Aznar's nine basic questiong to spring board her science fair project.