CS 1023 Cultural Implications of the Information Society

Here is a list of aphorisms related to avoiding risks when dealing with technology, particularly computer technology.

(Material adapted from Jerry Mander's list, in Computer Related Risks by Peter Neumann, page 304.)

1. Be skeptical. Since most of what we are told about new technology comes from its proponents, be deeply skeptical of all claims

2. Guilty first. Assume all technology "guilty until proven innocent."

3. Technology is not neutral. Avoid the idea that technology is neutral or "value free." Every technology has inherent and identifiable social, political, and environmental consequences.

4. Avoid the glitter. The fact that technology has a natural flash and appeal is meaningless. Negative attributes are slow to emerge.

5. Don't judge personally. Never judge a technology by the way it benefits you personally. Seek a holistic view of its impacts. The operative question is not whether it benefits you but who benefits most? And to what end?

6. Look for the big picture. Keep in mind than an individual technology is only one piece of a larger web of technologies. The operative question here is how the individual technology fits the larger one.

7. Consider the scale. Make distinctions between technologies that primarily serve the individual or the small community (for example, solar energy) and those that operate on a scale of of community control (for example, nuclear energy).

8. Don't fall for ends justifying the means. When it is argued that the benefits of the technological life are worthwhile despite harmful outcomes, recall that Lewis Mumford referred to these alleged benefits as "bribery." Cite the figures about crime, suicide, alienation, drug abuse, as well as environmental and cultural degradation.

9. You can go back again. Do not accept the idea that "once the genie is out of the bottle, you cannot put it back," or that rejecting a technology is impossible. Such attitudes induce passivity and confirm victimization.

10. Think negatively. In thinking about technology within the present climate of technological worship, emphasize the negative. This brings balance. Negativity is positive.

• The future isn't what it used to be. Arthur C. Clark, 1969, lamenting that it was becomming harder to write good science fiction.

• The past isn't what it used to be, either. Peter Neumann, 1991, speculating on why history is so quickly forgotten and why progress becomes so difficult.

• It is easier to invent the future than to predict it. Alan Kay (common attribution).