[sabj]

A fun article whose real value will likely be missed by many here who will be rushing, misguided, to defend their ideas of 'technology' or 'progress' from attack.

The points that Taleb is making here are best discussed, not by considering technology as artifact alone, but technology for what it really is - a set of artifacts, systems, processes, and artifices that take place in a social milieu and as a two-way relationship with society and civilization. To think otherwise is naive folly, from my perspective. (Please see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_construction_of_technolo... for a primer on this, it's fun reading if you're unfamiliar).

Technophiles (myself included!) will often project things out because they fail to understand that technology does NOT just show up and leave an imprint on the world, deus ex machina style. Instead the world shapes technology back. You can see this for any kind of technology, from the bicycle (Bijker's famous example, shown in the wikipedia article) to the Internet, which has its present design because of the real fears / threats / motivations that abounded during its establishment.

It's the (mostly) impossible nature of this dis-entanglement that throws people off track. In some world of scientist-kings of technocratic technophile dictatorships, yes, we'd have moon bases by now. But that's not how it works, and as a result people - messy, annoying humanity - get in the way. For better or, for often, worse.

The future WILL be cool - I'm still an optimist. But it will be cool in different ways, and maybe for different reasons, than many here on HN might imagine.

Since this thread is already a bit long let me instead just close with a great quote that I reference often. Relevant here.

The plain message physical science has for the world at large is this, that were our political and social and moral devices only as well contrived to their ends as a linotype machine, an antiseptic operating plant, or an electric tram-car, there need now at the present moment be no appreciate toil in the world, and only the smallest fraction of the pain, the fear, and the anxiety that now makes human life so doubtful in its value. There is more than enough for everyone alive. Science stands, a too competent servant, behind her wrangling underbred masters, holding out resources, devices, and remedies they are too stupid to use. – H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (1904)

[TeMPOraL]

To quote from the Wikipedia article:

"Advocates of SCOT—that is, social constructivists -- argue that technology does not determine human action, but that rather, human action shapes technology."

Sounds like another case of people not understanding feedback loops - that A can both determine, and be determined by B.

[sabj]

Obviously you're going to see a gradient, but I don't think most would contend human action isn't shaped at all by technologies in ways that are often unexpected. Plus, you get a sort of chicken-and-egg problem at some levels...

But people very, very commonly fail to see the embedded social factors in technologies, and are very quick to ascribe autonomy to technology, which is in my mind fallacious. You see this when the news has stories like, "Technology just keeps advancing. How will it change our lives next?" instead of understanding it as part of a relationship between people, their environment, and their artifacts, technology gets put on some magical self-propelling trajectory that just isn't true. Yes, Moore's Law is great - but it's a social/human driver, as is Intel's Tick-Tock, not something innate in technology!