The Dangers of Hi-Tech

I am NOT a Luddite. I enjoy technology and, even more, I love the thinking processes involved in creating something new and tweaking (called "hacking" in programming) existing things to make them perform even better.

However, that does not mean that I am not always aware of the dangers of advanced technology. Sure, there is the Frankenstein aspects -- designing "smart" robots that take over the world. I'm not that awfully fearful of that -- although it certainly could happen.

The Luddites were more fearful of how technology affects society and how new things cause the old things to be denigrated. What happens to the horses when a steam engine can pull the plow? Each change in technology affects the society and people involved with the old technology. That is still true today and, perhaps, even more true as the pace of change continues to increase. Still, that has always happened and it always causes chaos. The first people who made use of iron weapons were ascendent over those who still used stone weapons and the people who used bronze weapons were ascendent over those using iron and so forth. This has not changed -- only the rate of change where now the change can occur many times in one's lifetime rather than over a period of several generations.

My primary fears are the pyramid effect of Hi-Tech.

If I worked carefully over a period of a few weeks, I could make a gramophone. (This is one of those old "record players" with a big copper funnel over the needle to make the noise louder.). With more time and access to more tools, I could probably make a "record player" that connects to a home-built electric speaker. It wouldn't be of great quality but, with practice, I could make pretty good ones. But could I make a ceramic cartridge magnetic needle casing with a full powered amplifier and multiple speakers? Yes -- but only by using a lot of other tools that are a per-requisite to make it. Over a lifetime, I might be able to create the entire set of tools and then use those tools for the final product. A lifetime wouldn't be enough to create a CD player.

My father would have been even better qualified to build something than I am -- among his many jobs, he was a machinist and an auto mechanic. He could have built a working carburator from chunks of metal. However, even he could not have mined the ore, smelted the ore, refined the metal and created the metal chunks that he needed.

Every "hi-tech" product relies on components that, in themselves, are "hi-tech" and requires specialized tools to build. On and on down the line.

I have a "landline" phone in addition to my cell phone. I have no intentions of giving it up (although economics may eliminate them as an option someday in the future). Why? First, the sound quality of a dedicated circuit-switched line is better than anything you can currently find in cell phones and probably better than you ever WILL find in cell phones. But, more importantly to me, a basic landline phone is powered by the line that leads to the phone company. They have banks of batteries to supply the very low voltage current needed to power the phones. If the electricity goes out -- I still have a working phone! Even there, most people have landline phones that are connected to local electricity -- and those won't work without the power. They COULD be designed to make use of the line power but most aren't.

So, what is the danger? The danger is that a disruption in one vital element of a product will eliminate the feasibility of the product. Many things are dependent on oil products -- run out of (or be separated from the access to) gas/oil/diesel and much of society's products will stop working. Have an electromagnetic pulse take place in New York City and much of our economic records would disappear -- even worse if backup sites are attacked/broken.

So, when you pick up your smart phone, think a bit about what it really took to make it and be able to use. There's a lot of industries, professions, and people involved in that one product. Then turn on a light and do the same type of thinking -- still a lot of factors involved in the use of that light switch. If you have a gas cooktop you are reliant on a steady gas supply but if you have an electric cooktop you have a different set of dependencies.