This is the title of conversations I was lucky to have with curious and open-minded people at the recent Talking Heads event in Cape Town. One does not go to such an event unprepared. So I prepared a story, a “big picture” of technology that my background and experiences have given me the privilege to be able to construct.
How does technology penetrate society? The story starts with its creation until it pervades our lives with numerous societal impacts and at each stage, there are opportunities and dangers. My message was essentially this: Unless we take an interest in technology, we remain ‘dumb’ consumers and are losing touch with some of the biggest forces that drive our society today. In other words, we give up our citizen’s rights to play an active part in the evolution of our society. With this, I’m looking at everyone who shies away from it thinking it’s difficult to understand or considers it irrelevant to learn how technologies work.

So here’s the story…

Origins

Where does technology come from? It originates from the most fundamental science, the one most people in today’s world wouldn’t think is useful at all. Let’s take the example of the Square Kilometre Array, SKA. This is a project that seeks to answer fundamental questions about the universe. For that, the intention is to build the biggest (radio) telescope ever, correlating observations from thousands of receivers designed to measure the faintest radio signals from outer space. Last year, South Africa and Australia were selected as host countries for this enormous scientific infrastructure. There has been considerable criticism from the South African public as to why the country, which faces many other immediate needs, should invest in such a project. The counter arguments are fairly simple: the amount invested is very small compared to the amounts invested in areas of greater needs but this is rarely contextualised in the media. More importantly though, the reason the South African government, which is more known as unbelievers in science than science buffs (think HIV/AIDS denialism) is so invested in this project is because it sees the vast array of opportunities the SKA brings to the country. The point is, fundamental science leads to new technologies. Wi-Fi technology that most of us use every day is itself a spin-off from radioastronomy.

The next image shows some of the areas that are most likely to benefit from the SKA, in South Africa and elsewhere.

The big circle in the centre shows the areas that will be affected by the development and construction of the instrument itself. The list is far longer than just Astronomy. On the left some foreseeable spin-offs. Time will tell what other new inventions will come from this endeavour.

Infrastructure

Once technology has been invented, it turns into infrastructure. Mostly, this is great. It leads to better communications — think how fast cell phone technology has revolutionised the developing world! With the emergence of Big Data, smart environments, from your home to entire cities becomes a reality. Improved monitoring of our planet informs resource management to human geography in both emergency situations and long-term planning.

This is all great but unless the public knows how it works, its members may not realise what how are contributing to this, willingly or not. I asked the people sitting around the table if they had used the traffic information on their smartphones to see traffic jams ahead on their route. All answered positively. I then asked them if they knew how it worked. I got two types of answers: either “I don’t know” or “Via satellite?”. When I explained that the phones themselves were contributing the data (on Android, sending their location and movement data to Google) to infer how well the general traffic is flowing, most of them were spooked and had no idea. But they all understood the concept… This is no secret. Taking the time to read the technology pages of their favourite news outlet would most likely have confronted them with that piece of knowledge and understanding.

Ubiquity

I left them to ponder and moved on to the next level of technology penetration: ubiquity. This means that a technology can be found everywhere anytime. Think cell phone signal. Or running water, or electricity for that matter. This is when it is taken for granted by many, and often by the decision makers. At what point is ubiquitous technology perceived as a human right? In South Africa, there are regular demonstrations about service delivery — the services in question often being running water (basic sanitation) and electricity. If you don’t have it, the government is letting you down. This affects the exercise of our democratic rights. When cell phones will be required to take part in the democratic process, the digital divide will go beyond haves and have-nots, it will be similar to a form of segregation.

Also, when technology is ubiquitous, do we suddenly depend on it? Do you remember, or can you imagine how the world functioned without email? Again, this is not without danger either. Imagine a hospital suffering a power outage. The newly trained obstetrician may not know how to deal with a difficult delivery without all the monitors and other supporting instrumentation, but the midwife with 30 years of experience may. Are we losing skills as we increase our reliance on technology?

Societal impact

Finally, the penetration of technology definitely leads to economic growth. Simply put, new technologies are new platforms for innovation. Were it not for the growing smartphone market, what would all the app developers do for a living? New platforms mean new markets too. The smartphone is the perfect example. It creates opportunities to improve almost every profession and we are only still exploring this new space. In fact, technologies that become ubiquitous affect everything from government, media, healthcare, agriculture, telecommunications, finance, industry, to education and entertainment, to mention but a few sectors. Therefore this is also a whole new space that governments try to understand and legislate around. This regulation effort creates both opportunities and limits them. M-pesa in Kenya, a technology allowing people to send money to other people through SMS owes its success partly to the government’s openness to the original concept.

So yes, the socioeconomic benefits of technology are vast and its dangers or shortcomings can be addressed with a citizenry that is at least interested in how it works before being opinionated about it. So is technology the solution to our problems? Of course not. The solution always lies in people and that’s the second part of this story, which I’ll write up soon ☺