Technology & Social Change­

Five Lessons From History

When we create a new technology, how will it be used? What will be its social impact? How will it change the world we live in? What is our social responsibility — whether as producers or consumers — as new technologies shape our social and economic interactions?

If you were a giant sequoia tree and watched humanity for five hundred years, perhaps you’d find humans to be both intriguing and predictable. The actors change, but the plot stays the same. This is what we see when we look at the history of technology and social change. History gives us insight into the world we inhabit, allowing us to understand it more critically and plan intelligently for the future. Thus, we may ask, what does history have to tell us about who we are as humans, about technology, and about our future?

Lesson I: History is Cyclical

You’re Not Necessarily Inventing, Or Even Reinventing, the Wheel

Over one hundred years before the development of the modern Internet, we saw the birth of the first “worldwide communications network” — the Intercontinental Telegraph. The Intercontinental Telegraph was a wide network of telegraphs, pneumatic tubes, and messengers used to connect almost every corner of the ‘civilized world’ and it was revolutionary for its time.

The Intercontinental Telegraph was described in popular magazines of the period, using terms and concepts that feel surprisingly modern. It “spanned continents and oceans,” “revolutionized business,” and promoted “equality and mutual understanding.” Tom Standage elaborates:

During Queen Victoria’s reign, a new communications technology was developed that allowed people to communicate almost instantly across great distances, in effect shrinking the world faster and further than ever before. A world-wide communications network whose cables spanned continents and oceans, it revolutionized business practice, gave rise to new forms of crime, and inundated its users with a deluge of information. Romances blossomed over the wires. Secret codes were devised by some users, and cracked by others. The benefits of the network were relentlessly hyped by its advocates, and dismissed by the skeptics. Governments and regulators tried and failed to control the new medium. Attitudes to everything from newsgathering to diplomacy had to be completely rethought.

Tom Standage “The Victorian Internet”

This language feels very familiar in today’s world. When I look at the similarities between the rhetoric in the late 1880s and today, I find it startling and eerie. It’s like a movie where the main character lives the same day over and over again. The Internet was once called the Information Superhighway and the telegraph was once called the Highway of Thought. Over the last hundred years, it seems not much has changed, the dots and dashes were merely replaced with ones and zeroes.

And yet, from another perspective, if we start from the same ingredients, why should we expect a different output? Take humans, add network technology, and predictable patterns will emerge.

We know that communication technologies disrupt conventional business models and change social interaction patterns. New classes of upwardly mobile technical workers emerge, some industries adapt while others go extinct, society reacts and contracts accordingly, and these hopes and fears are expressed with a similar rhetoric regardless of technology.

In 1884, contemporary journals proclaimed that the “‘Rapid interchange of sentiment and ideas’ brought by new communications technologies, we are told, will ‘knit’ communities together, and will ‘annihilate distance, isolation and prejudice.’” These new communication technologies were seen as transformative forces with the power to rework modern society.

In the last 130 years, it seems that little has changed, as these basic sentiments remain alive and well. Listen to your average technology keynote speech and count how many times the words “change” (as in “changing the world”), “first,” and “revolutionary “ appear. During one recent conference talk, I counted these words 43 times. But let us not be unfair; from computers to phones and beyond, technology has changed the world.

Yet, how many smartphone consumers know that the first modern, publically adopted Internet was created in France, or that the smart phone revolution originated in Japan, not Silicon Valley. There is no question that new technologies are transformative — in fact, much of human history is shaped by the story of technology and change — but we should be careful not to think we’re reinventing the wheel when we jump on the latest tech bandwagon.

Lesson II: The Virtual World is an Extension of the Real.

People Build Houses in Virtual Space Because It’s What Humans Do

Everywhere we look online, we see humans doing very human things — they conduct business, interact with others, learn new things, enjoy good entertainment, play sports and games, fall in love, etc. In the words of Howard Rheingold, we are currently homesteading on the electronic frontier. For while the Internet is many things to many people, it must be understood first and foremost as an extension of who we are as humans, of our way of life. We still read the sports page, go shopping, and consume entertainment — now we merely do it online. If life online was not driven by human dynamics, it would be a very strange place, indeed!

So why do people build houses in virtual space? Because if the Internet were not a reflection of the real, it would be of little use to us. As we spend more and more time in virtual space and as the Virtual World grows in importance, it becomes more tightly integrated into daily life and activity. Whether we’re talking about work, social interaction, government, or law, the real and the virtual are becoming one.

By way of example, in the early days of the Internet, people asked if an online relationship was actually real (as they did with the telephone, as well). But today we understand that, of course, they are real! And more and more people are using dating and people finder apps to pursue them. What was once considered virtual, or in some way unreal, in time becomes part of ordinary life.

When new communications technologies become integrated into the fabric of daily life, they become extensions, augmentations, or integrated tools for our use. The Virtual World is merely an extension of our own.

Lesson III. Humans Will Use a Technology for Their Own Ends.

Give A Kid Two Paper Cups and Some String and They’ll Make a Telephone

People will always use a technology for their own best interests. Whether it’s a businessman or teenager; or more generally speaking, Hollywood, Wall Street, Washington, or Silicon Valley. If you want to know how a technology will be used, one need only ask, “What do people want?”

Because communications technologies challenge traditional boundaries and institutions, we often see a cat a mouse game between those seeking to use technology to reinforce boundaries and those wishing to break them. The telephone, by way of example, challenged traditional boundaries of the home, class, and race, because it was no longer necessary to talk face-to-face. My grandmother recounted, “If the telephone rings when you are naked in the bath, you ask yourself, can you answer it? You are naked after all.”

With the invention of the telephone, to quote Carolyn Marvin, “some people were suddenly too close and others too far away… with consequences that were tirelessly spun out in the electrical literature.” The telephone offered a choice of social contacts, on demand, even between strangers, without ceremony, introduction, or credentials. New communications technologies can be used to connect with family and friends. Or, as emphasized in early advertisements for the telephone, to, “put one in instant contact with the grocer, butcher, baker.”

Some experts were surprised by the early success of the Internet as a medium of social interaction, but they shouldn’t have been. People will rapidly adopt, and adapt to, new technologies in order to pursue their wants and needs. And on the Internet today, social needs have come to the fore. Humans form relationships, even in the most impersonal of environments. Successful groups — even virtual communities — require investment in personal and group identity. Yet, social dynamics are hard to predict or control and even the most well-planned virtual community or technology may devolve into chaos. Through understanding group interaction and online behavior patterns, we gain greater insight into building usable community-centric virtual environments.

Lesson IV: Technology is Inherently Disruptive

Dropping a TV Set into a Remote Village as a Metaphor

Sigmund Freud reflected in Civilization and Its Discontents, “If there had been no railway to conquer distances, my child would have never have left his native town — I should need no telephone to hear his voice….”

With the development of the telephone, came new business models and increased specialization. It was no longer necessary to be a jack-of-all-trades when customers could simply call a specialist in a building far away. This altered the city’s skyline, facilitating the birth of both the skyscraper and the suburb — of building up beyond the street (eye) level and beyond the convenience of the walkable city center.

It may sound ridiculous to say that Bell and his successors were the fathers of modern commercial architecture — of the skyscraper. But wait a minute. Take the Singer Building, the Flatiron, the Broad Exchange, the Trinity, or any of the giant office buildings. How many messengers do you suppose would go in and out of those buildings every day? Suppose there was no telephone and every message had to be carried by a personal messenger. How much room do you think the necessary elevators would leave for offices? Such structure would be an economic impossibility.

John J. Carty first head of Bell Laboratories, 1908

But if there is a single metaphor for understanding technology and change, it’s the introduction of western television as it spreads to culturally and physically remote villages across the globe. Take a TV, drop it in a remote village, and you will see dramatic cultural changes. People will begin to imitate actors they see on TV, often challenging traditional ways of doing things. People will begin to take greater interest in soccer, celebrities, global events, and contemporary fashion, shifting focus away from local and regional interests.

Technology challenges the “old ways,” whether we are talking business models or consumption patterns in a once-remote village:

• Challenging traditional rules and boundaries.
• Undermining existing business models and institutions.
• Changing how we spend our time, what we do for fun, how we do business, and how we interact with one-another.

Lesson V: As We Negotiate How Technologies Are Used, Important Questions Arise

Does Strict Technological Determinism Exist

In 1905, the journal Telephony reflected, “The invention of new machinery, devices, and processes is continually bringing up new questions of law, puzzling judges, lawyers, and laymen.”

In the 1970’s, the French government — which viewed communications technologies with suspicion — responded to emergent network communications by creating the first modern internet. All while maintaining careful control over content. To the French government’s surprise, however, the system which was designed to make online purchases and train reservations (among other features) was “hacked” for less approved uses.

With the development of any new communications technology, there is a process of negotiation over how that technology is “used, designed, and understood.” Is a cell phone a tool that a teen uses to meet up with friends, or is it a tool parents use to track and surveil that same child?

We see this happening on the Internet today — concerns over identity theft and privacy, online-bullying, digital rights management, cryptocurrencies, etc. These issues may be understood in terms of how a technology is used and understood — both in terms of social boundaries and in terms of the control over ones and zeroes.

As discussed earlier, technological change is naturally disruptive. While it challenges traditional boundaries and institutions, it can also be used to build a better world as technologies shape social, economic, and political life. New technologies are leading to important changes in every aspect of human activity. It’s only by thinking critically about the world — both virtual and real — that we can hope to plan intelligently for the future.

What will the world look like? There is no such thing as strict technological determinism, it is up to us.

In Closing:

“ We are getting perilously near the ideal of the modern Utopian when life is to consist of sitting in arm chairs and pressing a button. It is not a desirable prospect; we shall have no money, no ambition, no youth, no desires, no individuality, no names and nothing wise about us.” — Electrician, 1892

If there are three things you remember from this article, I hope it’s that:

• History is cyclical.
• Dropping a TV set into a remote village is a metaphor for understanding technology and change.
• The future depends on the choices we make, as we negotiate over how a technology is used, designed, and understood.

New technologies such as Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality will lead to important changes in every aspect of human activity. What might we expect to see? What will be the impact on interpersonal communication patterns? What will be the impact upon the larger society?

Whatever the answer, be ready for disruptive social, economic, political, and cultural changes brought about by emerging technologies. As we continue to extend real-world norms and practices into Virtual Reality, history tells us to look for:

• Interpersonal features of the telephone.
• The broadcast function of the television.
• Virtual manufacturing.
• Homesteading behaviors.

If history gives us any insight, we can add a fifth bullet to that list.

• The next generation, much like ours, will forget the lessons of the past.

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Mychilo Cline is a software developer at Capital One, holds a graduate degree in Human-Computer Interaction / Technology & Society, and is author of Power, Madness, and Immortality: the Future of Virtual Reality and the Virtual State & the Fall of Empires: Digital Right Management, Virtual Rights, & the Decline of the Nation State System.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT: These opinions are those of the author. Unless noted otherwise in this post, Capital One is not affiliated with, nor is it endorsed by, any of the companies mentioned. All trademarks and other intellectual property used or displayed are the ownership of their respective owners. This article is © 2017 Capital One.