Technologies Don’t Solve Problems — They Just Disguise Them
Why we can’t forget the impact of our ideas on real people
Technologies seem free of embedded agendas. Their automation and opacity make highly reversed situations appear quite normal and natural.
For example, most Americans accept the premise that they need a car to get to work. And a better car leads to a more pleasant commute. But that’s only because we forgot that our pedestrian and streetcar commutes were forcibly dismantled by the automobile industry. The geography of the suburban landscape was determined less by concern for our quality of life than to promote the sales of automobiles that workers would be required to use. The automobile made home and work less accessible to each other, not more — even though the car looks like it’s enhancing the commute.
Once the figure and ground have been reversed, technology only disguises the problem.
In education, this takes the form of online courses that promise all the practical results for a fraction of the cost and inconvenience. The loftier goals of learning or enrichment are derided as inefficient self-indulgence, or the province of decadent elites. Online courses don’t require a campus or even a live teacher. A responsive, algorithmically generated curriculum of videos and…
