Capturing our own monsters
Our fascination with Pokémon GO is probably fine but our understanding of tech isn’t
If you are tired of reading about the successes, injuries, or murders related to Pokémon GO, I feel your pain. When a product like this takes off at such a rapid scale that it even squelches Twitter and Facebook for a moment, you can expect a content-hungry media to ride Pikachu’s coattails. Thus, every minor experience related to the game produces some larger narrative: chiefly, “this technology is good or bad,” based on the experience.
Now as a skeptic, I usually start from a position of hesitation to embrace new things. You can very quickly find yourself self-describing as a Luddite by watching these people below abandon their sanity to chase after a Vaporeon (the water evolution of Eevee) in Central Park, New York.
However, this week, I don’t know. Call it delight, nostalgia, genius, or something else. But I have been overcome by the innocuous nature of this technology. I have been reminded in general of the truly neutral essence of any tool or technology. Every new tool produces as many opportunities as it does limitations, and being cognizant of those limitations is key to understanding the benefits. Nick Carr explains it better than anyone:
When the carpenter takes his hammer into his hand, he can use that hand to do only what a hammer can do. The hand becomes an implement for pounding and pulling nails. When the soldier puts the binoculars to his eyes, he can see only what the lenses allow him to see. His field of view lengthens, but he becomes blind to what’s nearby.
Using a similar metaphor, Pokémon GO gets you outside, walking and talking to new people, while it also gets you run over by a car if you are not paying attention. Intelligent uses of technology are always of the highest importance. Lackadaisical and novel embrace of “new things” is exactly what makes new technology the most dangerous.
This is the understanding we have of technology, though. Parents and thought-leaders do not want to have to sit down and figure out if every new tech is good for their family or business. They want to be told. Thus, the media makes Pokémon GO the best or worst thing to happen to children since the hoverboard.
On one side, child rapists, murderers, people falling from cliffs all fit neatly into a narrative of “Pokemon Go is very dangerous” — while most of these things would likely happen regardless of the game’s existence. On the other, “Pokémon Go is the answer to every parent’s dream” — “Two former Marines playing ‘Pokemon Go’ help nab attempted murder suspect” — or “Children’s hospital using ‘Pokemon Go’ to get patients out of bed.” They all clearly speak to the benefits of this silly game without the disadvantages — most of which could happen or be motivated otherwise.
Irrational reactions to technology are rooted in communism
So let me be clear: tools cannot be good or bad. Only their effects can and by some order and magnitude.
This is the existentialist’s problem, rooted in Karl Marx’s epiphenomenalism. Marx believed that the world moved by the force of power and physical order. To him, there is no phenomenon of what we would call good or evil — God or the devil. The means of production create technologies that bring about war and class struggle. And controlling those means leads to success or failure for a particular faction. Like Marx, we often are fooled into believing that a technology (such as a gun) can lead us to some evil and therefore it must always be thwarted over its worst effect.
Technologies are full of effects. The worst of them are usually longer-term and hidden from plain sight. For instance, the prevalence of cancer and death from using birth control or the damage to our brains from using GPS. But again, no tool is inherently morally evil. It is only its effects that are a cause for worry.
Superstructures are tools too
Ahead of the major political party conventions, we see a similar story unfolding. Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are seeing some of the highest unfavorables in presidential history and party members are scratching their heads over why. So too, for many decades, have we misinterpreted our political party as a “good” that aims to implement our versions of morality or ethics — our truths. Instead, the national party is but a neutral tool for corralling interest through representative democracy. It cannot be good or evil. Also, I just really wanted to use this picture of Trump and Hillary as Pokémon.
It is easy to give up hope and trash a two-party system when it stops working for us — a system that has brought us this far in the American experiment. It is easy to suddenly abandon a tool once it starts producing results we find distasteful or wrong — even though we may personally be at fault. When a hammer stops being used to build houses and starts being used to crush skulls, look to the person with the hammer; not the hammer.
Conclusion!
Technology is incredible and being able to discern the good effects from the bad is what makes us prudent and assertive adopters. Avoiding snake oil salesmen and tech evangelists (those who benefit from our adoption) is key to escaping the hype and determining which tools we should use and which we shouldn’t.
While I admit I often resist injecting new technologies into my daily routine, I must always acknowledge that the tool itself is not a moral good or evil. Social media, television, and rock ’n’ roll are not bad. They are merely morally-neutral temptations to engage in potentially good or potentially evil actions that our intentions sanction. Anyone selling you anything different has another motive.
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