
“Technology widens existing disparities” - Amezarak
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/09/us/taking-a-tire-iron-to-techie-triumphalism.html
======
rayiner
This is a fantastic article. I appreciate this bit in particular:

> Mr. Toyama used to share that worldview: “I am a recovering technoholic,” he
> writes. Then he moved to India, to lead the Microsoft lab, and observed a
> phenomenon that he would come to believe was universal: “Technology’s
> primary effect is to amplify human forces.” When computers entered rural
> schools, for instance, guess who held the mouse? Upper-caste boys.
> Technology wasn’t an intrinsic leveler or a bulldozer to archaic structures:
> It just gave people new, improved tools to be lovely or horrible to each
> other in all the old ways.

Technology lets you do more and more extreme versions of what you were going
to do anyway. It should come as no surprise that the most newsworthy outcome
of putting laptops in the hands of schoolchildren is teachers using them to
spy on kids. It's a predictable outcome of the social dynamic, one which
technology itself can only amplify, not change.

Of course, technology can be a component enabling larger trends of social
change. Consider the industrial revolution. A strong argument can be made that
modern technology is a prerequisite for modern liberal democracy. But the
immediate impact of industrialization was not liberal democracy throughout
Europe. That followed about a century later, on the back of human forces.

~~~
wozniacki

      Then he moved to India, to lead the Microsoft lab, and 
      observed a phenomenon that he would come to believe was 
      universal: “Technology’s primary effect is to amplify human
      forces.” When computers entered rural schools, for instance,
      guess who held the mouse? Upper-caste boys. 
      Technology wasn’t an intrinsic leveler or a bulldozer to 
      archaic structures: It just gave people new, improved tools
      to be lovely or horrible to each other in all the old ways.
    

I don't know what to say but that's just gut-wrenching. All the high-altitude
"Loon" balloons [1] and lightweight "Aquila" drones [2] won't make much of a
difference if it were up to the local warlord in Central Africa or strongman
in India to decide who gets to live in shacks with uninterrupted power, much
less "who holds the mouse". Now, does it?

If true change is desired, tech powerhouses like Google & FB cannot but
develop a political will to address the chronic root causes behind the
problems of technological disenfranchisement, among the world's downtrodden.

[1] [http://www.google.com/loon/how/](http://www.google.com/loon/how/)

[2] [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/26/technology/drones-
beaming-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/26/technology/drones-beaming-web-
access-are-in-the-stars-for-facebook.html)

~~~
M8
Furthermore some tech like Facebook and Twitter can be "weaponized" to ruin
entire previously stable economies.

------
djcapelis
This article's beginning is eyeroll inducing, but when it gets to covering the
actual critiques of how technology has shaped and influenced the world good
points are made.

I've noticed similar things. I'm not sure how we really get to the point where
technology is a force used for leveling the playing field and not a force used
for exacerbating it.

But I do know that it's important for the people who care about these things
to engage with it. I know we'll be even worse off if the tech people that care
about how tech impacts the world and care about leveling the playing field
drop out of the field.

Tech has become increasingly soulless. None of us can afford to let that trend
win.

~~~
panzagl
If technologists shouldn't try to change the world, who should? I guess we
should just roll over and do whatever the politicians and bankers want,
they've done such a brilliant job so far.

~~~
rayiner
It wasn't technologists that overthrew King James II and declared the
supremacy of Parliament, founded the United States, freed the slaves, pushed
for universal suffrage and civil rights, etc. It won't be technologists that
end the war on drugs, bring marriage rights to everyone, implement universal
healthcare and basic income, etc.

Having gone to engineering school, I used to have the same arrogance for
superior role of engineers in society. As I have gotten older, I have come to
realize that while engineers are important, other people play very important
roles in progress.

~~~
reagency
The internet has been incredibly powerful in giving isolated queer folk a
place to come together and organize.

------
themeek
During the stone age militaries and governments wielded stone.

During the bronze age militaries and governments wielded bronze.

During the iron age militaries and governments wielded iron.

We shouldn't be surprised that, during the information age, militaries and
governments wield information.

The utilization of technology, like any tool, can be used for bad or good or
positive or negative or might or right. It is agnostic to propriety and to
morals.

When techies magnified the power of technology in the 80s, they used to herald
information and its decentralization as something to magnify the power of the
people.

Today when techies magnify the power of technology, they herald its use by
large corporations or mimick the interests of their military. They think they
are champions for people, for decentralization, but the vocabulary changed
without their knowing about it and the excuses are more plentiful than good
intentions, manifestos or philosophies.

~~~
mirimir
More or less, computers were developed by governments for designing nuclear
weapons, processing and decrypting intercepts, and so on. The PC revolution
did foster decentralization, but it was an accident. They're correcting.

------
Terr_
> “Technology’s primary effect is to amplify human forces.” [...] It just gave
> people new, improved tools to be lovely or horrible to each other in all the
> old ways.

I think this encapsulated most of it, followed by:

> In each arena, he writes, technologists ignore “the unavoidable role of
> social forces.”

Yes. In my early-career, I think I had bought into this foggy notion that
somehow everything could be solved if you just made a clever-enough
technological solution that somehow realigned people's incentives and desires.

After working in a large company for a while, I've gradually come to believe
that a lot of sub-par technology exists because nobody faced the
social/organizational problems first.

------
norea-armozel
I think the article is on point with regard to the likes of Schmidt and Gates
and other folks in the Silicon Valley culture, but for the rest of the tech
world there's always been a stronger sense of skepticism towards the
transformative properties of technology.

Institutions and norms still matter regardless of how cheap the next iPhone
can be made. And if you still have institutions and norms that promote
something like racism or homo/transphobia then you're going to still have
those around no matter what technology is employed. If you can't change minds,
then you can't change how technology will be used.

------
markc
>When computers entered rural schools, for instance, guess who held the mouse?
Upper-caste boys. Technology wasn’t an intrinsic leveler..

Of course it's not an _intrinsic_ leveler. Who claims that? But wasn't it
"technology" that made it possible for the rural school to have a computer _at
all_? That looks like leveling to me - between urban "haves" and rural "have
nots". Sure, most of us would want this leveling to happen faster - but over
time each kid will get their own mouse (or whatever), and we can move on to
concerns about how the brahmin kid's computer is nicer. That's progress.

>It’s a world full of trained engineers — and many college dropouts — who
cannot be expected to grasp human dynamics any more than political scientists
understand Java code.

What a ridiculous false-equivalency. Engineers live in the world and thus
develop some understanding of "human dynamics" whereas non-coders do not get
exposure to coding just by living their lives.

>If family dinners and school lunches were painful for you, “disrupting”
eating with a venture-capital-backed protein drink like Soylent can seem like
liberation.

This is cringe-worthy. Psychologize much?

>Talented chefs don’t believe their sauteeing skills entitle them to reimagine
Web browsers, but talented technologists feel entitled to reimagine cooking

Because technologists cook too! Especially anyone who'd create cooking
technology! Another false equivalency. Technologists: live in the world, use
products, cook, clean, travel, eat, buy, ... whereas non-engineers (for the
most part) do not code, or design electronics, etc.

>“If you’re a concert pianist, it doesn’t mean that you have any special
knowledge about how to cause social change,” Mr. Toyama told me. “And yet
that’s the equivalent of the thinking that many entrepreneurs engage in.”

Really? We're a bunch of idiot savants with Dunning-Kruger? Screw you Toyama.

>But Mr. Toyama disagrees: “Technology — even when it’s equally distributed —
isn’t a bridge, but a jack. It widens existing disparities.”

Evidence please? And what if disparities are widened because everyone gets a
50% boost? Don't do it?

I'm the first to agree that handing out a tablet to every kid is no panacea,
and that programs where that happens are poorly planned. But naive, poorly
executed attempts to introduce technology are hardly evidence of futility.
Silver bullets have never tended to be as effective as holistic efforts with
measurement and feedback loops. A critique of tech as silver bullet is
certainly justified. A critique of it as inherently malignant is not.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
> >But Mr. Toyama disagrees: “Technology — even when it’s equally distributed
> — isn’t a bridge, but a jack. It widens existing disparities.”

> Evidence please? And what if disparities are widened because everyone gets a
> 50% boost? Don't do it?

Well, it's not _evidence_ , but Paul Graham said the same thing in one of his
essays (don't remember which one, sorry). He said that technology is a
multiplier. Instead of the distribution of talent (or perhaps productivity?)
going from 1 to 10, now it goes from 1 to 1000.

So PG's position is that it's not just 50% boost for everybody. It widens
differences more than just by scaling existing ones by a constant factor.

~~~
oldmanjay
I'm not convinced that widened differences are a real problem. They are
certainly a perceived problem, and they seem to give people emotional flutters
about the envy center, but I'm not sure what there is to "solve" about that.

------
bcg1
I like this article and I definitely agree with Toyama's view, however my
emotional reaction might be summarized as "Meh, welcome to the party... even
though you're a little a late we're glad you showed up"

A lot of the points in the article are of course right in line with many of
the arguments that RMS et al have more over the years.

The assertion that 'technologists' (as opposed to concert pianists etc) feel
entitled to enact social change is simplistic and misleading. Those who feel
entitled in this way are in general just wealthy ego-maniacal control
freaks... and in the current age technology is one place where the money is,
so that's where they are. That said, there seems to be a bizarre tendency to
give 'technologists' a free pass on ideas and actions that are quite obviously
negative for free society and human rights.

Of course, powerful monied interests trying to reshape societal for the
perpetuation of their own power and ideology is nothing new... meet the new
boss, same as the old boss. At least the article does a good job of attacking
the false notion the power of technology to transform is unequivocally
positive.

~~~
advael
>That said, there seems to be a bizarre tendency to give 'technologists' a
free pass on ideas and actions that are quite obviously negative for free
society and human rights.

I think tech billionaires occupy the position of the "new, cool rich". I don't
know if it's our (Western? US?) culture or humanity in general that likes
seeing underdogs (or, more often, people who can paint themselves as underdogs
successfully) win, but there seems to be a long history of the powerful
becoming out of touch and against the interests of the many (Either by
ignorance, indifference, or very occasionally deliberate malice), new powerful
people emerging (Sometimes but not always replacing the old powerful people),
and people thinking of them as heroes who "made it" for a while before they've
been around long enough that it's clear they've become out of touch and
against the interests of the many, if they weren't in the first place.

The free pass is the sheen of new power, rather than entrenched power, and it
wears off quickly.

------
_rpd
> “Technology — even when it’s equally distributed — isn’t a bridge, but a
> jack. It widens existing disparities.”

As an unqualified statement this is too absolute. Some technology decidedly
levels the playing field. As always the key is to be mindful of the
consequences of your actions.

------
hyperion2010
The only case where I think tech can become anything other than a tool is if
it somehow contributes to something like a phase transition in how the
physical a social world works (think benevolent and actually independent AI or
something like that).

------
JesperRavn
Look at a graph of log GDP for the world or the US over the last 200 years.
Why does it keep going up? Mainly because of technology. If you want an
accurate, rather than pithy, summary of the effects of technology, it would be
"technology gives us more and better things" or "technology makes the world
richer". Distribution is an issue, but without technological growth there
would be nothing extra to redistribute in the first place.

------
johngalt
'Techies' already know that technology is not god. I don't criticize computers
for not dissolving class disparities for the same reason that I don't
criticize an amortization table for not solving poverty. This doesn't make me
some sort of uncritical devotee to the church of technology. I never had the
premise that technology would solve all problems to begin with.

------
VLM
The article could be extended and mashed up to obtain an interesting, perhaps
useful, alternative conclusion.

A quarter century ago there were very popular pop psychology books by a guy
named john gray whom I believe is still alive on the difference between men
talking about problems and women talking about problems with the claim of an
unusually accurate stereotype is men, especially tech men, mostly talk about
problems to fix them as best they can (however poorly that may be) and women
mostly talk about problems to air their grievances and de-stress and if they
wanted a best effort repair, being strong women they'd have already done it
themselves so men should F off, shut up, listen, and not tell them what to do.
The above is a gross and inaccurate summary based on failing memories of an
entire series of pop psych books from a long time ago, but I don't think I
totally messed up my summary. At least not on purpose.

Anyway looking at the article thru 25 year old pop psych glasses in a crazy
extended mash up, the author is bent out of shape because worldwide whenever
problems are discussed the only response is the "manly response" of trying
their best to fix the problem, however incompetently. So far the author and
quarter century old pop psych are in sync. They diverge at my suggestion that
perhaps attempting the "womanly response" of actually listening would be worth
a try when confronted with a problem. Or maybe 25 year old pop psych is best
left in the dustbin of history. But it is interesting to think about a bit.

I've made a lot of money for longer than many HN readers/posters have been
alive by fixing stuff. When I've gotten really stuck, sometimes its helped to
actually listen rather than wielding keyboards and screwdrivers and soldering
irons. Just saying anecdotally the obsolete pop psych stuff is occasionally
not totally useless.

Note I'm not trying to ignite a flamewar about women in tech. Especially since
"shut up and listen" isn't necessarily only useful when talking to women, and
I'm not even claiming that a quarter century old pop psych worldview is true
or universal or even generally useful, although I am claiming its super creepy
deja vu to hear a modern retelling of part of the story, admittedly with
different conclusions. Its just that the author describing (male) techies
trying to solve the worlds problems totally sounds like something John Grey
would have written. I wonder if the author read the same books and quite
possibly unconsciously is channeling John Grey or something.

------
dang
We changed the baity title to a representative sentence from the article.

~~~
greenyoda
Unfortunately, the current title doesn't convey that the article is about the
criticism of technologists' views. How about something like "A critique of
technology-based solutions to human problems"?

~~~
dang
That's true. Happy to change it again if anyone can suggest a more accurate
one. The "tire iron" thing is over the top, though.

~~~
greenyoda
Thanks. I've updated my previous comment with a proposed title.

~~~
dang
I'm loath to use language that doesn't come from the article itself. It's
almost always possible to find something in the text that works (if not a
title, then a representative phrase).

Edit: I've taken another crack at it. (Previous title was "Technology’s
primary effect is to amplify human forces".) Part of the problem here is that
the columnist seems to want to turn this into a dramatic, even violent
confrontation (spike-studded tire iron? how silly). It's not clear at all that
Toyama holds such views. Indeed his actual quoted words are more moderate than
the frame the columnist is putting on it.

------
spenrose
Aiming an Axe at Asinine Alliteration.

------
0xdeadbeefbabe
> the critics are often Luddites who struggle with their toasters

I think that's just a coincidence and not really the cause. You can find
luddites nowadays on hn who understand technology.

> if you’re a concert pianist, it doesn’t mean that you have any special
> knowledge about how to cause social change.

Haha such as Victor Borge, Tom Lehrer, and more.

What about actors like Schwarzenegger and Regan?

Recovering Alcoholics try to change the people around them too. Sometimes even
if the people around them don't have the same problems.

The humans are the problem and not the subset of human techies.

I admire the Toyama for blowing the whistle, but I think he's nearly as blind
as he was before realizing all this.

~~~
niccaluim
I believe this criticism is answered here: "Of course, such thinking, endorsed
by no one beyond the world of technology, would be of limited force. But the
technologist worldview has become widely influential."

No one's listening to recovering alcoholics outside of AA and maybe their
families. Schwarzenegger, Reagan, Borge, Lehrer—these are all individuals,
influential in their own way, but not commanding entire social movements with
uncritical followings. (Well, maybe Reagan did/does.)

~~~
0xdeadbeefbabe
I suppose we are both technologists. Did you think that giving poor kids in
India an ipad would solve some of their problems? I didn't think that, and I
still don't. You can find credulous dopes that do, but this implicates dopes
and not technologists or does it?

