The Social Life of Technology
According to the ancient Greeks humans received the gift of fire from the Titan, Prometheus. Paleoanthropologists have unearthed evidence that our early ancestor, homo erectus, was able to control fire around 400,000 years ago. Whether looking through the lens of myth or science the analysis is similar: controlling fire was a watershed event in human evolution. It was perhaps the first of many critical technological thresholds that would radically change our relationship with the environment, ourselves and what it means to be human.
Once again we are traveling through such a technological threshold. And while this digital edge is full of promise and potential, the transition, as we are witnessing, is full of peril – whether it be of the political, economic or social variety. As the philosopher, Ken Wilber, has stated, “technological revolutions can speed through the social system extremely quickly – leaving the old cultural worldview completely out of sync with the new realities.” It is precisely this lack of symmetry between our emerging digital infrastructure and our prevailing cultural worldview that is helping to fuel an age of uncertainty and disorientation.
The media theorist, Marshall McLuhan, felt that “our age of anxiety is a result, in great part, in trying to do today’s jobs with yesterday’s tools and yesterday’s concepts.” While some of the tools of today and tomorrow can be imagined with relative easy – mobile devices, digital networks, satellites and cyclotrons – the concepts of tomorrow don’t as easily come to mind. Flourishing in the world of today and tomorrow requires not only digital tools, but, perhaps more importantly, being digital. Being digital entails new kinds of social organization and new ways of thinking and communicating. The narrative of history informs us that new forms of social organization trail in the wake of new technology. And when disequilibrium between new technology and the prevailing social structure exists then cognitive dissonance ensues.
As an educator I believe education has a significant role to play in guiding society through this twilight zone. Yet, education is retrospective. It looks to the past for guidance and understanding. An orientation toward tradition may appear to be counter to the kind of education that is likely to prepare students for a world of exponential change and uncertainty, but if we are to summon the courage to leap into the future then it may serve us well to understand what pathways have carried us to the edge of history.
There isn’t consensus when the wheel was invented but most archaeologists think that it probably emerged about 5,500 years ago in Mesopotamia. Initially it wasn’t a load bearing device but was conceived to cast pottery. Only three hundred years later were they were used for chariots. Fast forward to 500 BCE and the wheel was adapted for metaphysical reasons in Indian. The Dharmachakra, or known more simply as the Wheel of Life, is the universal symbol for Buddhism. The wheel represents the teachings of the Buddha. His first discourse in Deer Park is known as the first turning of the wheel of dharma (or cosmic law). The eight spokes of the wheel symbolize the Noble Eightfold Path the Buddha set forth. Interestingly, one of the key concepts of Buddhism, dukkha, which is commonly translated as suffering, has etymological roots that means a wheel out-of-true. Technology is invented for seemingly straightforward reasons, yet as society becomes ensconced in their new realities, they begin to shape habits of mind and create new metaphors we live by because they structure our perception and understanding in novel ways.
Buddha lived 2,500 years ago in what the German philosopher, Karl Jaspers, called the Axial Age. The Axial Age was a time of great turning throughout the world. Iron was discovered and became a driver of change in warfare and economics. Coinage was invented and power began shifting from the Kings and temples to the marketplace. Inequality and violence was widespread. The old worldviews were out of date for the new social and economic realities that were emerging. It was in this crucible that revolutionary thinkers emerged in China, India, the Middle East and Ancient Greece that would lay down the philosophical and religious foundation that is still the bedrock of modern civilizations.
The Axial Age is most remembered for the seminal ideas that socially restructured societies from east to west. One of the powerful catalyzes for driving this process was the widespread use of iron. Little did the metallurgist that first smelted iron know that fashioning arrowheads and plough tips out of iron ore would help stimulate social revolutions. Rapid external development in society puts pressure on internal development to keep pace with the outward changes. During the Axial Age this pressure created the teachings of the Buddha, the Bhagavad Gita, the Tao Te Ching, the Analects of Confucius, the writing of Plato and Aristotle and the Hebrew scriptures. These writings and teachings created a new moral and metaphysical center of gravity that civilizations in India, China and Mediterranean could be structured around.
It wasn’t until the Industrial Revolution that another German thinker, by the name of Karl Marx, provided a framework for seeing how a change in the techno-economic base of society begins to change the social structure of society. Through his analysis of history Marx noticed that as technological development propelled societies from hunting and gathering to plowing fields to mechanizing labor, these technological changes lead to changes in social organization, which lead to changes in beliefs and values.
Technological revolutions in steam power, iron smelting and textile manufacturing in the 18th century launched the industrial revolution and radically reconfigured the social structure of those societies in the throws of such monumental change. Almost every aspect of economic and social life changed. And while the economic growth was exponential, the social benefits of these technological and economic changes weren’t as swift. Dramatic social and economic change wasn’t embraced as a godsend by all sectors of society. The transition was disruptive, disorienting and painful. As a result new social structures and civic models are needed to adapt with the changing base of society.
Clay Shirky in his book, Cognitive Surplus, writes how London’s rapid urbanization, a side effect of industrialization at the beginning of the 18th century, created a chaotic social climate that fueled a gin craze. In essence, London in the 1720’s was on a collective bender. According to Shirky, “What made the craze subside wasn’t any set of laws. Gin consumption was treated as the problem to be solved, when in fact it was a reaction to the real problem – dramatic social change and the inability of older civic models to adapt. What helped the Gin Craze subside was the restructuring of society around the new urban realities created by London’s incredible social density, a restructuring that turned London into what we’d recognize as a modern city, one of the first. Many of the institutions we mean when we talk about ‘the industrialized world’ actually arose in response to the social climate created by industrialization, rather than to industrialization itself.”
Education was one such institution that changed in response to the new social and economic realities. Universal education was designed to meet the social and economic needs of the industrial revolution. Before the industrial age most human lived in rural setting and worked as farmers. The shift from country to city and from farm to factory was seismic. Universal education was conceived of to socialize and prepare the masses to think like a factory worker. This model is now severely outdated. Factories and factory works have been outsourced to developing economies decades ago. Both factories and the service industry, which makes up the bulk of developed economies, are increasingly being replaced by automation – whether it’s done with software or robots. These vary technological changes are creating a chaotic social climate: unemployment, vexing copyright laws, social media cocoons, and fracturing of values and beliefs. And social institutions haven’t been able to keep pace with these changes. Only new social structures can tame this chaos.
Nicholas Negroponte, in his prescient book from the 90s, Being Digital, writes about the power of digital technology to globalize society, decentralize control and flatten organizational hierarchies. He even speculates that digital technology is helping to erode the power of the nation-state, which may eventually become an artifact of history. These dynamics are clearly in the process of morphing our society, but there is tremendous resistance to this digital tide on a social level because it is threatening prevailing institutional culture. Decentralized control and flattening organizations may be a good goal, and in fact my be the future, but this process of restructuring requires disarming institutional defense mechanisms that we all enable to varying degrees to maintain stability.
Psychological research has revealed that social structure is critical to identity formation. When societies aren’t stable and existing social systems – from economic to political to educational – are being bent by external pressures, then social integration is more challenging and identity negotiation becomes commonplace. This can lead to crisis or transformation. Social structure can be used to measure a society’s capacity to change and how flexible it is. On the whole we need to imbue greater adaptability into our relationships writ large: how we learn, communicate and collaborate. How we relate to one another and how we work together needs to undergo a phase change.
In, Non-Zero: The Logic of Human Destiny, Robert Wright distills history’s trajectory from hunter-gatherers to our modern civilizations. Evolution of human societies follow a central template: new technologies emerge that encourage greater forms of interdependence, then social structures evolve that can capture the potential of the technology. Kevin Kelly comes to similar conclusions in, What Technology Wants, “This cyclotron of social betterment is propelled by technology. Society evolves in incremental doses; each rise in social organization throughout history is driven by an insertion of new technology.”
Technology may be a powerful driver of change but it is only a more evolved social structure – the way people interact within all facets of society – that can capture the potential of the technology. A transformation of social structure is needed. In physics this is called a phase change. A classic example is when liquid water transforms into ice or steam. It’s still water but its structure has transformed due to changes in external conditions. On a global level we are undergoing dramatic environmental, technological, economic, political and social changes. These changing external conditions are heating human bonds and are leading to a transformation of social structure.
In education digital technology and 21st century learning have become quite fashionable. Schools that have the resources to integrate digital tools are eager to do so. However, if we are to learn anything from history, it should be that technology alone isn’t enough to prepare students – and society at large – for monumental changes. Digital tools are only the beginning. They are intimations of greater changes to come. It will be the novel and creative ways that people interact using technology that will generate the innovation all sectors of our society are looking for. If flattening hierarchies and decentralizing control are previews of coming attractions, then what does that mean for education?
Let’s start with the classroom. Flattening hierarchies and decentralizing control would increase autonomy and augment network interaction. A flattened hierarchy would transform the teacher from an omnipotent silo of knowledge to more of a designer, coach and guide. This would enable greater autonomy for students to pursue what intrinsically motivates them within an environment shaped by design thinking and under the guidance of a teacher. Greater network interaction would emphasize collaboration versus individual achievement. With an Internet connection via a smart phone, tablet or laptop a learning network would be rooted in the local environment but limited only by ones imagination. Integral to this structural shift is the collapse of departmental walls and cultivation on multidisciplinary thinking. This is not your father or mothers school. But it is the kind of learning your can find at two of the world’s premier universities: MIT and Stanford.
The Media Lab at MIT and the d.School at Stanford both foster a culture of learning that underscore intrinsic motivation, collaboration, interdisciplinary thinking, trial and error and production versus passive learning. The research and projects from both schools are internationally recognized for their innovative methodology by corporate, non-profit and governmental organizations. Not only are these schools models of 21st century learning, they also provide a template for effective 21st century work environments. The Harvard professor, Tony Wagner, in his book, Creating Innovators, interviewed Mitchel Resnick, head of academic programs at the Media Lab and a professor of learning research, to understand not just what the Media Lab does but how learning happens there. According to Resnick the linchpin to future success is the ability to think and act creatively. He goes on to say, “we take our inspiration from the ways people learn in kindergarten, where kids have opportunities to create, design, and build collaboratively. The best way to develop creativity is to design and create things in collaboration with one another. We also find that people do their best work when they are working on things that they care deeply about – when it’s their passion.”
In times of great change we are called to adapt to our changing conditions and think and act in new ways. Of course we should learn from our past and respect tradition. But failing to ever leave the safe harbor of tradition won’t yield new discoveries, insights and innovations. In many respects we need to adopt the mindset of the Victorian explorer, David Livingstone. When asked if he needed more men for an expedition he replied, “If you have men who will only come if they know there is a good road, I don't want them. I want men who will come if there is no road at all.” The quest for certainty prevents venturing into the unknown. Yet it is the unknown that is the frontier of opportunity and evolution.
An edited version of this article was originally published on MediaShift.