The Technology Industrial Complex

from the growing-out-of-control? dept

An opinion piece from the Stanford Business site seems likely to stir up a bit of controversy. The premise seems to be that instead of a military-industrial complex to be afraid of, people should now be afraid of the technology-industrial complex, which continually increases the speed at which new technologies are produced with little to no thought of the consequences. The article takes on the typical "we're going to destroy ourselves" tone of Bill Joy's work (and even mentions him saying that he must know what he's talking about). I don't really see what the problem is with the pace of new technologies increasing, and people who worry so much about them always seem to come out wrong in their final opinions. However, I do agree with some of the suggestions further down in the article, that technologists should make more of an effort to at least think about the social implications of their technology. I don't agree that technology "shouldn't be invented" because of the bad things it might do, but we should know what the possible implacations are - and do our best to minimize the negative ones.

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