Some months back while I was in a waiting room, reading Ruben Shade’s blog prompted me to write down thoughts I have on tech optimism.

I found his post his post relatable. Both in his young experiences with tech and frustration with it’s current state of affairs.

I miss being optimistic about technology.

Not mostly, or somewhat, or with caveats. No “leaving aside…”, or ifs, or buts. Just unabashed, unashamed… wow, isn’t tech cool!?

Tech for good exists, but it was never as realized in the commercial world as we’d like to think. I think the only way keep tech optimism is with caveats. Tech is not neutral. It never was. There is no linear scale of more sophisticated tech making for a better world. Tech can go in all kinds of directions. Not all good, but not all bad either.

Things usually have to be understood in context. Take religion. You can’t understand it isolated from society¹. It’s the same with tech. You have to understand it in context of society. Since the 70s one of the biggest influences in society has been market capitalism and deregulation. This means a lot of tech got expressed in terms of those ideas. However, they are not the only ideas² that can guide tech!

If you look to at tech history, a lot of the pioneers have always been idealistic.

I’m interested in user interfaces and the use of computers beyond raw computation. One of the greatest pioneers in that field was Douglas Engelbart. While he had a successfull career as an engineer in the military, he decided he wanted to use his talents for the betterment of mankind, and changed career. The institute that bears his name are working towards that goal to this day. With his manifesto On Augmenting Human Intellect as a guide, he and his team unveiled their inventions in The Mother of All Demos. This was the beginning of modern graphical user interfaces for computers and so much more. And it was motivated by idealism and a wish to help humanity!

As an aside, I think I’ve read somewhere that Engelbart was described as a unusually kind person³. I think that’s really cool! I’m tired of the celebration of mean (supposed) geniuses.

Take another computing pioneer: Alan Kay. His work at Xerox PARC was things inspired by Montessori education among other things. Like Engelbart, he wanted to make computing a tool that helps us think and solve problems. To help humanity.

This was a long time ago. What about today? Earnest idealistic tech projects still exists! Dynamicland headed up by Bret Victor is a great example. From their point of view the future of computing is not in an isolating VR-headset, but in bringing computation into the physical world⁴. Think less Black Mirror and more arts and crafts infused by computation.

You won’t find a lot of this in the for-profit tech world. My guess is that the commercial side of tech have been dishonest in their idealistic claims. Maybe even to themselves.

Tech idealism isn’t limited to research projects. The independent websites of indie web and decentralized social media in the fediverse show how great non-commercial tech can be⁵.

Broadly speaking, tech being available to more people fascilitate invention. Look at Kenyan Maasai’s invention of a device to keep cows safe from lions. Imagine what more people would do if they had more resources⁶. It’s not enough for tech to exist, it has to be accessible. We’re missing many inventions because too many people are denied the resources to utilize their creativity and problem solving.

Tech can help make society better, but you have to pair it with the right ideas. We probably have to fight for those ideas. Politcal aspects can’t be ignored. We have to consider what kind of tech we want, not merely how much.

Is this pure tech optimism? No. However, I don’t think we should miss naive tech optimism. An honest outlook will make us better able to grasp actual opportunities to do good.

I’m optimistic about tech with caveats.

Footnotes

1. An understanding that’s somewhat missing in protestant cultures ↩

2. The obvious alternative would be tech projects informed by socialism, but that is not what I’m thinking of. They have been attempted though. ↩

3. Sadly I can’t find the source for this. So take it with a grain of salt. ↩

4. I agree with Dynamicland that VR-headsets are not the future of spatial computing. They don’t think ”Ai” is the future either. ↩

5. Or at least better than the tech giant alternatives. ↩

6. Including but not limited to tech. Tech is just one part of a bigger puzzle. ↩