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Musings Report 2017-30 7-30-17 Is Technology Impacting Us More than Government?
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For those who are new to the Musings reports: they are basically a glimpse into my notebook, the unfiltered swamp where I organize future themes, sort through the dozens of stories and links submitted by readers, refine my own research and start connecting dots which appear later in the blog or in my books. As always, I hope the Musings spark new appraisals and insights. Thank you for supporting the site and for inviting me into your circle of correspondents.
Welcome to July's MUS (Margins of the Unfiltered Swamp)
The last Musings of the month is a free-form exploration of the reaches of the fecund swamp that is the source of the blog, Musings and my books.
Is Technology Impacting us More than Government?
We have been conditioned to see the government--central, state and local--as the primary source of impact in our lives.
This conditioning is based on the fact that we are largely powerless to escape the impact of government decisions and policies.
Should our central government trigger a nuclear war, we will suffer the consequences.
Government can take property via eminent domain, impound our bank account and property via unproven claims of wrongdoing (Civil Asset Forfeiture), and so on. A new government policy can impact our livelihood in numerous ways.
But if we set aside these dramatic examples of overwhelming government power over our lives, in day to day life, technological changes have greater impact on our lives.
Consider the amount of time people spend with their mobile phones now. This extraordinary change in daily life was not mandated by the government; technology became available that tapped into humanity's need to be connected to others by any means available.
If we look at automation, we find government is playing catch-up to private industry, or even worse, avoiding the benefits of automation.
Here's a small example. In the San Francisco Bay Area, the metro train system is BART -- Bay Area Rapid Transit. It was initially built in the late 1960s and became fully operational in the early 1970s. The system is in dire need of car replacement/track maintenance, as well as software upgrades. Fares have essentially doubled in a few years to pay for these very costly upgrades.
The human operator is required to announce each stop and basic instructions for passengers on how to connect to other BART lines in each station. As a long-time user of the system, my estimate is 98% of all the information uttered by BART train operators is mumbled or inaudible--completely, utterly useless, especially to non-native tourists.
Virtually every other developed-world transit system uses automated voice systems to announce stops and other information, and many make announcements in more than one language. The automated voice is clearly audible and useful.
This automated-station-announcement technology is old and easily programmable. Yet the "tech capital of the world" still relies on bored/tired human operators who fail to do a minimally useful job 98% of the time. (When we heard a BART operator speak the station and other information clearly, it was a revelation--we'd actually forgotten what it was like to hear a clearly audible operator voice on BART.)
This is a very small example of a profound trend: government can get us into wars and imprison us, but it can't keep up with technology or control its adoption or utility.
Much is said of government support of basic research which is the ultimate driver of technology. As a funding source of research and development, government definitely impacts technology.
But the daily-life impact of technology arises largely from private-sector development of basic research. In many of the leading technologies of our era, the government is trying to control technologies from the backseat, so to speak.
Cryptocurrencies are a good example. They arose (as far as we can tell) outside government agencies, and governments are trying to figure out how to respond and control these new digital forms of currency.
Now that the genie is out of the bottle, the idea that governments can ban cryptocurrencies or otherwise put them back in the bottle is impossible, despite claims to the contrary. Blockchain cryptocurrencies are likely to be integral parts of future economic development, and governments that try to limit or ban their spread are effectively tying the hands of their economies.
Here's another way to pose this: which entities impact our daily lives more--the government or Amazon, WeChat, Alibaba, Facebook, Apple, Google, et al.?
The adoption rate of technology is accelerating. 100 years ago, it took many decades for new technologies to spread into the general populace. The World Wide Web (i.e. web browsers) emerged in 1995, and now that it has spread to mobile telephony, billions of humans have access to the Web and related technologies.
This global transformation took roughly 20 years, and many of us feel it is still in the very early stages of development.
Recent technological developments have spread even faster--for example, smart phones have taken over mobile telephony in a mere decade.
Many commentators have noted that the machinery of government is slow and deliberate for good reason: consensus is required, and government regulators must get the basic rules and regs right before imposing them on industry and the public.
But the increasing speed of technological adoption is widening the gulf between technology's impact on daily life and governments' response/control mechanisms. If government agencies fail to exploit these very same technologies, they will be left further and further behind and become increasingly out of touch with the economy and society they are mandated to manage.
From Left Field
10,000 Hours With Claude Shannon: How A Genius Thinks, Works, and Lives
how our lives will change dramatically in 20 years by CEO of Mercedes
Russell Clark Speaks In Real Vision's "Most Requested Interview Ever" (via Cheryl A.)
The Fall of Working-Class New York-- universally accessible, affordable public works, spaces and systems...
The new astrology: By fetishisizing mathematical models, economists turned economics into a highly paid pseudoscience
Bill Miller, Josh Brown are the latest Wall Street pros to test the bitcoin waters
At Our Own Peril: DoD Risk Assessment in a Post-Primacy World -- long read, important...
11 Charts That Show Income Inequality Isn’t Getting Better Anytime Soon
U.S. Household Incomes: A 49-Year Perspective
A Primer On The "Global Sharing Economy" In 20 Charts
Is This The New Media Normal: Manufactured News For Hire? -- important explanation of journalism-for-hire...
Content isn't king -- mobile telephony is king
A Cleanup of ‘Holes in the Wall’ in China’s Capital (via Maoxian) -- busily destroying the only charming architecture left in China...
"Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body." Seneca
Thanks for reading--
charles
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