The Ministry for the Future

90

Today we’re here to discuss the question of whether technology drives history.

No.

I’m sorry, are you saying that technology doesn’t drive history, or that you don’t want to discuss it.

Both.

Well, let’s focus on the first no instead of the second, and see if we can get some clarification on just why you would say that.

It’s a ridiculous question.

And yet it has been the title of books, essays, seminars, conferences, and the like. We ourselves are poor forked radishes, to quote someone, unless we augment our poor powers with tools. We are Homo faber, man the maker, and our tools are the only thing that allow us to cope with the world. We even co-evolved with our tools; first stones were picked up and sharpened, then fires started on purpose, and these tools made us human, as it was our precursor species who invented them, and after that we evolved into ourselves, and then on from there. Clothes to keep warm. The moment we find bone needles in the archeological record, for instance, we see people moving twenty latitude lines farther north than before.

So what?

So what? Excuse me? The question is, where would we be without our tools?

We think of ways to do things. If one way doesn’t work, we find another way.

But these are the ways we’ve found!

Path of least resistance. Dealing with the laws of physics. Picking up a rock for instance. It’s just trial and error.

Well, say we call that technology then! Doesn’t it follow that technology has been the driving force in history?

We are the driving force in history. We make do, and on it goes.

All right then. Enough of philosophy, I’m afraid I’m getting confused.

Yes.

Let’s move on to some specific examples. Have you heard of those drones developed to shoot mangrove seeds into the mud flats, thus seeding hundreds of thousands of new trees in terrain difficult of human access?

Very nice, but that same drone could shoot a dart through your head as you walk out your door. So it illustrates my point, if you care to think about it. Our tools are expressions of our intentions, so what we want to do is the key driver.

I’ll save that for our next foray into philosophy, which we will certainly schedule soon. Meanwhile, what do you think of these new bioengineered amoebae that are now grown in vats to form our fuel, while also drawing carbon out of the atmosphere? Kind of a next-stage ethanol?

Useful.

And other amoebae grown in vats can be dried to make a very tasty flour, thus eliminating the need for lots of ag land while feeding us all.

Also useful.

What about this blockchain technology, identifying where all money is and where it’s been on its way there?

Good idea. Money only works when you trust it. Tracking it might help with that. Get all that right and you might find money itself becoming irrelevant and going away.

Very good! And what about all the other recent transformations in that area that we’ve been seeing, the carbon coin, the guaranteed jobs, and so on? What you might call the social engineering, or the systems architecture?

These are the areas that matter! Our systems are what drive history, not our tools.

But aren’t our systems just software, so to speak? And software is a technology. Without the software, the hardware is just lumps of stuff.

My point exactly. By that line of reasoning, you end up saying design is technology, law is technology, language is technology—even thinking is technology! At which point, QED—you’ve proved technology drives history, by defining everything we do as a technology.

But maybe it is! Maybe we need to remember that, and think about what technologies we want to develop and put to use.

Indeed.

So, but back to all the new innovations in our social systems we’ve been seeing recently. It really does seem like an unusual time. You were saying you think these changes are good things?

Yes. Strike while the iron is hot. Put the crisis to use. Change as much as you can as fast as you can.

Really?

Why not?

Won’t so many changes at once lead to chaos?

It was chaos before. This is coping with chaos.

It’s a bit of a case of inventing the parachute as you fall, isn’t it?

Beats landing without one.

But will we have time?

Best work fast.

There are some who think we’ve already run out of time, that the hard landing is upon us now, which is what we’re seeing in current events. Have you heard that the warming of the oceans means that the amount of omega-3 fatty acids in fish and thus available for human consumption may drop by as much as sixty percent? And that these fatty acids are crucial to signal transduction in the brain, so it’s possible that our collective intelligence is now rapidly dropping because of an ocean-warming-caused diminishment in brain power?

That would explain a lot.