Sunday Night Thoughts on Tech

I spend a lot of time thinking about technology. Mostly, it's at a pretty superficial level that involves thinking up use cases to justify buying new gadgets ("this could be really helpful if I need to simultaneously listen to a podcast and read a book while flying!"), but occasionally I stumble into more fertile ground.

This forms the basis for my first 'Sunday Night Thoughts' post where I'm going to throw a few bits and pieces of thinking out there, along with some interesting things I've read.

So, my Sunday Night Thoughts -

1. Technology is the single most powerful force in the world today - I just don't see any way to dispute this any more. You're either on this boat, of you've missed it. Media (news scrapers, citizen journalism, proliferation of information), politics (campaign finance, wikileaks, so-called 'twitter revolutions' - more on that later), warfare (drones), manufacturing (automation), marketing ('earned' media, channel proliferation), human interaction and networks (LinkedIn, Facebook) ... you can go on and on.

If you're reading this, nodding your head, and saying 'tell me something I don't know' - then, great. But, honestly, I am continually shocked at the extent to which this would be a radical assertion within the more traditional business sectors in which I find myself on a regular basis. I think this is a big blind spot for a lot of people.

2. I'm deeply ambiguous about whether it's a force for good - Unlike a lot of technologists (Clay Shirky, Kevin Kelly, Daniel Pink, etc.) I just don't buy the idea that we're entering a new age where technology will bring us together, liberate the oppressed, and free our 'Cognitive Surplus.'

This is all based on the idea that technology creates a platform through which like-minded people can find each other. This can be good, but it can also be tremendously bad. Google's Eric Schmidt spoke about this issue a few weeks back - http://j.mp/bOLr3W - short, and to the point.

Clay Shirky - author of Here Comes Everybody and Cognitive Surplus, is a very famous technologist and I actually find a lot of what he says very interesting. But I definitely identify with this critique of a lot of the over-optimistic hyberbole that surrounds technology - http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/articles/future-guy_513321.html

That's it for Sunday - talk soon.