Usman Haque - I Hate Technology
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One of the highlights of the We Love Technology day which took place on July 12 in Huddersfield was the keynote of architect Usman Haque. He titled it "I Hate Technology" and listed several things that bother him about technology. My rough notes: The word "technology" means something different today than what it used to imply in the past. Technology used to imply "knowledge", it was the study of making. It was not an object but the description of an object. Technology was more about the description of systems. Today we tend to think that technology resides in physical things. That is a rather dramatic change, from the way we describe things to objects containing this thing we call technology.
Consequence: But a look at train timetables (from 1973 to 1997) shows that even if loads of money has been poured into the train system, the trains actually got slower. There are reasons for that but many problematic issues actually deal with control, power and money and the way they are inlaid in the concept of technology. Wearable computing, internet, GPS, cybernetics and AI were first developed through military funding. Think about Thomas Edison. He sure was a clever marketing guy. He managed to put Tesla´s work aside and have his slightly inferior technology adopted. It is said that when Thomas Edison invented the dictating machine, or Ediphone. To publicize it, he sent one as a gift to Tolstoy. The Russian author did use it for a while, then sent it back with a note: “Dear Mr. Edison, Thank you, but it is too dreadfully exciting – I would never get any work done.� While reading Raymond Chandler´s book "The High Window" published in 1943, Haque found a passage where the detective gets back home. There is a note saying that a parcel is waiting for him. He can call and the parcel will be delivered again 24/7. He does and "Ten minutes later the door was knocked on." You wouldn't dream of anything similar and so fast happening these days. Money, power and control heavily linked to this idea of technology. There used to be hundreds of aircraft manufactures in the US and even thousands of automobile manufactures. Now something similar is happening to companies making electronics because there is so much emphasis on mobility. Promises: our dreams are preemptied. The way technology is sold to us inspires passivity, not reactivity.
Then there is ownership. Some people have it, other don not. That's the way it goes with technology, unlike sandals which are ubiquitous. Time scale: technology is something that exists now but not a short time ago. Suggested readings: Humberto Maturana´s essay Metadesign and a poke through Natalie Jeremijenko´s project How Stuff Is Made (image on the left). |
Another problem is obsolescence. Haque used the same phone for years. It was lighter than his new one, cheaper, batteries were better and it allowed him to read what was on the screen even in the sun, etc. He cannot find anymore another model of that phone which suited him perfectly. What used to disappear within years just vanishes within months now.
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V. thought-provoking for a Sunday morning.
Technology is still knowledge, of course, but today we have these huge bureaucracies built up around know-how that seek to prevent its open transmission. To the extent that this continues, we lose technology from generation to generation.
This can give us some cause for hope--I've seen it estimated that the USA could not easily re-start nuclear testing because almost everyone involved in the 60s and 70s is retired now. But it can also mean that genius design decisions, especially elegant interfaces (like the simple cell phone) are consigned to the dustbin o' history.
If we can liberate the tools--spreading technology in the knowledge sense--from the bureaucracy (or the cathedral or whatever), artists and hackers and just plain-old-everyday-humans will be able to make up some of the ground that has been lost. I've seen it first-hand with the open source software movement, and it's why the Maker movement and projects like RepRap are so darned inspiring.
Must. Keep. (Re-)building.
Because it ended up being a rather long response I've just posted my comments to my blog:
http://www.toxi.co.uk/blog/2007/07/technology-is-knowledge-is-power.htm
It's an interesting idea. But the negatives that are raised (eg, obsolescence & timescale) pale in comparison to the positives that technology provides.
Yes, iPhones grab the headlines. But if you choose, you can opt out of the bait ball frenzy of the 'so hot right now' technology mania. Instead, focus on the wonderful things technology provides: mobile phones in Africa, making finding work and price transparency easier. Medicine. And the ability to sharing information on a vast scale.
I feel similarly about technology as applied to software. When a given software is binary-only - unopenable in a text editor - it is closed for reading and so becomes opaque. As things become opaque they are increasingly perceived in the singular. The opacity of binary-only software creates the artificial condition of that given software being an artifact, an object.
The non-porous, singular, technological object is the staple of (esp Steve J´s) techno-arianism and related consumer utopias: the mechanism by which consumptive value is produced from the strategic disenfranchising of technology from the knowledge and multiple processes that both produce and embody it. Instead we are left with a ´technology´ readily demoted to the inanities of pure practicality and its abstracted fetishisms. This is The Product in all its technographic singularity.
This illusory irreducible condition is contrary to code - whether natural (spoken, sung) or formal. Like any body of text, it has no use until read, until in process. The illusion of irreducibility is also contrary to machines with visually discernable parts, like Swiss watches. Any technology both describes an action and enacts it at the same time (when I say "Ship" a ship passes through my lips - as the saying goes). Any separation of the two is contrived.
It´s not that I think we should all learn to read machine-code but we should certainly have the option to explore ´technology´ as a transparent chorus of human effort and thought. Moreso, I do think we should develop a talent for being embarassed at the metaphor of the Desktop and of icons; increasing numbers of us operate within this absurd (and occasionally practical) space all day.
The moment software is made unreadable by a person - the code unavailable to human eyes - it becomes useless in its usefulness. It is the great antique text in a Private Collection (Joyce). It becomes singular and opaque; the ´reading´ reduced to machine execution without entry for human (mis)interpretation and consequent human development.
Ubiquity and Usability aren´t all that they´re cr4cked up to be.
Here´s to transparent case mods, fish-tanks, screwdrivers, the General Public License and text-editors.. Cheers to Usman.
> Philadelphia to Los Angeles in 1965 lasted 5 hours and 5 minutes. In 2005, the ride was 6 hours and 1 minutes.
WHAT?! This train trip takes 3 days!
that Phil-LA trip definitely takes a number of days.
all else checks out, though. ;p
a simple google answers the question:
http://www.google.com/search?rls=en&q=%226+hours+1+minute%22+%225+hours+5+minutes%22+philadelphia+los+angeles&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
which gives this info (point being he must have been talking about planes, not trains for this example):
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/homepage/20070423_Farther__faster__Not_anymore.html
technology clearly doesn't improve all things. but we cannot resist it's power and there is no way we can reverse its transformations. the only hope is that like in the film War Games the computer is smart enough (smarter than us) to avoid our ultimate destruction.
I am not quite buying the train example. I bet these days they stop way more often on the way, giving more people the opportunity to travel from close wheer they live. Thats rather positive progress.
Many other examples itself prove rather than that technology sucks, that bureaucracy sucks. The production processes get ever more complex,because the things we do with the help of technology are getting ever more complex. Its is rather getting easier to produce things we are calling technology, but because of that, the quality level suffers as of with anything that you can find 2% makes real sense and 98% sucks or is irrelevant. Technology is not alone in that, look at news, I hate news just as much. Or cars, where is the real progress in cars these days?
It was as well way before Steve Jobs' IPOD that we were hip on gadgets. Remember mobile phones or walkmen? The stuff has been out there for ages and their social implications obvious. And as long as we want to hear about the option of living free from peer pressure and popular public believe, we want to listen to someone to remind us of that. But if so many people REALLY hate it, why do they spend their life exploring new ways of using and pushing technology? Isn't hate such a better word these days than love?
With the plane thing, the physical maximum for subsonic flight had been reached by 1965, so planes haven't got any faster since then. (Except by using six times the fuel and shattering windows).
"Today we tend to think that technology resides in physical things. That is a rather dramatic change, from the way we describe things to objects containing this thing we call technology."
This, at best, is a hollow, paternalist statement. The objects in question are the product of an application of knowledge, therefore can colloquially be said to "contain" that knowledge.
The rest of the article is not much better. Technophobia here seems to be being employed to disguise feelings of inappropriateness resulting from an ignorance of science and mathematics that in turn might be a result from contemporary architectural design curricula.
I have to agree with Uncle Unvoid on train-efficiency; I'm quite sure there are other factors playing along besides the negative sides of technology. Saying it takes a couple of minutes longer does not take into account for instance: The increased traffic on that line, the amount of stops pre and post, the amount of roadcrossings pre and post. Just to name some obvious things.
Then, I reckon it takes more than a razorblade manufacturer to change cultural perception of personal hygiene and beauty. To name but one of the ambivalent side-effect; The other razorblade companies will sell too. So where here is Wilkinson's logical drive?
Although he probably chose these examples for a good reason, my scientific gland is tickled to be skepical.
I see power being a logical component of any development that enables control of anything. 'Technology' as used above aggregates power, both practically and commercially. But isn't that exactly what capitalism is about?
So seeing technology as the problem here is about as bright as blaming the commies for unemployment.
Excellent article - reminds me of what Hakim Bey was saying about the fetishism around technology in the mid-nineties...
What I don't get is why someone would use the amazing technology called the Internet to write an article saying that technology is no good...
The Internet has vastly changed the way we do business, communicate, even recreate. It is undeniable that the Internet has been, for the most part, an incredible advancement.