The myth of progress and the dangers of monoculture
Photo by Fabrizio Verrecchia on UnsplashTechnological determinism presents a tempting narrative. We see society shaped by technology and technology shaped in turn by society, and we feel justified, by that tight coupling, in saying that technologies that failed did so for a good reason and that our current lineup, because it survived in the hyper-speed pseudo-Darwinism of the global market, is fitter in some general, eternal sense. Path dependence, because it’s so difficult to predict ahead of time, gives us the illusion of destiny. The phenomenon of simultaneous discovery bolsters this feeling — “with steam engines comes steam-engine time” because until that point the prerequisites for steam engines were not in place, and come “telephone time” six people file patents simultaneously.
It is, however, an illusion. Technology (as the class of all human-made items) doesn’t “want” anything, although specific technologies have particular prerequisites and particular side effects that make them fit better in particular environments. Unlike the pseudo-Darwinism of global markets, this is a real Darwinism: the only metric for success is existence, and fitness is always contingent upon the environment. A technology that is fit for 1998 is not fit for 2018, but likewise, a technology that is fit for 2018 is not fit for…