Culture: The Arbiter of Technology
One might think that with the exponential hype machine around Artificial Intelligence and the bubbling of quantum computing that massive technological change in society is underway. That it is coming fast and furious and has left most of us standing there like a deer in the headlights. The reality is much different.
Technological change in society is faster than hundreds of years ago, but the ultimate decision maker on any technology, how it gets accepted or rejected or changed, has always been culture. And in the end, technology gets better as a result. Why? What does this mean for the future of humanity?
In democracies, when culture as society (sociocultural systems) decides it wants something to change, like it did with AT&T and the New Deal in the last Gilded Age, it reaches a point where society outweighs the value of the lobbyists dollars. This is what is happening with regard to social media. It is a battle that not even the deep pockets of Meta can win.
It is hard to say how this will all play out with regard to Artificial Intelligence, but the AI giants like OpenAI, Microsoft, Google and Amazon, will eventually have to face their greatest arbiter. Culture. They’re currently sounding alarm bells of the dangers. Their goal is to secure moats around themselves to own as much market share as possible. This is a risky gamble. If…
