Our Weird Expectations of Technologies
I’ve written a fair bit on how human societies adopt technology, why we fear and love it and how culture is always the ultimate decider of any revolutionary technology. But what about what we expect from some technologies?
With so much hype around Artificial Intelligence (AI), specifically Generative AI (GAI) and more robots opening more doors into society, literally and figuratively and other world-shifting technologies, perhaps it’s time to explore our expectations around digital technologies impacting our world today. And why our expectations are rarely met, which is probably a good thing.
For example, in the 3rd century A.D., some Romans felt that sundials were ruining youth. In setting up our expectations regarding the telephone, the NY Times over a century ago thought we’d be able to talk to the dead. That expectation died out quickly.
We often think that a technology is invented by a singular human, because that’s how we tend to celebrate them when society becomes aware of them. Or we give celebrity status to individuals around certain technologies. Public figures have long played a role in setting society’s expectations of a technology. We see this today with Sam Altman and OpenAI or Jensen Huang, the founder of Nvidia. Both brilliant people, but neither invented the technologies they promote.
