Here's a theory:
Technology is ultimately driven by anti-social tendencies.
I don't mean
criminal tendencies - I just mean our reluctance to communicate with other human beings. Now, at a fundamental level, this is self-evidently true, because the inevitable alternative to using technology is to use more manpower (I use the term in a gender non-specific way, obviously). Ever since some guys sitting around a dusty river delta on the southern Mediterranean decided that what the skyline really needed was some really big triangles on it, the way to make things happen is either (a) use lots of people, or (b) invent some clever gizmo that means you need fewer people to do the job. If we were a species who genuinely and wholeheartedly revelled in each others' company, then why bother with technology? Every job would be a big party.
This tendency has become ever more obvious as time goes on. The Walkman, of couse, was perhaps the first technology which made the trend explicit, but it was going on for a long time before that. The invention of writing neatly circumvents all that tedious business of sitting around listening to old geezers sounding off about stuff (what overly-respectful anthropologists call the 'oral tradition'). Transport, in general, is devoted to getting you from where you are (where the people are dull) to where you want to go (where the people sound more interesting). Later on, the trend accelerates: the
first web cam was invented because a bunch of geeks couldn't keep a coffee pot full - not in and of itself a technically demanding task, but one which required rather more communication than they were willing to partake in.
Now some might argue that certain technologies have enabled us to communicate over long distances - something which must surely be inherently social. I disagree. I would suggest that these technologies actually allow you to talk to
people you already know but who are not within shouting distance, thus saving you from the terrible prospect of having to communicate and get along with
strangers who happen to be within earshot. Thus you are mercifully spared the prospect of having to make new friends by being able to communicate with your few old ones wherever they may be. What's more, most of the so-called 'enabling technologies' that we're talking about here are ones which enable you to find and talk to people who share a similar view of life to yourself. That's great for making friends quickly; but it also requires considerably less social skill to talk to someone who basically agrees with you, than someone who doesn't. Someone once said, 'each generation is its own secret society'. Communication technologies seem to have the universal effect of exaggerating the barriers which set each group apart as different, simply by allowing us to indulge our anti-social tendency to ignore those with whom we might have differences.
I'm not saying technology is a universally bad thing. I just think we should be honest about our motivations.
