For an explanation of SPLATS, see the main splats page
The complete list of technology topics, now all online.
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The social effects of technology
- Technology is much older than science: once, science was derived from new technology, today, it is more likely that technology will be derived from new science.
- Alan Kay's point that the only way to predict the future is to invent it remains valid. History has too many examples of impossibles that became possible.
- Every technology that has ever been developed has been attacked by people who see it, usually irrationally, as threatening their way of life in some way.
- Every technology, having been developed, has had social effects and consequences that could never have been anticipated when it was first introduced.
- Most new technologies have been dismissed as useless and dangerous nonsense by at least one elderly and experienced scientist who knows all about the subject.
- Many pieces of useless and dangerous nonsense have been correctly attacked and dismissed for what they are by at least one elderly and experienced scientist.
- That which scientists dismiss as impossible is only so under a set of assumptions and knowledge that are always open to revision, question and change.
- A new technology typically goes through a twenty-year development phase before becoming generally adopted and maturing over the next thirty years.
- At the end of the fifty years of development and maturation that all technologies seem to need, the social effects of the new technology start to become apparent.
- Technology is neither good nor bad. In the long run, every technology improves the lives of humans, but it can exact an incredible toll upon some human beings.
- These days, there is never enough appropriate technology, using small solutions to tackle and crack small problems at a local level with simple equipment.
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This file is http://members.ozemail.com.au/~macinnis/scifun/splatstech.htm, first created on July 24, 2004. Last recorded revision (well I get lazy and forget sometimes!) was on January 25, 2006.
©The author of this work is Peter Macinnis, who asserts his sole right to the product as it is packaged here, recognising that many of the ideas are common. You are free to use this as a model to do your own version. Copies of this whole file or site may be made and stored or printed for personal or educational use.