Sci&Tech History

What do we need for a better life? Do we need reminder in our hand phone to warn us on several appointment, FoodPhone (helping to fight obesity), the HygieneGuard (motivating people to wash their hands after using the toilet), and the EconoMeter (helping people to drive their cars more economically)? If we do that, do we miss something in our humanity? Who have the right to decide whether the technology is good or bad? To sustain, industry need to make an innovation every day. So from their side, innovation in technology is a good thing. While as a user who heard new invention every day, see how the advertisement frame technology into an illustration of ideal life, technology seduce us to buy them.

I try to answer the questions above from the economic model. First, industry growth will reduce unemployment thus increase people welfare. Second, consumerism is needed to keep industry sustainability. But on the other hand, people consume technology as part of their life and don’t increase their humanity, i.e: share porn videos rather educational content. The complexity increase when analysis technology in the making. As human product, technology can not be separated from cultural context. Using Akrich term, there are in-scription in technology. The in-scription, in certain degrees, ‘force’ human to do something, and as consequence from human free-will, create an anti-program or move to something that never been calculated before.

Is it ethical to force people from development countries to use internet? Have we ever calculate the cultural implications?

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