Bro Tech

Back when people still thought the future was flying cars and moon bases, the word "high tech" was coined to describe cutting edge, advanced technology, with the implication that technology was progressing upward with significant steps.

Then "high tech" became a source of anxiety. As automation replaced factory workers, industry and government told people to learn new skills that would be needed by future jobs that would be created by new technology.

See for example this extraordinarily disingenuous and manipulative advertisement by a private college founded by a manufacturing company. In February of this year, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sued ITT Tech for predatory lending.

In reaction to the increasingly negative connotation of "high tech", marketers coined puns like "low tech" (traditional, natural, simple) and "high touch" (personal, unmediated.)

Behind this sly word play is an awful truth: technology imposes the ethics of the people who shape the technology. Shapers are not always inventors. Floor workers can shape technology through the quality of their labor. Engineers are constantly tweaking technology. Managers shape technology by the directives they give to engineers. Government shapes technology through regulation.

Today social networking is one of the biggest things happening on the internet. Why? Is it really a step up the technological ladder, employing the "wisdom of the crowd" to make us all more "connected"?

Or did a smart kid at an Ivy League school just decide to automate and mass market the value system of privileged douchebags. Isn't that the whole point of a "face book"? It magnifies the advantages of who you know instead of things that are supposed to be more important like who you are, what you know and what you do.

I'm not saying it hurts anybody, I'm just saying it's the kind of technology you would get if frat boys ran the world. Because they do. Different cultures embrace and promote different technology, and the dominant technology reflects the dominant culture more than it reflects which technology is inherently superior.

It does bog down progress though. Bro tech serves masters who don't care about improving the world because they are already on top.

See a different critique of our inventor culture (or lack of it) at my friend's blog.