The Trap of Technology

In May this year, I wrote  about what drives us to technology. I refer to my blog The Why of Technology. In this blog I share a few thoughts about the opposite: why we should NOT be driven to technology and why technology can be a trap.

Technology is supposed to make us happy but tends to make us unhappy by being too demanding and changing our habitat too rapidly. We don’t fully master technology and the pace of technology. Technology also imposes itself too much in our free time.

Technology may generally be beneficial in the long term; it can however be disturbing in the short term because we continuously adopt half-baked products. As early adopters, we become part of the product development process without knowing. This leads to a lot of frustration. Will we still have Windows updates in 2030?

The idea that all new products should be within reach of everyone is a dangerous idea. Was it really a good idea to bring the car in reach of everyone? We can no longer imagine otherwise. Travelling should however be a privilege. Perhaps some developments should mature longer within a smaller group before they are released for mass production. We should not all become space travellers. Leave the privilege to people who deserve this, like captain James T. Kirk.

Other interesting questions have been asked within Homo Deus : who wants to live forever? Who is afraid of Artificial Intelligence?

The purpose of technology lies outside of technology. The human sciences should help us engineers find out what should have the priority. Collaboration with human scientists is important for engineers because we need to make choices. Technology should be there for the sake of humankind. Humankind is not there for the sake of technology.