杏吧原创

We depend at least as much on simple 鈥渙ld鈥� technologies such as corrugated iron and paper as we do on the internet or biotechnology. So why do we go on ignoring what the world really uses and create a fantasy world built on technohype, wonders David Edgerton

IT鈥橲 2007 and we all live in outer space in silver suits, with pills for food, reproducing via artificial wombs, coexisting in perpetual peace and knowing everything through our brain implants.

No, of course, I know it never happened 鈥� just as I know that today鈥檚 brand of technohype predictions will prove as wrong about the future as the last lot did. But we can鈥檛 just laugh off this kind of approach to science and technology, it is too wrong-headed and too aimed at boys of all ages.

The reason it really matters is that because we forget we have heard it all before, we are far less sceptical than we should be. Worse, we are profoundly unimaginative about the future. The name of the latest 鈥渢ransforming鈥� technology may change, but this merely disguises the fact that the arguments for them changing the world remain as unconvincing 鈥� and sometimes crazy 鈥� as ever. For example, a list of technologies that, when they appeared, people said would 鈥渃reate peace鈥� includes battleships, Alfred Nobel鈥檚 explosives, the radio, the aeroplane, the atomic bomb, television and the internet.

So what makes us prone to this kind of thinking? One factor is that we confuse technology per se with that small part of it that is claimed to be novel: because an individual item of technology is new, we grant the whole thing novelty. Another problem is that we measure scientific and technical activity by how much we spend on research and development, and also by the number of patents granted. We define science in particular in terms of research, and research is a business which needs to promise a definite, profitable outcome.

Then there is the problem of conflating our speculations about the future with the nature of science and technology. Why, for example, do we limit technology to nanotechnology and biotechnology, and what they might do? Similarly, we think of technologies of the past in relation to the time when they were invented; think of all those time lines of technology which are centred on dates of inventions. We too easily fall for the idea that the technology of a given era is the technology that was actually important at that time. I have often asked students which technologies were important at what time in the 20th century, and their answers include aviation (1903), the atom bomb (1945) and the Pill (1955). Yet, for what should be obvious reasons, these technologies are often more important today than when they were invented.

We also underestimate the importance of 鈥渙lder鈥� technologies in the past 鈥� that is, those invented before a particular era but still in use in that era. So when we think of German technology during the second world war, we think of V-2 rockets, yet the horse was much more significant in military terms: the Wehrmacht marched to Moscow with more horses than Napoleon鈥檚 Great Army.

We also underestimate the importance of some modern technologies and sciences. Take chemistry. It hardly figures in most accounts of 20th-century technology or science, and its absence is barely noticed. But omit computers, even from histories of the 1950s, and your account would be questioned. We can easily exaggerate the significance of technologies, and ignore some really important ones.

Globalisation has very quickly, and for no really good reason, become associated with the internet. We could as easily have had today鈥檚 globalised world without the internet, but without cheap air travel 鈥� carrying people and some cargo 鈥� and cheap shipping 鈥� carrying most of the world鈥檚 tradable goods and some people 鈥� it would hardly be possible. A type of globalisation driven only by the internet, had it happened, would surely not see so much stuff surging around the world.

Even the 鈥渙ld鈥� technologies of aviation and shipping are still changing 鈥� the Emma Maersk, for example, is a new container ship nearly 400 metres long which can carry around 15 per cent more containers than any other vessel, or the forthcoming Boeing 747-8 intercontinental airliner and freighter, which Boeing claims will outperform the all-new Airbus A380.

The trick to avoiding the seduction of technohype is to look carefully at the distinction between old and new technology, because the closer you look, the more the distinction dissolves. Think about wood, the pre-industrial fuel and construction material par excellence. For all the talk of paperless offices, paper and paperboard consumption has done nothing but increase. At more than 50 kilograms per person per year, it is now at twice the level of the 1960s. You can order a book over the internet, but the paper product will be delivered wrapped in a cardboard cover by the good old postal service.

Then there鈥檚 IKEA. Some estimates place its founder, Ingvar Kamprad, as richer than Bill Gates. Kamprad made his fortune selling largely wood-based furniture. In an age of hype about customised production, IKEA鈥檚 furniture is mass-produced in the old-fashioned way, and its biggest seller is not a computer table made of advanced polymers, but the 鈥淏illy鈥� bookcase, made from new wood-based materials.

IKEA subverts the modern and postmodern notions of what we are technologically in another way: it has shifted part of the production and transportation of furniture away from specialist (employed) producers back to the household. The company has created a new middle-class urban peasantry which has to load, transport and build its own furniture, though in new ways, of course.

Perhaps one of the two main reasons why we are so prone to hyping technology is that we associate technology only with the rich world 鈥� the world that tends to do the inventing and sign up most of the patents. The other is that we believe, rightly or wrongly, that rapid technological change correlates with or fuels economic growth and wealth.

鈥淥ne of the main reasons we hype technology is that we associate it only with the rich world鈥�

So we tend to think of the poor world as lacking technology, and therefore as static. Yet the truth is poor countries have changed a great deal more in the 20th century than rich ones; their populations and cities have grown much faster than those of rich ones. And these 鈥減oor鈥� cities are neither scaled-up traditional rural villages, nor are they replicas of great 19th-century cities: London and Paris were never like Lagos or Nairobi.

One of the technological emblems of this kind of rapid development is corrugated iron, a material whose production is still expanding because it is used to build more urban, and increasingly rural, dwellings for poor people. Cheap, light and portable, it is one of the great technologies of poverty, together with the T-shirt and the flip-flop.

To describe the importance of seemingly old technologies is not necessarily to celebrate them. Lots of technologies need getting rid of, lots of things could be done better. Corrugated iron roofing has many drawbacks: it is a poor insulator, and it鈥檚 noisy in rain. Personally, I would like to see more change rather than less. Using measures such as economic growth, we are living in an era of rather slow change, at least in the rich world.

But don鈥檛 confuse change with invention. Adapting, redeploying, redesigning what we have is enough to both increase our standard of living and reduce our carbon emissions. What I am arguing against is technohype, which at best produces a vision utterly different from the real world of technology and invention. At worst it generates a future shaped not by needs or desires, but by that outdated hype itself. We must do better than that.