Postponing Technology

It is an interesting fact that there were several important "advanced" technologies available to the ancient Greeks and Romans during the Empire era that they declined to use. They decided that it would be too disruptive to society. It was not because they doubted the potential benefits or effectiveness, but rather because they thought it might might create too many problems and hurt their society more than any advantages it could bring.

The Romans had very good engineers, and could design quite complex machines, but preferred to keep more people employed rather than building labor saving devices. They also knew the potential power of winds and water, but didn't build windmills to pump water for irrigation, or waterwheels to run sawmills. The Greeks even discovered steam power, but saw no point in making an engine to replace working men and animals. They simply decided that it was not the time to pursue such things.

For example, they could have been the first to develop cogs and springs for clockwork devices. An ancient orrery device has been found, but they did not see much advantage in trying to make accurate time pieces. Knowing the hour, and perhaps also whether it was early middle or late was good enough. Minutes would have created more frustration and friction.

Their society was primarily based on agriculture, and employed a significant number of slaves, so they didn't really need technology to reduce the amount of labor involved in operating their civilization. There simply were not too many things they wanted to do that could not be accomplished with what they already had.

And they certainly did not have our modern mindset. We embrace every new idea that comes along, just because it is new, and eagerly seek out every possible new application, just to see what it can do. As a result, our society changes so fast that someone born 150 years ago would be shocked to see how we live today, and would have serious difficulty finding a place to fit in.

Indeed, we ourselves find the pace of change bewildering. Our own expectations from childhood have been left behind by the trends led by inventions we did not foresee. And many of our inventions have brought with them liabilities that were not part of the prospectus we were sold. Who could have foretold the threats of computer viruses and hacking, identity theft and cyber attacks, before the personal desktop computer was invented? Perhaps we need to consider that every arena of increasing freedom also creates new opportunities for abuses and criminal exploitation.

All of those unemployed slaves in ancient Rome would have gone hungry, and soon have taken up weapons to become free-ranging bandits waylaying travelers just to get enough food! No, they didn't need the cotton gin, or a sawmill, or the automated thread spinners and fabric weavers that developed in Europe just after the Black Death cut the population in half.

You don't really need labor saving devices unless you are short of labor to begin with. And putting intellectual tools in the hands of the common people should have been seen as likely to promote social disruption. The results have been more discord (Facebook), addictive daydreams (video games) and basic vandalism (hackers), than any actually useful productivity. And much of this can be traced back to the blithe adoption of novel technology, without first assessing the purpose or need it was created to address, much less examining the possible or likely consequences of widespread use by the public at large. The internet was built as a tool for scholars, not porn.

Obviously, unemployment is not a good thing, aside from the resulting poverty, as idle hands and bored minds are apt to find  some mischief to get into. Technological progress is not progress unless it addresses a real need, or a foreseeable problem, and its uses should be monitored to insure that it doesn't get abused by its application to extraneous issues. We should be able to speak with some consensus about our values, and what constitutes a foolish abuse of them, especially if it creates a danger to others.

It is true that today we have many unsolved problems and significant needs that can only be addressed with technology. Certainly, some could have been met with greater simplicity, but that is probably a missed opportunity. We have set some trends in motion, and waited too long to address others, so that now we need some technological solutions. Take the example of Energy. We need an alternative to fossil fuels, so as to ameliorate the trend of global warming. Solar power and nuclear, fission or fusion, have the potential to replace coal, natural gas and petroleum, but we lack the technology to make it inexpensive and safe, and they have their own pollution issues.

Economics, resource development and population pressures also make certain problems more likely. A vigorous space program can lighten these pressures a little, just until we can find some feasible solutions. Our space agencies are still in their infancy. We have major difficulties just getting off the planet. But there are increasing numbers of governments and corporations getting involved in the search for solutions.

And yes, possible spacefaring solutions do exist, if only we can achieve enough basic development to make them doable. It doesn't have to be "practical" just yet, only "an improvement" to be progress. If we can get past the stage of needing to use rockets to get away from the earth, lifting people and materiels cheaply enough, we can make pioneer outposts, tourism and eventually emigration available to average people. Then we will have broken through the bottleneck. It will take a lot of time and effort, but it can be done. There are plenty of people who would take the risks to try and colonize the Moon and Mars, and more will follow as the problems are worked out.

But aside from addressing the near term problems that we face today, most of which we created ourselves by foolish pursuit of technological novelty, there is really little point in change for its own sake. We already have enough problems to face, without mindlessly creating more. Future generations may indeed thank us, if we can build the social mechanisms to slow the pace of change. We need to take a deep breath, and discuss what our goals are, and where we want to be in the future. And then we can consider whether we will need new technology to get us there.

The pursuit of artificial intelligence, for example, far outreaches the proximate goal of automating our devices to promote safety. We don't need a machine to tell us what we need to do, and much less, to tell us what we should want, or think. We can develop tools to facilitate our intellectual work, without actually simulating a thinking mind. This is even more of a danger, if we try to fit computer circuitry into our own brains, as that would create a direct pathway to thought control and enslavement. Why would we want to create a God, with actual power to override our free will? Isn't it better to have one who refuses to take over, even though that leaves us to doubt his existence?

We need the time to figure out the technology we already have, and to integrate it into our social systems in a responsible way. It is probably not possible to revert to a previous level of development, nor would that be a desirable step. There was plenty in the past to cause real discontentment. And there are some projects we are working on that we should continue, up to a point. Our medical sciences are not yet what they could be.

Our lifespans, for example, are really too short, and old age is a painful handicap preventing the enjoyment of life. But immortality would likely bring serious problems of it own, including the need for a complete and total stagnation of any further technological development. If our current human potential seems to allow for us to try to achieve a century, perhaps we can set a new goal to make a millennium the next limit. To ask for more would seem to be seeking to become divine, a serious act of hubris, and a sin.

This is an example of the kind of technological development that we may want to reign in, seeing the potential for improvement, but also the power for disruption. Our society does not really have the resilience and flexibility to absorb such great changes as fast as they can be reached. Rather, let us slow it down, consider our options, and choose with as much wisdom as we can muster, what is it we should do, for ourselves and our posterity. Leaving some things as yet to be done, and some goals as yet to be achieved, may turn out to be the best gift we can leave for our grand-children, and their grand-children.