Why Taking the Time to Understand Technology Helps Us Understand the World

After spending more than three decades researching, writing about, and teaching people of all ages, educational levels and experience about technology, I am still frustrated at the widespread inability to understand how it impacts our lives .

The vast majority of skepticism and resistance to technological development comes from people who, in part due to the malpractice of Big Tech, don’t understand the rules that govern its relationship with the markets, rules that, if properly understood, would make it much easier to take advantage of the benefits that technology can generate for individuals, business and society.

For example, if we look at most of the “problems” that many people cite in relation to the technologies associated with decarbonization, which are absolutely fundamental for tackling humanity’s greatest problem, the climate emergency, what do we find? Basically, misinformation.

Take EVs: a lot of potential consumers believe that their manufacture creates huge amounts of pollution, something that has been proven on countless occasions to be wrong. Similarly, they cite batteries as a weak point: too expensive, extremely dangerous, impossible to recycle, ultra-polluting, and that we lack the raw materials to manufacture them. Instead, the reality is not only that batteries are continuously recycled at different stages of use, but also that they are not flammable or dangerous, nor are they contaminating. Their components? There is still plenty of lithium left on the planet, lithium is not burned or destroyed in their use, and there are at least ten technologies already advanced and underway to replace lithium with other much more abundant components. Also, there’s plenty of research and alternatives in how to charge batteries fast and efficiently, to the point that there are already batteries that are designed to last one million kilometers or sixteen years.

Surprised? The only reason anybody would be surprised by this fact is that they have been convinced of the opposite for so long they are simply incapable of accepting the truth. In reality, the only thing necessary to understand this is to assimilate the empirical laws by which technological development works, the same laws that cause microprocessors to double their power every two years (Moore’s law), or the cost of making solar panels to fall by 75% every ten years while improving their performance (Swanson’s law), or batteries to constantly improve their storage capacity, durability and performance as more and more are manufactured.

When people criticize a particular technology, they tend to make the same key mistake: that it’s not going to change. Instead, the limits of technology are set by sciences such as physics or chemistry, and those limits can be extended by applying changes that researchers are constantly working on, because improving the performance of a technology tends to create interesting opportunities that can be actively exploited. True and efficient competition, technology wars, fresh influxes of money and its value as a comparative advantage for nations are factors that feed new approaches, new ideas, new factories and new bets. That’s the way technology innovation works: nothing stays the same for long. Understanding the power of the economies of scale is fundamental today to understand the world we are living in.

That is why we are constantly changing our smartphones, even if in some cases they still work well: because the speed of technology development makes it possible to make improvements in their performance that we want.

Of course, this can be environmentally irresponsible, generate technological waste and turn us into tech slaves, but however we look at it, it can’t be avoided: it’s a feature of technology, and it’s impossible to ask companies not to try to exploit it. We could ask them to require consumers to undertake responsible recycling, or for them to buy back old products at competitive prices, or take other initiatives, but they’re not going to pass on improving their products at the pace of technological development, because that simply cannot be done and it would not make any sense. If our devices become obsolete within a year, it is not the fault of those who manufacture and sell them; it is simply that no one in their right mind would want to continue using a smartphone from ten years ago, and it is quite possible that they could not even do so, even if they wanted to.

Understanding the reality of technological development is one of the best investments we can make, both for our own personal development and for the good of a human civilization that depends, fundamentally, on the extent to which we are able to progress technologically towards new energies that do not involve burning hydrocarbons. The sooner we understand this, the sooner we can get down to solving some of our most pressing problems.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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