Radical Technologies • Adam Greenfield • 2017
On the Force of Belief in Technology
In Short
The model of the world that technology creates often doesn’t match reality. But despite this fact, our belief that it does is enough to impact how it shapes our lives.
Note: The above summary is in my own words.
In Depth
When it comes to data, Greenfield points out that there are always contextual factors that influence the model that is generated.
For our purposes, what is vital to remember is that there's no such thing as “raw data.” Whatever data that we measure and retain with our sensors, as with our bodily senses, is invariably a selection from the far broader array available to us; perception itself is always already a process of editing and curation. (p.210)
But commercial economic pressures ultimately incentivize proponents to market technological innovations without this awareness. This practice generates a public belief in the promise of a technology which is enough to have real impacts on how we choose to allocate resources and drive change as a society.
Greenfield calls this out particularly in the context of automated systems:
What often matters most in weighing the degree to which we surrender control to an automated decision-making process isn’t so much what a system can actually do, but what we believe it can do. In the absence of better information—guided mostly by folk beliefs about the capabilities of autonomous systems that completely saturate popular culture, leavened significantly by commercial hype—our estimates of machinic competence can grow to the point that they become dangerous. (p.254)
For example, a strong belief in the infallibility of a self-driving car could lead to over-reliance by consumers on the automated system or hasty investment by governments in infrastructure for self-driving vehicles at the expense of short- and mid-term solutions of public transit. While this doesn’t invalidate the potential benefits of the technology, Greenfield’s point is that this kind of unchallenged belief subtly “resculpts the space of possibilities we're presented with.” (p.256)
I am particularly reflective on this point as someone who works in interaction design and is often in the position of promoting particular experiences of interactive technology. I’ve found that in a commercial design environment, it’s difficult to maintain perspective on whether your design (or even, to Greenfield’s point, the belief in your design) is pushing us toward a future that you want to live in. I take this as a reminder to remain critical of the assumptions underlying my design projects.
The lesson for all of us is clear: beliefs about the shape of the future can be invoked, leveraged, even weaponized, to drive change in the present. (p.257)