Asking Questions About Technology Today

Using the definition of technologies that I laid out in Part 1, I’d now like to explore the question: How do we ask more fruitful questions related to technologies in the world today?

I will first use the more popular view of technologies as doing things to us to analyze a technology many of us use every day, our smartphones. I will then use the definition I proposed in the first post, which focuses on what we do with technologies - how the design, construction and use of technologies - is influenced by our societal context.

We usually think about how smartphones connect us to our friends, family, and the world. Smartphones ensure that we’re never alone, and that’s supposed to make us happier. We might be confused because we see news headlines stating, “Using Facebook actually makes you feel depressed”. This thinking leads us to the question – do smartphones make us happy or sad?

Now let’s instead focus on what we do with our smartphones. Our society has become increasingly fast-paced and transient compared to previous eras. It’s common for younger working professionals to change jobs, which may require moving to a new city. There is also a trend toward increased urbanization, which means more people are leaving rural areas for cities. Since more young, professional people are moving to new cities, they rely on smartphones to keep connected with loved ones.

In this analysis we’re not focusing on how smartphones influence our mental health. We’re instead focusing on societal trends, while acknowledging the important role that smartphones play within this context. This leads us to questions such as – is increased mobility in our society leading to greater feelings of isolation? Can smartphones provide sufficient contact with loved ones to overcome possible unhappiness related to feelings of isolation?

What’s the main difference between these two perspectives? Again, the latter leads us to ask what we do with technology, compared to the popular line of questions that seeks to identify what technologies do to us.

Our technologies depend on us. Our gadgets simply wouldn’t exist without the people that design and build them, and without people that use them. They do however have the capacity to amplify issues that we face every day – all informed by our hopes, desires, and fears. That’s why it’s so important to know what we’re collectively trying to do with our technologies. If we instead focus on what technologies do to us we’re stuck investigating the symptoms rather than the causes of today’s issues – and these causes are often a mix of political, economic, and cultural forces.

I’ll leave you with some questions:

• Ask yourself, do I know what I’m trying to accomplish by using this technology? Can this technology help me achieve what I’m seeking? How might the design of this technology hinder or increase the chances that I’ll achieve what I set out to do?
• The questions about our personal uses of technology are similar to big questions about what societies do with technology. For instance, what are social media companies trying to accomplish with their technologies? How do their interests affect the design of their products? Are their interests in-line or in conflict with the public good?

I hope to have convinced you of the importance in the seemingly small difference between looking at what technologies do to us compared with what we do with our technologies. Thanks for reading.