Technology is probably changing us for the worse—or so we always think

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Technology is probably changing us for the worse—or so we always think

By Timothy Maher | MIT Technology Review | May 15, 2024

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We’ve always greeted new technologies with a mixture of fascination and fear,  says Margaret O’Mara, a historian at the University of Washington who focuses on the intersection of technology and American politics. “People think: ‘Wow, this is going to change everything affirmatively, positively,’” she says. “And at the same time: ‘It’s scary—this is going to corrupt us or change us in some negative way.’”

And then something interesting happens: “We get used to it,” she says. “The novelty wears off and the new thing becomes a habit.”   At MIT Technology Review, writers have grappled with the effects, real or imagined, of tech on the human mind for nearly a hundred years. In MIT March 1931 issue, in his essay “Machine-Made Minds,” author John Bakeless wrote that it was time to ask “how far the machine’s control over us is a danger calling for vigorous resistance; and how far it is a good thing, to which we may willingly yield.”  The advances that alarmed him might seem, to us, laughably low-tech: radio transmitters, antennas, or even rotary printing presses.

Fifty years later, the debate had shifted more in the direction of silicon chips. In its October 1980 issue, engineering professor Thomas B. Sheridan, in “Computer Control and Human Alienation,” asked: “How can we ensure that the future computerized society will offer humanity and dignity?” A few years later, in MIT August/September 1987 issue, writer David Lyon felt he had the answer—we couldn’t, and wouldn’t. In “Hey You! Make Way for My Technology,” he wrote that gadgets like the telephone answering machine and the boom box merely kept other pesky humans at a safe distance: “As machines multiply our capacity to perform useful tasks, they boost our aptitude for thoughtless and self-centered action. Civilized behavior is predicated on the principle of one human being interacting with another, not a human being interacting with a mechanical or electronic extension of another person.”

By this century the subject had been taken up by a pair of celebrities, novelist Jonathan Franzen and Talking Heads lead vocalist David Byrne. In MIT September/October 2008 issue, Franzen suggested that cell phones had turned us into performance artists. 

In “Eliminating the Human,” from our September/October 2017 issue, Byrne observed that advances in the digital economy served largely to free us from dealing with other people. You could now “keep in touch” with friends without ever seeing them; buy books without interacting with a store clerk; take an online course without ever meeting the teacher or having any awareness of the other students.

“For us as a society, less contact and interaction—real interaction—would seem to lead to less tolerance and understanding of difference, as well as more envy and antagonism,” Byrne wrote. “As has been in evidence recently, social media actually increases divisions by amplifying echo effects and allowing us to live in cognitive bubbles … When interaction becomes a strange and unfamiliar thing, then we will have changed who and what we are as a species.”

It hasn’t stopped. Just last year our own Will Douglas Heaven’s feature on ChatGPT debunked the idea that the AI revolution will destroy children’s ability to develop critical-thinking skills.

If we are to ever create the ideal human society, he concluded—one with sufficient time for music, art, philosophy, scientific inquiry (“the gorgeous playthings of the mind,”)—it was unlikely we’d get it done without the aid of machines. It was too late, we’d already grown too accustomed to the new toys. We just needed to find a way to make sure that the machines served us instead of the other way around. “If we are to build a great civilization, if we are to win leisure for cultivating the choice things of mind and spirit, we must put the machine in its place”. But—how, exactly? Ninety-three years later  (since the publications of the first issue of MIT Technology Review) and we’re still trying to figure that part out.

2 key takeaways from the article

1. We’ve always greeted new technologies with a mixture of fascination and fear. People think: ‘Wow, this is going to change everything affirmatively, positively. “And at the same time: ‘It’s scary—this is going to corrupt us or change us in some negative way.’  And then something interesting happens: “We get used to it”. “The novelty wears off and the new thing becomes a habit.” 
2. If we are to ever create the ideal human society, —one with sufficient time for music, art, philosophy, scientific inquiry (“the gorgeous playthings of the mind,”)—it was unlikely we’d get it done without the aid of machines. It was too late, we’d already grown too accustomed to the new toys. We just needed to find a way to make sure that the machines served us instead of the other way around. But—how, exactly? Ninety-three years later  (since the publications of the first issue of MIT Technology Review) and we’re still trying to figure that part out.

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Topics:  Technology, Humans, Civilization, Machines