Atle Hetland
The ongoing technological changes affect the way we work and live, as all technological changes do, and they go on all the time, especially in the recent several hundred years. We think that changes today are very fast, but maybe they were even faster and more massive before. In today’s article I shall reflect on these issues, and also look a bit at history and give a few examples.
In a few recent articles, I have drawn attention to some of the changes that take place today, namely in the communication and mass media sector, where regular electronic and print media are challenged by social media. There are also major changes in education and research, especially in higher education, where distance education and home studies are becoming more common, often in combination with regular onsite seminars and meetings and practical activities. There will be many changes in different fields and at different levels of education in the years to come, and there will be changes in the ways we all, indeed the children and youth, learn and spend their time.
It is important that there is good management and planning of the changes, and that we do not let the technological changes run loose and have the upper hand while control and regulations lag behind and become a response to the technological developments rather than being the overall leaders in the public and private sectors. It is also important that some existing technologies are protected, and that old and new technologies can work together, not only letting the providers of the new technologies have a heyday and make profit. The importance of planning is quite obvious in the fields I mentioned earlier, namely communication, mass media, education and research, including the furtherance of IT and artificial intelligence, AI, and its many aspects and possibilities, also in the production industries and other areas of society.
Many new technological improvements build on existing technologies, but some, and probably increasing numbers of technologies, are entirely new, leading to all new ways of working and thinking and organising social life. That means that the new technologies lead to major and broad structural changes of society. We know well that the inventions and technological developments in recent centuries were massive, indeed in the whole of the nineteenth century, such as, for example, the invention of electricity (in 1800 by Alessandro Volta), the light bulb (in 1879 by Thomas Edison) and the motorcar (in 1885 by Carl Friedrich Benz).
The technological advancements in shipping were dramatic when sailing ships had to give way to ships being driven by steam. Also, the modernisation and mechanisation of farming and fishing, taking place over time, have changed, and keep changing, towns and rural areas dramatically. The current advancements will have similar massive impacts, even if we remain a bit sober too, not overstating issues, for example, believing that self-driven cars are actually just around the corner or that robots will tomorrow carry out all or most manual work in factories and at home.
The old Industrial Revolution was certainly a shock to people and their known way of life. It lasted from about 1750 to 1900, divided into at least three different phases by historians, depending on the types of inventions and changes, with geographical and other variations. From our school years, we may recall the lessons about the invention in the UK of the Spinning Jenny in 1764. The new machine allowed one worker to spin multiple threads of yarn at the same time, leading to the transformation of textile manufacturing from a craft-based to an industrial-scale operation, symbolising the beginning of a new era, followed by numerous further inventions and discoveries. The employment structures changed, often with major unemployment, contributing to the mass migration from Europe to America and elsewhere. There were many social changes; countries moved from feudal structures to becoming class societies, with distinct differences between the owners of the means of production and the workers, the sellers of labour. Over time, democratisation processes developed, but it took time, since improvements towards rights and fairness had to be fought for by the people themselves in the lower classes and their organisations.
Further studies of the past changes and technological developments are important, but they can only tell us something since the future will always be different from the past. The inventions in medicine and the demographic changes that have followed, with more children living up and also people living longer, with higher numbers of old people, lead to new demands as to how societies should be organised and how public money is spent. In our time, the technological developments lead to less need for workers in many fields, indeed in the fields where unskilled workers used to work, or so we think, since we have made all fields of modern societies more specialised and demanding people with ever longer education and training. We may well have overdone it and a time may come when we actually need less formal training in many fields, but more on-the-job training and de-specialisation of professions and vocations, in the midst of the fast technological developments and specialisations that go on everywhere in the world, especially in the West and in specific fields.
Let me end my article today with some reflections about the fact that technological developments are ultimately meant to lead to better lives and living for people. It is probably a fact that many of the inventions and developments in recent decades have made life better and more comfortable, not for all, but for many. Today, the main task ought to be to focus on making access to and the use of new technology more fairly and justly available to all.
The democratisation issues are certainly not given the attention they should have. That leads me to stress that it is the people, in practice mainly the politicians, who must control the technological inventors and developers. To a certain extent, the politicians and the private sector should also plan more of what new inventions should take place, in spite of discoveries and inventions not being entirely possible to control and predict, as they couldn’t and shouldn’t be either. I believe that the time has come that we must take a serious look at the benefits of the new technological developments and how societies plan and manage the use of them. Again, there are benefits of new technologies, but there are also disadvantages and regression. Hence we must consider better and plan how the potential of the new technologies should be used in the right ways, for the right purposes and the right, needy people.
The writer is a senior Norwegian social scientist with experience from university, diplomacy and development aid. He can be reached at atlehetland@yahoo.com
Courtesy
