{"id":1024415,"date":"2021-11-25T08:51:21","date_gmt":"2021-11-25T07:51:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/?post_type=articles&p=1024415"},"modified":"2021-12-03T09:08:36","modified_gmt":"2021-12-03T08:08:36","slug":"forgetting-star-trek","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/articles\/forgetting-star-trek\/","title":{"rendered":"Forgetting Star Trek"},"featured_media":1025258,"template":"","meta":{"_has_post_settings":[]},"schools":[],"areas":[26],"subjects":[422],"class_list":["post-1024415","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","areas-technology","subjects-innovation-and-technology"],"custom-fields":{"wpcf-article-leadin":["The lack of neutrality in digital technologies is ushering in a neo-Medieval world, writes Professor Milo Jones."],"wpcf-article-body":["As a boy, I was an avid Star Trek<\/em> fan. Until recently, I also thought the show offered a plausible vision of the future: a diverse crew, led by an American Captain, representing a \u201cFederation\u201d of intergalactic reach. In the last few years, however, I have realized that the newest wave of change \u2013 digital technologies \u2013 probably won\u2019t unlock \u201cphasers,\u201d \u201ctransporter rooms,\u201d and a \u201cFederation.\u201d Instead, digital technologies may usher in a neo-Medieval world of aristocrats, religious upheaval, and decidedly \u201cpre-modern\u201d sensibilities among many.\r\n\r\nA future resembling the distant past seems counterintuitive (maybe even crazy!), so let me explain why I think that, in the words of the Center for the Study of Digital Life, \u201cDigital retrieves the medieval.\u201d It\u2019s easy to suffer from what I call (after another TV program of my youth), \u201cThe Jetsons <\/em>problem.\u201d That\u2019s shorthand for the naive view that technologies are culturally, politically, and socially neutral. George Jetson and his family were a typical, traditional American family of the 1960s, but with rocket ships and robot maids. In this view, the future is essentially the present, plus gadgets.\r\n\r\nAnyone with even a passing knowledge of history, however, knows that \u201cgadgets\u201d matter a great deal, especially communications technology. From the pre-Westphalian (i.e. medieval) age of hand-written script, to the mechanically-printed type (starting circa 1450) that helped launch the Westphalian age, to electrically-transmitted codes (circa 1850) of the telegraph, and then to voice and picture transmission (radio & TV), societies have been shaped and re-shaped by changing technologies. Print kicked off both the Protestant Reformation and the rise of books written in the vernacular, which solidified the nations of Europe. You may not be a political scientist, but can you imagine a Mussolini, a Hitler, a Churchill or a Franklin Roosevelt without radio? In other words, politics and society are profoundly shaped by the media environment.\r\n
We shape our technologies, and then our technologies shape us.<\/blockquote>\r\nWhy? Because technologies \u2013 including digital technologies \u2013 are what Aristotle referred to as \u201cFormal Causes.\u201d They shape our choices, alter power structures, and restructure our thinking. Technologies create new \u201cpsycho-technical environments,\u201d transforming mindsets, identities, and values as much as economies, institutions, and power structures do. In other words, contra <\/em>conventional \u201csocial science,\u201d technologies are not neutral. Humans are infinitely plastic, but the technologies they habitually use have cultural, psychological, and sociological consequences. As a man named John Culkin put it, \u201cWe shape our technologies, and then our technologies shape us.\u201d\r\n\r\nAnother way to think of formal cause is to invert the usual idea of political leadership: new technologies produce new values, concerns, and identities among people who use them habitually, and then those new audiences demand new political artists. In other words, leaders are symptoms<\/em> \u2013 not causes \u2013 of social change engendered by new technology.\r\n\r\nLet me be more specific: love Donald Trump or hate him, I suggest that you understand that he is the political version of Uber. How? Uber used digital technology to go over the heads of incumbent service providers (existing taxi firms) to speak directly to customers who felt under-served. And Trump? He used digital technologies to go over the head of incumbent service providers (the traditional Democratic and Republican Parties) to communicate directly with customers who felt under-served (and then took over one of the old firms). Digital disruption applies to more than business models!\r\n\r\nAs digital technologies spread, the deep social, cultural, and political changes are only just starting. Inasmuch as the quality of your life largely depends on the quality of your questions (and luck!\u00a0 I can\u2019t help you there), you might want to think more about what that means. To glimpse the direction of this transformation, I suggest a question-generating tool developed by the prominent Canadian media theorist of the late 1970s, Marshall McLuhan. He called it his \u201cTetrad of Media Effects.\u201d\r\n\r\nMcLuhan\u2019s Tetrad: A Generator of Key Questions<\/strong>\r\n\r\nA tetrad, of course, is simply something with four parts. But McLuhan\u2019s tetrad of \u201cmedia\u201d effects is a bit misleading because it is actually designed to probe the impact of technologies<\/em> more generally, not just media. That is why, in Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man<\/em><\/a> (published 1964), McLuhan considers the social and psychological impact of \u201cmedia\u201d like locomotives, light bulbs, typewriters, and even clothing.\r\n\r\nAs the title of that volume indicates, McLuhan argues all media or technologies are best viewed as extensions or enhancements of some human function. You then pose four questions about the technology and it is these questions the tetrad captures.\r\n\r\n\"\"<\/a>\r\n\r\nUsing the Tetrad, one asks of every artifact, medium, or technology, first what human function does it enhance or amplify? Cars, for example, enhance human legs. In digital technologies\u2019 case, it is human memory that is enhanced.\r\n\r\nMost people understand that new technologies also will obsolesce the previous technology used to perform that function. Cars, for example, made horses obsolete, and digital technologies are making paper-based memory systems (from books to paper currency) fade away.\r\n\r\nIt is at this point, at enhancement and obsolescence, which most people \u201cget off the analytic bus\u201d, and simply stop thinking. McLuhan, however, insists that you ask two other questions about technologies. The next part of the tetrad demands a sense of irony. It makes you ask, \u201cIf this new technology spreads far enough, does it reverse or flip into a contradictory form?\u201d Cars, for example, speeded up travel\u2026until they reversed into traffic jams. Likewise, digital technologies seemed to have ushered in the \u201cinformation age\u201d\u2026until they reversed into information overload and disinformation.\r\n
We are still at the \u201chorseless carriage\u201d stage of digital technologies, where the new technology is used and understood mostly in old ways.<\/blockquote>\r\nIt is the fourth question the Tetrad requires, however, that I find the most interesting. It demands that you consider: \u201cAs this technology spreads and human involvement with it deepens, what parallel period of history might it retrieve?\u201d In so doing, it sort of instrumentalizes Mark Twain\u2019s famous dictum that \u201cHistory doesn\u2019t repeat itself, but it often rhymes,\u201d making you look for the old forms reborn under the new technological conditions.\r\n\r\nThis is especially hard to imagine. We are still at the \u201chorseless carriage\u201d stage of digital technologies, where the new technology is used and understood mostly in old ways. (Don\u2019t believe me? Then why do you call that movie-camera\/supercomputer\/world-library\/GPS\/motion-sensor that you carry around and look at 70 times a day a \u201ctelephone\u201d?) But just as you would never understand even the economic impact (not to mention the cultural and social effects!) of automobiles if you referred to them (as people did) as \u201chorseless carriages,\u201d you must be willing to look beyond that digital device as a \u201ctelephone.\u201d\r\n\r\nFor example, if politics have seemed strange lately, just wait! The reason is, digital technology will retrieve medieval forms. In politics, the international system is composed entirely of nations and states created under pre-digital, analog conditions.\r\n\r\nLet me present in a somewhat cartoonish fashion some parallels between the Middle Ages and our own time. Do you recognize:\r\n
    \r\n \t
  • The growth of a transnational aristocracy, so-called \u201celites\u201d of enormous wealth, ambiguous nationality, and flexible allegiances? Consider different countries\u2019 \u201cGolden Visa\u201d programs, the entire offshore finance industry, and the many children of autocratic leaders who flit from country to country. Think of growing wealth inequality not just among but within nations.<\/li>\r\n \t
  • An international climate in which non-state actors like companies are powerful enough to challenge states? Think of Google or Facebook\u2019s disputes with nations. Did you know that Denmark now has a \u201cTech Ambassador\u201d permanently stationed in three locations: Copenhagen, Beijing, and Silicon Valley? They get it. Nations are like medieval kings \u2013 powerful, but still needing to deal with important barons.<\/li>\r\n \t
  • Or think of non-state actors like NGOs. Countries can no longer ignore them whether they want to save the rainforests (e.g. Greenpeace) or restore the Califate (e.g. Al-Qaeda). And speaking of which, what happened to the idea that states retain a monopoly on legitimate violence?<\/li>\r\n \t
  • A shift in popular opinion back towards local\/tribal or religious allegiances? Much of what people call \u201cpopulism\u201d around the world is actually a demand for local \u2013 even tribal or explicitly religious - rather than national \u201csolutions\u201d and organizational forms.<\/li>\r\n \t
  • Consider the birth of new cults, social movements, and religions. In the pre-digital world, these were difficult, expensive, and slow to get started because they required materials and people (clergy, buildings, choirs, incense, stained glass, etc.) to influence large numbers of a population\u2019s biochemistry and sense of self. In the digital era, you just need code, apps, or even a website. Hence the rapid spread of cultish social movements like Q-Anon or Extinction Rebellion. Yuval Harari pointed out in Sapiens<\/em> that this is especially the case via games like Pok\u00e9mon-Go, which blend the digital world and the real world, helping those with the right digital lenses to see things that non-players do not.<\/li>\r\n \t
  • In Europe, I don\u2019t foresee a breakup of the European Union so much as a return to a sort of Holy Roman Empire (which was, please note, based in Aachen, not far from Brussels.) It had a Franco-German \u201cmotor\u201d, included northern Italy, and while not always effective, exercised limited sway and authority (especially when local powers could agree on issues.)<\/li>\r\n \t
  • Digital technologies now allow global migrants to find the best migration destinations and routes, to connect with people-smugglers, and to arrange payment from their families after they take an on-location selfie as \u201cproof of life.\u201d Indeed, according to a private conversation I had with a FRONTEX employee, migrants even rate smugglers the way you and I rate an Uber driver. In the Middle Ages, people built castles\u2026and now, people demand walls on borders, making the state itself their estates.<\/li>\r\n \t
  • Is it an accident that the premier trade agreement of the 21st<\/sup> century is named for the medieval Tang Dynasty\u2019s \u201cSilk Road\u201d? Chinese leaders have mentioned the precedent.<\/li>\r\n \t
  • In the Middle Ages, people in Europe could pre-pay for their sins (often at a discount) through \u201cindulgences.\u201d Before you laugh, ask yourself what you are doing when you buy that expensive coffee, but comfort yourself by paying extra for \u201cFair Trade\u201d\u2026or consider that \u201ccarbon credit\u201d you bought along with your holiday flight.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\nThis article is intentionally provocative \u2013 an essay, a probe, a test of ideas. It\u2019s important to be skeptical. It\u2019s also important to, at the very least, consider what happens if our assumptions are not exactly what they seem \u2013 and what comes next. For example, what happens to the various power structures that govern our lives and shape our identities if digital technologies are not as \u201cneutral,\u201d psychologically, culturally, and sociologically, as we originally assumed? Is that Star Trek <\/em>\u201cFederation\u201d paradigm of future international relations \u2013 the \u201cOne World\u201d or \u201cGlobal Order\u201d \u2013 simply a pipedream under digital conditions? It is time to start thinking beyond digital disruption in business, and start thinking about digital disruption of our culture, identities, and politics.\r\n\r\n\u00a9 IE Insights."],"wpcf-article-extract-enable":["1"],"wpcf-article-extract":["The lack of neutrality in digital technologies is ushering in a neo-Medieval world, writes Professor Milo Jones."]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles\/1024415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/articles"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1025258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1024415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"schools","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/schools?post=1024415"},{"taxonomy":"areas","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/areas?post=1024415"},{"taxonomy":"subjects","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/subjects?post=1024415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}