Technology is Dead

Assuring Tech’s Consequences Are Intended
With technological advances rapidly taking on lives of their own—like the endlessly multiplying mops and water pails heedlessly summoned to clean up by Goethe’s “Sorcerer’s Apprentice”—mankind is being swamped by its unintended consequences. So warns Christopher Colbert in Technology Is Dead. And he offers a way out.     Chaos is gathering, says the former managing director of the Harvard Innovation Labs, because even the most intelligent devices lack a human, much less humane perspective. In other words, technology has never been alive. Inherently dead, it has no imagination, no thoughts, no direction nor goals of its own. Or at least not yet. As he writes:     “Many of the modern realities we face as a species can at least be partially attributed to technologies being unleashed with no consideration of the downstream human effects.  AI (artificial intelligence) will no doubt be exponentially more consequential.”     Colbert began to realize the nature of this crisis back in 2017 when he discovered that, despite Harvard’s “brightest young minds in the world,” 95 percent of his incubator’s startups failed because of a lack of knowledge about the humans involved, users and creators alike. And those few firms that did manage to succeed? They “either prey upon human vulnerabilities or ignore how inhuman we might become as technology increasingly defines our lives.” (Think of online trolling, for instance.)     His is a compact yet compelling book whose first half is about complicated and sprawling problems—afflicting education, medicine, government, business and society itself. Indeed, at a Harvard conference where they both spoke, U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter admitted, “The pace of technological change cannot be slowed but it can, in fact must, be steered.” Colbert is a good writer and his description of mankind’s self-centered, hardwired makeup in the face of massive challenges almost seems to preclude Ash’s hope.     Nevertheless, Colbert lays out an overarching “Humanitarian Revolution” to take on this world of woe under a design structure that relies on “The Seven I’s”: intentionality, innovation as infinite adaptation, integration, inclusion as accessibility, infinite time horizons, incentives, and individual responsibility. All of it tied together on one basic system architecture.     It’s a Herculean task that reminds me of the G.I. cynics’ encapsulation of Dwight Eisenhower’s Allied strategy in World War II’s European land war: “Everybody forward, everywhere, at once.” But I have to remind myself that Eisenhower did accomplish his “crusade,” which gave rise to the Marshall Plan and the birth of free and prosperous nations on that continent. Yet Ike also presciently understood the dangers of metastasizing technology, warning of an unbridled “military-industrial complex” at the end of his presidency.   Bob Gilbert

Technologies slippery slop
In an era for which technology surrounds you 24/7, this book provides clarity why humanity is the venue we should pursue.A must read!

Must-Read
Another gem from Chris Colbert, one of today’s most honest and insightful leaders. I loved his first book, This Is It, and once again here, Chris’ writing provides an urgent reality check, and a thoughtful prescription for a better tomorrow.