As Technology Gets Better, Will Society Get Worse?

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As Technology Gets Better, Will Society Get

Worse?

By Tim Wu
February 6, 2014

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Imagine that two people are carving a six-foot

slab of wood at the same time. One is using a
hand-chisel, the other, a chainsaw. If you are interested in the future of that slab, whom
would you watch?

This chainsaw/chisel logic has led some to suggest that technological evolution is more
important to humanity’s near future than biological evolution; nowadays, it is not the
biological chisel but the technological chainsaw that is most quickly redefining what it
means to be human. The devices we use change the way we live much faster than any
contest among genes. We’re the block of wood, even if, as I wrote in January,
sometimes we don’t even fully notice that we’re changing.

Assuming that we really are evolving as we wear or inhabit more technological

prosthetics—like ever-smarter phones, helpful glasses, and brainy cars—here’s the big
question: Will that type of evolution take us in desirable directions, as we usually

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As Technology Gets Better, Will Society Get Worse? | The New Yorker

assume biological evolution does?

Some, like the Wired founder Kevin Kelly, believe that the answer is a resounding
“yes.” In his book “What Technology Wants,” Kelly writes: “Technology wants what
life wants: Increasing efficiency; Increasing opportunity; Increasing emergence;
Increasing complexity; Increasing diversity; Increasing specialization; Increasing
ubiquity; Increasing freedom; Increasing mutualism; Increasing beauty; Increasing
sentience; Increasing structure; Increasing evolvability.”

We can test the “Increasing” theory by taking a quick trip up north, to an isolated area
south of the Hudson Bay. Here live the Oji-Cree, a people, numbering about thirty
thousand, who inhabit a cold and desolate land roughly the size of Germany. For much
of the twentieth century, the Oji-Cree lived at a technological level that can be
described as relatively simple. As nomads, they lived in tents during the summer, and in
cabins during the winter. Snowshoes, dog sleds, and canoes were the main modes of
transportation, used to track and kill fish, rabbits, and moose for food. A doctor who
worked with the Oji-Cree in the nineteen-forties has noted the absence of mental
breakdowns or substance abuse within the population, observing that “the people lived
a rugged, rigorous life with plenty of exercise.” The Oji-Cree invariably impressed
foreigners with their vigor and strength. Another visitor, in the nineteen-fifties, wrote of
their “ingenuity, courage, and self-sacrifice,” noting that, in the North, “only those
prepared to face hardship and make sacrifices could survive.”

The Oji-Cree have been in contact with European settlers for centuries, but it was only
in the nineteen-sixties, when trucks began making the trip north, that newer
technologies like the internal combustion engine and electricity really began to reach
the area. The Oji-Cree eagerly embraced these new tools. In our lingo, we might say
that they went through a rapid evolution, advancing through hundreds of years of
technology in just a few decades.

The good news is that, nowadays, the Oji-Cree no longer face the threat of winter
starvation, which regularly killed people in earlier times. They can more easily import

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As Technology Gets Better, Will Society Get Worse? | The New Yorker

and store the food they need, and they enjoy pleasures like sweets and alcohol. Life has
become more comfortable. The constant labor of canoeing or snowshoeing has been
eliminated by outboard engines and snowmobiles. Television made it north in the
nineteen-eighties, and it has proved enormously popular.

But, in the main, the Oji-Cree story is not a happy one. Since the arrival of new
technologies, the population has suffered a massive increase in morbid obesity, heart
disease, and Type 2 diabetes. Social problems are rampant: idleness, alcoholism, drug
addiction, and suicide have reached some of the highest levels on earth. Diabetes, in
particular, has become so common (affecting forty per cent of the population) that
researchers think that many children, after exposure in the womb, are born with an
increased predisposition to the disease. Childhood obesity is widespread, and ten-year-
olds sometimes appear middle-aged. Recently, the Chief of a small Oji-Cree
community estimated that half of his adult population was addicted to OxyContin or
other painkillers.

Technology is not the only cause of these changes, but scientists have made clear that it
is a driving factor. In previous times, the Oji-Cree lifestyle required daily workouts that
rivalled those of a professional athlete. “In the early 20th century,” writes one
researcher, “walking up to 100 km/day was not uncommon.” But those days are over,
replaced by modern comforts. Despite the introduction of modern medicine, the health
outcomes of the Oji-Cree have declined in ways that will not be easy to reverse. The
Oji-Cree are literally being killed by technological advances.

The Oji-Cree are an unusual case. It can take a society time to adjust to new
technologies, and the group has also suffered other traumas, like colonization and the
destruction of cultural continuity. Nonetheless, the story offers an important warning
for the human race. The problem with technological evolution is that it is under our
control and, unfortunately, we don’t always make the best decisions.

This is also the principal difference between technological and biological evolution.
Biological evolution is driven by survival of the fittest, as adaptive traits are those that

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As Technology Gets Better, Will Society Get Worse? | The New Yorker

make the survival and reproduction of a population more likely. It isn’t perfect, but at
least, in a rough way, it favors organisms who are adapted to their environments.

Technological evolution has a different motive force. It is self-evolution, and it is

therefore driven by what we want as opposed to what is adaptive. In a market economy,
it is even more complex: for most of us, our technological identities are determined by
what companies decide to sell based on what they believe we, as consumers, will pay
for. As a species, we often aren’t much different from the Oji-Cree. Comfort-seeking
missiles, we spend the most to minimize pain and maximize pleasure. When it comes to
technologies, we mainly want to make things easy. Not to be bored. Oh, and maybe to
look a bit younger.

Our will-to-comfort, combined with our technological powers, creates a stark

possibility. If we’re not careful, our technological evolution will take us toward not a
singularity but a sofalarity. That’s a future defined not by an evolution toward
superintelligence but by the absence of discomforts.

The sofalarity (pictured memorably in the film “Wall-E”) is not inevitable either. But
the prospect of it makes clear that, as a species, we need mechanisms to keep humanity
on track. The technology industry, which does so much to define us, has a duty to cater
to our more complete selves rather than just our narrow interests. It has both the
opportunity and the means to reach for something higher. And, as consumers, we
should remember that our collective demands drive our destiny as a species, and define
the posthuman condition.

Tim Wu is a professor at Columbia Law School and the author of “The Master Switch.”
This is Part II in a series on technological evolution. Part I was “If A Time Traveller
Saw A Smartphone.”__

Illustration by Hannah K. Lee.

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As Technology Gets Better, Will Society Get Worse? | The New Yorker

Tim Wu is a professor at Columbia Law School and a former contributing

writer for newyorker.com.

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