When technology is spurned, there is no development

disapointing
I agree the man still couldn't get over how great light-bulbs are. Yes they're handy, but boring. The bicycle is a great invention, with very few negative aspects, it is on the whole, JUST a good thing. This is what technology should be. He dismissed the public as fools and went on to bore us with WHY we got it wrong. yeh?

inapropriatly named
That is it's biggest flaw, were it entitled engeneering... i wouldn't have been disapointed.

I WANTED to hear about the internet, artificial intelligence, robotics, genetic modification.

this series seems to ask, "do you think tech will DEFINE us?" of course! it's obvious, it will out-perform and overtake. THAT's exciting. (the part where we're 50/50, that's the interesting bit.) The impact technology will have on society in the future will be ASTOUNDING. no flying cars.

This series is indeed a disappointment. This is because its title misrepresents its content. This is not a series of talks about technology. Its subject is, in fact, engineering.

If you re-read the talks and substitute the word ‘engineering’ for ‘technology’ you will find that they make more sense. This is also the case if you look at Andy Lane’s attempt to define technology. For example, Andy concludes that “technology is a profession”, but is technology really a career choice? Is there an Institute of Technology anywhere?

As an ‘encomium to engineering’ the talks have a legitimacy and value, I think. Engineering is peculiarly under valued as a profession in this country compared with the continent or America, for example. The question of why this should be is a a fair if not vital one. So, to the extent that XX addresses and answers this and related questions the lectures are worthwhile.

However, technology itself is more than engineering. All of us are engage daily, if not constantly with technology while few of us practise engineering. Many questions then arise. What is technology? We speak of primitive technology, traditional technology, appropriate technology and modern technology: are these different versions of the same thing or are they essentially distinct? If modern technology is fundamentally different from traditional technology are we as users of this technology also fundamentally different as humans from our ancestors? Does technology determine our future or do we, could we, shape it to help us reach the future we have chosen?

Important questions one might imagine in a world and a time so bound up with technology but they will not be answered by xx. In Britain they are blithely ignored. Engineering isn’t the only discipline not be highly esteemed in this country when compared with abroad. Philosophy in general is held in low regard (as Simon Beaumont noted) and within philosophy itself there is (with few honourable exceptions) no place for philosophy of technology. (It was telling, I thought, that the invited audience didn’t include such a philosopher.) This is not the case in France, Germany, Holland or the States.

So for a lecture series on technology we must still wait. Meanwhile let’s try and appreciate this eulogy to engineering.

To contemplate both sides of technology, as you say, good and bad, is a waste of your efforts in my view. Technology is generally advanced for the good of mankind but there will always be those who use it for 'bad' reasons. Unfortunately that cannot be avoided and should not be used as an excuse to stop advancing. The advantages of technological advancement far outweigh the disadvantages. Even those countries whose governments don't allow or can't afford the full benefits of the advances still benefit from cheaper communications, clean(er) water systems, better medicines, better education systems, etc etc in psite of the fact that technology-based wars are still being fought.

After an initial warm feeling, I tend to share your disappointment.

I might honestly regard myself as cast in the engineering mould - a child of the late fifties, (a disappointed astronaut indeed), twenty or more years as a professional software engineer, my father an EE, my grandfather a railway locomotive engineer.

The reason we harp back to the golden years is that back then it was not in the engineering remit to worry about the social consequences of the work and the role of science and technology in the greater community. We could naievely press on with whatever boyish dream we were seeking to project safe in the knowledge that the world would come with us should we get it to fly.

The real issues facing us today have nothing to do with technical education and everything to do with the most obviously missing part of our curriculum: philosophy - ask any PhD Biologist about Karl Popper and you will no doubt receive a blank look.

This is not the case in France and Germany, (where engineering and science are alive and well apparently), certainly philospophy is a major part of the Bac'. We have some of the best trained technologists in the UK - the majority of whom are incapable of critical or original thought. I wonder if this is where the problem lies. A reduced capacity for reflection in the Anglo-Saxon psyche perhaps?

I leave you with one personal observation from the life of a "cutting edge teechnologist".

Being at a career watershed I recently explored the opportunities that the market could offer for my skills.

Apparently I am worth 100K per year if I travel the world installing background ring tone services for mobile telecomms providers or 25K per year if I work for the Medical Research Council as a scientific programmer! Is this the triumph of technology that was refered to? As they say in the USA, "Go figure..".

The problems we face are not technical ones they are human ones.
Unchallenged materialism is at the heart of all our problems. Technology is just what we do.

I'm off to live in a tub and contemplate. Let's hope the next lecture is slightly more inspiring...

Encomium = high commendation (I had to look it up in the dictionary)

Well I was provoked to reflect about 'technology', as Alec Broers interprets it, and also as John Monk interprets it in another thread of this forum.

We are geared up to be inspired by technological advances, but I for one rather too easily dismiss the lessons of past technologies. The steam locomotive, the electronic valve, the vinyl disc, film photography, even 'mercury thermometers under the tongue' have all vanished from the mainstream in my lifetime. Were the potential benefits realised or even recognised (social, economic, political, technical) and might similar opportunities or mistakes arise with the next generations?