It’s a constant in American culture, this belief that new technology will either save us or spoil us. It says we like solving our problems with technological fantasies and we fear our moral fiber can’t withstand it … If we’re prisoners, we’re prisoners by our own design. Technology is such a part of our culture, you could argue that it is our culture. Where it goes is where we go, good or bad.
Predictor: Lubar, Steven
Prediction, in context:In a 1994 article for The Modesto Bee, Rusty Coats, interviews Steven Lubar, author of “Info Culture.” Coats writes: ”Each breakthrough in information technology in the past 150 years has been heralded with the same double-edged hype – one side proclaiming the arrival of Shangri-la, and the other portending doom. ‘It’s a constant in American culture, this belief that new technology will either save us or spoil us,’ said Steven Lubar, a Smithsonian Institute curator and author of ‘Info Culture.’ It says something about us. It says we like solving our problems with technological fantasies and we fear our moral fiber can’t withstand it – as they asked in the first intercity telegraph message (in 1844) – “What hath God wrought?”‘ In an age when consumers can find 100 manuals on programming DOS but none explaining what that’s necessary, Lubar’s book is an oddball: It employs perspective. The book, which coincided with an ongoing Smithsonian exhibit, shows how American culture has been defined by its engines of information. ‘For most Americans, starting in the mid-nineteenth century, what we see, hear, and think about, and how we understand it, is in part shaped by the way we use information machines.’ … Lubar said not all technocratic blue-skying is fantasy. ‘Remember,’ he said, ‘Chinese students in 1989 used a fax machine for their weapon. And the Xerox machine helped the Solidarity labor movement in Poland. Behind the enthusiasm, there are people using these information machines for real social change …’ Lubar … said that as information culture accelerates it’s important to remember: ‘If we’re prisoners, we’re prisoners by our own design. Technology is such a part of our culture, you could argue that it is our culture. Where it goes is where we go, good or bad.'”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Community/Culture
Subtopic: Human-Machine Interaction
Name of publication: Modesto Bee
Title, headline, chapter name: Info-Culture Technology: Savior or Destroyer of Society?
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe/document?_m=9242440c133a8b4f8b92228020e63450...
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney