Selling short the digital revolution

Technoskeptic. I had never heard the term before until I came across it recently in an op-ed piece in The New York Times by economist Paul Krugman.

In his article, Krugman sympathizes with the views of “technology skeptics”–those who view recent digital technological progress as paling in significance when compared to previous historical advances like the internal combustion engine and electricity. In fact, say the technoskeptics, any single advance from the industrial revolution is more significant than all of digital technology's achievements combined.

The digital revolution–symbolized by the microprocessor (right)–promises dramatic technological progress and social changes on the order of those last seen during the industrial revolution (left). Can it deliver? The discussion was sparked by the PBS documentary The 1900 House , in which a contemporary British family agreed to spend three months living in exactly the same conditions as their Victorian-era turn-of-the-century counterparts. Combining elements of This Old House , The Antiques Roadshow , and Survivor , the program was a vivid reminder of the profound benefits from industrialization that we now take for granted. To Krugman, however, it also served to demonstrate how our new digital technologies–“gizmos” he calls them–are relatively trivial compared to the transforming technologies of the late 19th and early 20th century. Watching The 1900 House , he says, reinforced his doubts about how much progress we can expect in the future. My reaction to this was astonishment at how anyone who has witnessed the progress and ever-widening impact of computer technology over the last two decades could fail to appreciate its significance and enormous future “transforming” potential. It's clear to me, at least, that the implications of digital technology extend far beyond the latest “gizmos.” Certainly on a personal level I can't begin to calculate the time-saving benefits of being able to buy goods like books and CDs on line; or being able to analyze and manage my investments more quickly. Or the countless hours I've saved by writing customized programs to automate repetitive processing tasks. And who can fail to appreciate the convenience of instant communication by e-mail? However, as significant as these benefits may be on an individual level, it's the changes happening on a larger scale that promise to have a profound effect on global economics, politics, and social order. For example, is it possible to overestimate the societal impact of the instantaneous and universal availability of an ever-expanding reservoir of information, and its accelerating effect on an already dizzyingly fast-paced accumulation of knowledge? Can we ignore how ever-more-powerful computing resources are enabling scientific advances, like the Human Genome Project, that were never before possible? Or how Internet communication is allowing the creation of online communities not limited by national boundaries or politics? And how can e-commerce–offering a worldwide distribution of goods and services over the Internet–not ultimately transform the world economy? To me, any one of these examples is enough to demonstrate the potential dramatic “transforming” nature of digital technology. Am I missing something here? Maybe Krugman's right, and my view of the future of technological progress is too optimistic. Or maybe, like 19th-century political economist Thomas Malthus who predicted universal poverty and famine as a result of continued population growth, the technoskeptics just have it wrong.

R. Pell, Editor-in-Chief