A third narrative is one that was introduced by Sterling, Bruce Sterling, who is a design
thinker, a science fiction author, a design researcher and a book called "Shaping Things."
In this book he describes a number of historical transitions that are happening that I will
call Sterling Transitions after Bruce Sterling, and to summarize this narrative he does state
in the book that relationships between humans and technology create cultural transitions
which can't be undone.
In the book he describes five major technocultures that have existed over time.
The first technoculture in this narrative was when the people had roles like hunters
and farmers and that technology had roles that he calls artifacts.
In this stage literacy is not important to society.
People that do jobs like scribes or initial data managers are very expensive.
Life is lived very close to nature, and life is dominated by the rhythms of the seasons,
one of the ways in which the first technoculture in which humans and technology interacted.
The next major technoculture in this progression, in this narrative of technology, was when
customers used machines.
So, now the people who are using the technology are more like customers.
They are literate and they are numerate.
Money is a technology that is very widely if not universally used.
Roads, ships, banks or infrastructures of institutions are present, and the machines
that the customers are using are largely powered by fossil fuels and are mass produced, are
machine produced.
The next technoculture, the third one, is when consumers, the people that are consumers
and the technology of products.
This is when goods are available in what appears to be infinite quantity.
These are the products.
These products, these goods are commodities, and they are highly specialized.
So, you can get high-end and low-end products.
High-end and low-end refrigerators, high-end and low-end cars, high-end and low-end clothes,
and the consumers exist within information infrastructures.
So, now as a person you're not just buying high-end and low-end things.
You also are referenced by a credit history, by Social Security numbers, by a driver's
license, by retirement plans, and these data infrastructures and these technological infrastructures
intertwine in this technoculture.
The current technoculture, or maybe the one which we're moving into, is the fourth one
in which the people are end-users and the technology are gizmos.
In this phase, in this technoculture gizmos have unreal amounts of functionality.
Think of your Smartphone where you can download an app that does anything.
You can upgrade your technology to have limitless numbers of features.
Everything, though, is tied in relatively unstable information networks.
Your mobile, the network come and goes.
Power comes and goes.
Who is using the phone changes.
You as an end-user are constantly being bombarded with information and enticements to participate
in the gizmo's infrastructure.
So, the gizmos are trying to get you as an end-user to participate in the information
economy that they are in.
The last technoculture in Sterling's transition is when people are now called "Wranglers"
and the objects are now called "Spimes" and this is something that I would say we're transitioning
into now.
Wranglers are people who are skilled at finding it and using information, and the objects,
the physical objects, are actually being replaced by digital equivalents which Sterling coins
the term spime to describe.
For example, 3D printing.
When you print an object what you're doing is you are making something which is digital,
a spime, real, and what's more important is that digital object, not the thing that you're
printing.
Information now flows between spimes and wranglers very fluently.
The important thing that Sterling brings out in his description of this narrative of technology
is that you move from one technoculture to another technoculture under two instances.
One is the line of empire.
The line of empire says that if you don't adopt a new technology you are going to be
overtaken militarily by a culture that does.
Imagine the technology of arrows.
If you are one society that uses arrows and another society decides to use guns and you
don't also adopt the technology of guns because you can't or won't, then you are going to
fall victim to the society that does.
The same thing when sail transportation, sailboats, progressed to steam transportation or fossil
fuel-based water transportation.
That is one way which you transition from one technoculture to another.
The other way in which you transition from one technoculture to another is by going to
the line of no return.
The line of no return is less military.
It says that the survival of your society depends on using this new technology, and
without it you're going to have widespread devastation.
So, think about the transition from using horses to using cars.
Sure, you can get out your car and go ride a horse, but you're not going to be able to
keep the infrastructure of things that have goods flowing to Walmart, and things coming
from the shipping ports, and you going back and forth to work.
That's not going to work if everyone goes back to horses.
You've transitioned to a line of no return.
Another example is moving from kerosene to electricity.
Sterling Transitions that move forward and you can't go backwards through them.
It's worth thinking about what are the technologies that we're transitioning through now?
What are the technologies that we can't live without?
GPS?
Cell phones?
Truck transportation?
What are the new lines of no return that we can't move backwards from because it would
result in widespread devastation, or we would fall victim to some sort of military overtaking?
So, the third narrative, a way of thinking about the history of technology transformation
is through Sterling Transitions.
The relationship between humans and technologies pass through one-way transitions, and Sterling
described five of them.
The final narrative that I want to put out there, this is a final and fourth way of thinking
about the transitions, the way in which IT develops, a story that we tell about what's
progress is what we have thought about a little bit, Bonnie, Bill and I, and it's called collapse
informatics.
Collapse informatics says that current technology depends on non-renewable resources.
Now, we still have resources now and so the challenge of collapse informatics is to say
how can we best use the resources that we have now to ensure prosperity when those non-renewable
resources are gone?
Here are four narrative visions of the future.
Technological determinism, ubiquitous computing, Sterling Transitions and collapse informatics.
Which of these are compatible?
If you think about progress from each of these different perspectives what sorts of next
steps look like progress if you think about the history of technology as being one of
ubiquitous computing?
What next step looks like progress if you think about the history of technology as being
collapse informatics?
Are those next steps the same, and if not why not?
As a student of technology which of those narratives do you think is more valid?
Which of the next steps do you think is actually progress, and which do you think is falling
prey to a narrative that isn't applicable to that?
Thank you very much.