Is Technology “Just a Tool”?
Transformations: Liberal Arts in the Digital Age
1.1, March 2003
Thomas D. Lairson
Gelbman Professor of International Business and
Professor of Political Science
RollinsCollege
1000 Holt Avenue
Winter Park, Florida
32789
Thomas D. Lairson holds the Gelbman Chair of International Business and is Professor of Political Science at RollinsCollege. He received a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Kentucky in 1980. Professor Lairson is co-author of International Political Economy: The Struggle for Power and Wealth (Wadsworth, 3rd Ed. 2003) and has written on the origins of the Cold War and the nature of high technology innovation. He is currently completing a book entitled: “Globalization and Institutions: States, Firms and Markets in East Asia.” He was the first Ford Foundation Professor of International Relations in Hanoi in 1994 and is a member of the editorial board of PS: Political Science and Politics.
Technological change is a troubling matter for much of higher education. Deans and provosts worry about the cost of technology investment and faculty are often dismayed by this new world and fear its consequences. These issues may be especially sharp in small liberal arts colleges, with their long history of supporting traditional educational values. Consequently, faculty and administrators working in liberal arts colleges and grappling with rapid changes in computers and information technology often respond in a conservative and even defensive manner. This has led to a common criticism of the advocates of widespread integration of technology into the classroom and significant curriculum adjustment. Opponents of this suggestion claim that technology is “just a tool.”
At most, they assert, technology affects how we accomplish our goals but does not affect what we want to do. Technology is only a means to an end and does not shape or define the ends themselves. Educators in liberal arts colleges, therefore, need make only minimal changes to accommodate information technology. Seeing technology in such instrumental terms is also linked to a broader argument about the nature of political ands social life, namely that human values are autonomously developed through a system of rational debate and discussion, and rarely change in important ways. Liberal arts colleges are premised on the conclusion that knowledge rarely changes in significant ways and that the political and economic order has only limited relevance for the content of our curriculum. A conservative reading of knowledge and human relations would have us conclude that not only does technology have a limited impact on human purposes, it should only have such a role. This view may be especially intense when the technology seems to threaten control by academicians over knowledge and learning.[1]
Continuity of knowledge and society does have merit and its advocates are often correct. However, there are times when this view of technology must be discarded, because it can be terribly wrong and lead us to a fundamental misunderstanding of the potential significance of technology in social, political and economic change. Sometimes technical advances alter not only the patterns of human interactions but also shift the possibilities and therefore the ends of human life. Common now is the proposition (made by serious scholars, not just wannabe dotcom billionaires) that digital technologies are profoundly reshaping economic, social and political relations. If this view is correct in estimating the significance of the changes underway, the impact on education – perhaps especially, higher education – will be substantial.
This paper outlines some important instances and consequences of technological change in the past, mainly to assess the view that technology is “just a tool.” Our goal is to show that technology is frequently far more important, operating to redistribute resources, create new opportunities, and reshape values. Further, we seek to demonstrate that contemporary changes are on the same scale as the most significant of the past and will have profound consequences for the way we define our present and future. These changes have enormous implications for higher education, which has a special responsibility to help clarify the choices and outcomes for this new era. This responsibility is particularly acute for liberal arts colleges, the traditional source for the clarification of public issues and critical thinking. Unfortunately, liberal arts colleges seem very reticent about adopting a major role in clarifying the relationship of technology to our future.
Technology and History
In a simple and obvious way, technology is indeed a set of tools we apply to the environment – natural and human – to accomplish our goals. Leaving matters here, though, ignores the way this affects what we can do, what we want to do, and how we value certain results. And it ignores the profound consequences for creating and redistributing resources in society. Technology helps to define values and goals, primarily by turning abstract possibilities into real options. The idea of operating a business quickly and effectively across an entire continent was just an empty dream in 1820, but by 1900 the railroad, steamship, and telegraph had made this a practical reality. The consequence of this change was a revolution in the way business was conceived and managed. Even more profoundly, technological change can alter the very structure of society through a complex set of effects on power relations within and between societies. The emergence of the United States as the world’s largest economy was significantly affected by the rapid adoption of these technologies and the ability to restructure the U.S. business system to take advantage of them.[2]
This argument about the impact of technology does not depend on a deterministic logic; human institutions are essential for technology to develop and generate such large consequences. Put another way, technologies are embedded in institutions that can nurture or impede change. These institutions shape choices, support or resist innovation and the dissemination of new ideas and values, and provide the means to amplify or retard technological development. At the same time, technology can greatly influence the formation of institutions by generating resources that privilege one activity or group over others. Technology is intimately connected to power, both as a resource of the powerful and as a mechanism for the redistribution of power. But technology is not a force, like gravity, that exerts its effects independently of human action. Rather, it must be understood as a set of capabilities that enable new forms of activity and thereby alters the range of human institutions. Moreover, these effects are only achieved through complementary institutions, such as educational, business, and political systems. And, these institutions are both shaped by and shape technology.
It is relatively easy to find ways in which technological changes have altered human activity, purposes and institutions in the past. The development of agriculture and domesticated livestock about 11,000 years ago generated a far larger amount of edible calories, and this permitted an increase in the size of human populations. What’s more, the humans adopting agriculture shifted from a nomadic, hunter-gatherer existence to one of more permanent settlements. The resulting stored food surpluses fed non-agricultural producers who developed specialized abilities in the various tasks associated with creating a complex society.[3] About 1800 BCE, the combination of the invention of the war chariot, spoked wheel, friction-reducing axle, and compound bow had profound effects on military advantage and thereby on the basic structure of class relations. The expense of these weapons and high skills in their use led to the development of a narrow elite dominating society. About 600 years later, technological changes in the ability to make tools and weapons cheaply from iron expanded the economic, military and political power of ordinary people. The relative ease in the ability to fashion iron plowshares increased production of food, and this food was controlled by a much wider stratum of people. These same people could produce and equip an army of men with metal arms and armor, and this army could defeat the warrior elite armed with chariots.[4]
There are many other examples of the impact of technology on society, from paper, electricity, the printing press, the compass, the telegraph and railroads, to the invention of mechanical spinning. Each had profound consequences for the formation and development of values and social, economic and political institutions. Consider the printing press. Invented in the West during the middle 15th century by Gutenberg, moveable type helped to generate widespread transformations in social, political and religious life.[5] Quite simply, this invention revolutionized the production of written material and images and permitted the cost-efficient distribution of ideas to an audience of readers much greater than ever before.[6] The results were very important for the ability of increasing numbers to read different versions of the Bible and form and transmit views independent of the Catholic Church. The Reformation owes much to these new capacities brought by the printing press. Likewise, the Renaissance was turned from a localized movement into a Europe-wide intellectual transformation by the distribution of ideas through printed books.[7]
Equally dramatic effects can be seen from the invention of mechanical spinning in the last third of the 18th century. The new ability to produce much higher quality yarn at a small faction of the previous cost had enormous social, economic and political consequences. The cotton industry was created through the capabilities offered by mechanical spinning and much of the early industrial revolution was based on this industry. One consequence was the production of cheap cotton, which replaced wool as the clothing of choice. Because cotton was easily washable, the cleanliness and health of most people improved dramatically.[8] Conversely, because the British dominated this technology, the profits and power from mechanical spinning flowed disproportionately to the British, who assumed world dominance because of this and a flurry of related inventions. The spinning industry in India was devastated by the inability to compete with British industry. At the same time, demand for cotton from the southern United States rose, helping to perpetuate slavery there.[9] Not surprisingly, students of economic development now regularly attribute much of economic growth to the impact of technology.[10]
Clearly, some technologies in human history are not just a tool. But what is it about these and other technologies that lead to such large consequences? The power of technology in restructuring social relationships and redefining values comes primarily from its impact on the material aspects of life and the consequent effects on other realms of human activity. Each of the great technologies of the past had some combination of four qualities: first, the technology dramatically expanded what we could do in areas that mattered; second, this was accomplished in a very cost-effective manner, and usually at a declining cost over time; third, the technology had extensive externalities and spillovers affecting wide areas of human life; and fourth, the application of the technology fed on the effects of the first three to generate positive feedbacks or increasing returns.
To return to agriculture, the development of the technology for growing food offered a dramatically better way for providing an essential requirement for sustaining human life, and it did so at a cost that was much lower than the hunter-gatherer strategy. Not only was the caloric yield from cultivation greater than from hunting and picking up available food, it was more dependable. That is, the cost per calorie obtained declined significantly. The surplus in food produced had a wide range of consequences. Agricultural populations not only increased, but also were healthier and better able to develop a host of additional institutions. Put another way, surpluses made possible a new set of social, political and economic relationships that make up a more complex society. Moreover, these new social forms helped improve agricultural production even more and this gave rise to new and yet more complex social systems. One consequence of complex societies is that considerable human energy can be devoted to the development of technology. That is, the new system generated increasing returns; it fed upon itself.
The Impact of Digital Technologies
How do the changes in digital technologies measure up to the transformations of the past? Can we conclude that the effects of digital technologies will rival those from the printing press and agriculture? Predicting the future is an uncertain task, at best. Just consider the roller coaster of optimism and pessimism surrounding e-business between 1998 and 2002. But, we should not let the bursting of the dotcom bubble detract us from seeing the underlying power of this technological transformation. Using the four standards defined above, digital technologies seem likely to have very big consequences.
There are several characteristics of digital technologies that point toward profound effects. Most important, this technology permits the production and distribution of information and knowledge on a global scale at a rapidly declining cost. Digital technologies operate globally and in a near-ubiquitous manner. And they have fundamentally altered the nature and role of information and knowledge in society.[11] Complex and richly textured information flows have become globally pervasive, because creating and distributing information is so inexpensive. Somewhat ironically, although the cost of obtaining and disseminating information falls by 35% per year, the actual value of information is increasing when it can be used to develop knowledge. When the cost of doing something important falls exponentially, while the capabilities for accomplishing it rise exponentially, material relationships are rapidly and radically restructured.
How has this declining cost been achieved? The greatest factor has been the ability to increase exponentially the power of integrated circuits, through the unceasing capacity to double the number of transistors on a constant space of semiconductor every 18 months. And, astonishingly, this has been accomplished at a constant cost. The result is that computing power has doubled about every 18 months, at a constant to declining cost, since the early 1960s. This means the cost of producing and distributing information has declined by 35% per year for several decades.[12] Some dramatic but representative measures of the consequences of this process can be seen in Figure 1.
1970 / 1999Cost of 1Mhz of processing power
/ $7601 / $0.17Cost of 1 megabit of storage
/ $5257 / $0.17Cost of sending 1 trillion bits of information
/ $150,000 / $0.12Figure I
Cost Comparisons for Information Production and Distribution
Source: Pam Woodall, “Untangling E-conomics,” The Economist, September 21, 2000.
What this chart suggests is that in 1970 the cost of producing and distributing complex information was in some ways prohibitively expensive. By 1999, the cost of these same activities had become nominal. Though this rate of improvement cannot continue forever, scientists have high confidence in maintaining the same rate of improvement through at least 2010.
These stunning declines in the cost of information move like a pinball through information-based activities, and it is here where social, political, and economic transformations take place. Digital technologies are both a product in themselves and the key technology responsible for changing the process and organization of production. More and more economic activity revolves around production based on or enabled by digital technologies, and the processes are increasingly global. The result is a powerful feedback loop between the increasing production of digital technologies and their application to new areas.
Real-time information flows create new systems of management. Firms, which previously were organized in hierarchical and self-contained forms, are increasingly operating in much more dynamic ways with other firms. Global production networks have replaced traditional supply chains, and complex systems of collaboration have become as important as the arms-length contract. Nothing less than a global business revolution has been wrought by digital technologies and the declining cost of distributing complex and rich information around the world.[13] The production process for most goods and services is increasingly defined around knowledge and information intensive capabilities. One consequence is the premium wages for high-skilled employees. Another result comes from the highly mobile and transferable character of information and knowledge. Nations creating effective institutions can make quick improvements in their production of high technology goods. The rapid growth of the semiconductor industry in Asia is testimony to this possibility.[14] And nations able to develop the capacity for innovation now have distinct advantages in global competition.[15] Less clear are the effects of the ability to produce, distribute and consume goods in cyberspace, beyond the reach of any nation.