Nine Inch Nails will likely soon be coming out with a revised Rage Against the Machine song that captures the Neo-Luddite opposition to many mechanical innovations that assist us in our march toward a new economic era.
Flock cameras, online tracking systems, data centers needed to collect, process, and analyze all the billions of transactions from Flock and tracking systems…the list of innovations that keep track of where you are, what you do, what you buy, and how you react to stimuli pushed your way grows by the minute.
I’m thinking our laws, our culture, and our capabilities and capacities are running further behind by the hour from science and innovation.
Fuller’s concept of the doubling of knowledge curve provides a scary recognition of how fast our world is changing.
Prior to 1900, it took centuries for the collective knowledge to double. In the 1800s, this began to change, and by 1945, accumulated knowledge took 25 years or so to double. By the 1980s, it took 12 years, quickly dropping to 1-2 years in some fields as we entered the current era. The AI era will exponentially increase the volume of information, and we really don’t know how it will affect real knowledge.
My view on the technological advancements we are experiencing is not to become a Neo-Luddite and put the brakes on innovation, but rather to get deeper into understanding the parameters of innovation. We tend to ignore history.
While the Luddites got a bad rap, now commonly using the term as I have here, as opposed to innovation, they were actually seeking accommodation for the workers as technology was beginning to displace textile workers. The innovations moved forward, as did the innovations of the late 1800s, seeing the age of technology, and the later 1900s bringing the rise of the computer age.
I have lumped Flock Cameras and Data Centers into one protest category because, in my view, they have emerged in a similar fashion. They meet a required technology need, and there has been rapid movement towards the creation of the tools and implementation of their usage. This movement has gone faster than the governmental and political considerations of guardrails and constraints, nor even the real environmental implications.
In the data center realm, we have seen a quicker development of construction and implementation than the power and water innovations and infrastructure required, leading to the huge pushback in some communities across the country.
I’m thinking a lower-geared approach, taking it slower, with deep dives into consequences, might take us to a better place. Historical resistance to technological change has never reversed innovations. They are going to happen. We just can’t let our hair go on fire in resistance when every change in technology leads to innovation within the technology. If water usage is a problem, I am confident innovation will develop alternative cooling mechanisms. If cameras on every block raise concerns, I’m expecting alternative applications for specific places, with constraints on how collected data is used and for how long it is kept.
We adjust and can be as innovative with our regulations as we are with our innovations. The Second Amendment is clear to me, yet if I buy a handgun my information goes through a background check. How that information is used and how long it is kept is regulated, even as I remain unsure of how that might violate the Second Amendment.
There are going to be cameras placed somewhere in our daily lives. There are going to be massive data centers somewhere in our country. We can be as smart as we want to be in our regulatory efforts as we are in our innovation.
