The Management of Future Technology: A Problem of Uncertain Visions and Values

Abstract

This book has considered how values affect the design of technology and work systems today. The important question is what values will influence the way we use technology in the future. At present we see technology as today’s hope but tomorrow’s bogey man. Christopher Evans, computer scientist and psychologist, has described our situation as a three-stage revolution which has already begun. Stage one (1975–1982) he sees as the dawn of public awareness in terms of computers, the stage of gimmicks and toys which is already evident. Stage two (1983–1990) will be when we see the first large-scale changes in the patterns of work and education, economics and social life. Stage three (1991–2000) will be signalled by political upheavals, and the vastly important emergence of the ultra-intelligent machine [Evans 1979]. If we are already in a revolutionary mode, a revolution being defined as major changes in roles, social structures, norms and attitudes, then we have a great many things to do. We need to gain an understanding of the societal implications of the new technology, and of the different kinds of future it can lead us to. We need also to develop strategies for its control and management so that we are able to guide technology in the direction we want it to take. The author’s namesake, Lewis Mumford, once said: “Science discovers, technology executes, man conforms”, implying that we follow blindly wherever technology takes us. Can we afford to do this in the future or must we, as members of society, assume a more interventionalist role than we have perhaps been willing or able to do in the past?