Technology Challenged book online

Introduction

It might be a familiar progression, transpiring on many worlds—
a planet, newly formed, placidly revolves around its star;
life slowly forms; a kaleidoscopic procession of creatures evolves;
intelligence emerges which, at least up to a point,
confers enormous survival value; and then technology
is invented…In a flash, they create world-altering contrivances.
Some planetary civilizations see their way through,
place limits on what may and what must not be done,
and safely pass through the time of perils.
Others, not so lucky or so prudent, perish.

— Carl Sagan

The time of perils has already begun. This book offers a tool for navigating them. It is a personal tool, one we might use in our everyday choices. And it is a global tool, one that could help our civilization survive.

Just how did we get into this situation? Expanding on Carl Sagan’s description: For most of the earth’s existence it has hosted organic life. Single cell life evolved into multicellular plants and animals. Some animals started to use simple tools—from otters cracking open shellfish with rocks to chimpanzees dipping into termite mounds with sticks—but another animal went farther. It used tools to create even better tools. With spears it hunted. With sewn animal hides it survived the cold. With plows it created surplus. With tablet and scribes it recorded information. These tools led to the printing press, microscope, steam engine, telephone, airplane, and computer. We call these things technology, and for a million years they have been transforming our environment…with ever increasing power, costs, and benefits.

World War II saw the creation of one of our most potent contrivances so far: a weapon based on a nuclear chain reaction. Not as well known as the atomic bomb was a possible side effect of its detonation: a second chain reaction that might incinerate the earth’s entire atmosphere. While the nuclear chain reaction was limited by the amount of radioactive fuel contained in the bomb, the atmospheric chain reaction would be limited only by the amount of oxygen cloaking the earth.

What to do? Scientists building the first atomic bomb estimated the risk to be as high as three chances in a million. They weighed the costs and benefits…to themselves, their country, and their planet. They considered the objective calculations and their subjective values before proceeding with the detonation.

The atmosphere did burn, but only in proximity to the explosion. There was no atmospheric chain reaction. Had there been, we would not be here to write about it. The atomic bomb is hardly alone in leveraging human power to a perilous height:

· One of the oldest tools, knives in the new form of box cutters, were used to hijack airplanes, which were used as suicide weapons in the U.S. on September 11, 2001. Technology gives individuals breathtaking power.

· The Institute for Biological Energy Alternatives synthesized a completely new virus in just two weeks. Unlike a bomb, a virus does not explode once, but can multiply and spread. Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) circled the globe in a matter of days.

· SARS was neither highly infective nor highly deadly, but Vector, the USSR’s secret bioweapons laboratory, genetically modified diseases to be both. One product was a smallpox virus designed to be resistant to all known treatment. Scientists also worked toward viruses and bacteria that would degrade the human immune system or modify behavior.

· Electric probes implanted in the brains of rats have demonstrated rudimentary “mind control,” foreshadowing the day when entertainment may become as immersive as video games and as addictive as brain-chemistry-altering drugs. What effect might “digital methamphetamine” have on society?

· Nanotechnology, the technique of creating objects on the molecular scale, would become more efficient if it could create microscopic robots—“nanobots”—that could, in turn, create more nanobots, which would create still more nanobots. Factories would then have workers that could also make more workers. But as Mickey Mouse discovered in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice when his magic broom replicated itself without limit, a self-reproducing tool can quickly escape our control.

There are good reasons for almost any technology. Even though they can be used as weapons and can transport disease, airplanes provide tremendous benefits. Those developing a drug-resistant strain of smallpox must have believed that presented more benefit than cost, at least for them. The question is not, “Should we have technology?” Obviously, we have it and—barring catastrophe—we will have much more of it. The question is, “How do we evaluate it?” Unfortunately, the most compelling argument for a considered, critical approach would be a spectacular disaster…and that could exterminate us.

We live in an increasingly interdependent world and,
due to the progress of technology, our power over nature
has increased by leaps and bounds. Unless we use that
power wisely, we are in danger of damaging or destroying
both our environment and our civilization.

— George Soros

Evaluating technology is not just about saving the world, but is part of our everyday lives. Our education, work, health, and recreation choices pivot on technology. What kind of car is best for you? Which software should you buy? Should you take the new drug your doctor prescribed? Do you write your senator to support or oppose a missile defense shield or cloning? What jobs will technology move offshore…before it renders them obsolete? Billions of people making a thousand billion choices, aggregating—like raindrops building to a flood—to transform the earth. We did not get from stone tools to genetic engineering without choices.

Key to our individual and collective future is how we make those choices. But if we are to understand and evaluate technology, we face a monumental problem: technology is complex. There is more of it than we can fully understand and, beyond that, it is changing faster than we can keep up. Stone tools changed little over thousands of human generations, but modern technology changes radically within just a single human generation. Personal computers, cellular telephones, medicinal drugs, and weapons systems render themselves obsolete ever more quickly, and this trend continues to accelerate. So the small percentage of technology that any individual can fully understand is becoming smaller every day.

In our highly specialized world, even experts rely on experts. The auto mechanic fixes the car of the computer technician who fixes the computer of the mechanic. We rely on expert’s reviews, take our doctor’s advice, listen to our friends, and then make gut decisions. And, while our children exhibit an amazing facility for adapting to and using new technology, they are no better prepared to evaluate it. Schools teach them that technology is no more than computers, and that knowing how to operate them is equivalent to understanding them. Learning which buttons to push is no substitute for the ability to evaluate.

In an era of rapidly changing technology, studying the details of what has already been invented is like driving a car while craning out the window and staring down at the blur of asphalt. This is a dangerous way to drive. Learning to operate current tools is important for many occupations, but in order to plan ahead we need a grasp of the timeless patterns that have held true for stone tools, plows, computers, and genetic engineering…and may well continue to hold for future technologies. This is not about how to design a computer or repair a car, but about discovering a big picture that puts these technologies—all technologies—into context. It is technological literacy.

There is a major difference between
technological competence and technological literacy.
Literacy is what everyone needs.
Competence is what a few people need in order to do a job or make a living.
And we need both.

— William Wulf

This form of literacy changes how we perceive technology. Do we treat it as some foreign and strange thing that “experts” create and direct us to use? Or, quite the opposite, do we create a relationship with technology, putting it within our understanding and influence? Even a computer engineer or auto mechanic may sometimes take the first view, seeing the other as an expert whose technological domain is completely foreign. Technologically literate people take the second, more powerful view.

This “big picture” contextual view of technology is precisely what we need to navigate these perilous times—both on a personal and a societal level. To gain that view, we need to figure out what is true for many technologies, even those not yet invented. It is in our nature to seek out the patterns around us—all a part of finding our place in the Universe. We look for patterns in technology much the same way we would look for them in anything…by asking the right questions.

Overview

Being technologically literate is knowing what questions to ask.

— Ira Flatow

To understand and evaluate technology, we ask nine questions (each the topic of a chapter) and seek enduring answers. We start by building a foundation: In chapters one through four, we examine technology’s identity. Once we identify technology, we analyze how it changes in chapters five, six, and seven. Together, these seven chapters give us a foundation for its evaluation, which we do in chapters eight and nine.

1. What is technology? Since we are looking for patterns that have long been—and will continue to be—true, we cannot define technology as just the latest inventions. We need a much broader definition. In Chapter One, we try several, including tools that extend our abilities. A definition that includes history—even all the way back to stone tools—may endure into our future.

2. Why do we use technology? In Chapter Two, we uncover a few answers that apply to most of what we have invented. Our desire to communicate, for instance, has been satisfied by writing, paper, printing press, pencil, radio, telephone, television, email, and “instant messaging.”

3. Where does technology come from? In Chapter Three we look at environments conducive to the birth of technology. One pattern we find is that denser populations gave us more chances to encounter and build upon each other’s inventions, speeding up progress. This might help us understand why technology changed slowly for thousands of years but rapidly now.

4. How does technology work? All humans use technology, much of it so simple—a hammer or shovel, for instance—that we do not even think about this question. Perhaps surprisingly, there are simple patterns that hold for a variety of technologies. One pattern we uncover in Chapter Four, feedback and correction, explains how computerized thermostats, robots, and other complex technologies work.

The four questions comprising the first four chapters focus on the “identity” of technology, but “change” is what makes technology a pressing issue, and we address it in the next three chapters:

5. How does technology change? While it is common knowledge that computers double in power every couple of years, few know that this exponential growth curve started back when computers were made of electromagnetic relays and vacuum tubes...or that mechanical clocks followed a similar curve of improvement beginning in the 1300s.

6. How does technology change us? It is not just the technology that changes. We change in response to it, just as any living thing adapts to its environment. In Chapter Six we find that technology has affected how we work, live, and perceive our world. Machines have displaced workers and created new jobs, pushing us up a pyramid of work, which often requires more thinking and less brute strength.

7. How do we change technology? Just as technology changes us, we change it. While Chapter Five looks at patterns of change intrinsic to technology, Chapter Seven looks at the ways that people influence it. As inventors, managers, investors, leaders, teachers, and in many other capacities, our choices and decisions guide technology. In a sense, humans form much of the environment in which technology either survives or becomes extinct.

8. What are technology’s costs and benefits? In Chapter Eight, we search for patterns in the tradeoffs we make with technology. One tradeoff we examine: the more a technology enables us, the more we become dependent upon it. This was uncomfortably clear as we approached January 1, 2000 and worried about the Y2K bug, which had the potential to cause many millions of computers to malfunction. Computers are so useful that we have come to depend on them to schedule our factories, operate antilock brakes on our cars, and keep track of our bank balances.

9. How do we evaluate technology? In Chapter Nine, the second of our two chapters on evaluation, we draw on sociology and psychology. Countries, corporations, religions, clubs, families, and individuals bring their own values to bear when evaluating costs and benefits. For example, the values of Afghanistan’s Taliban regime labeled Stinger missiles “good technology” and TV satellite dishes “bad technology.”

These nine questions fit into the categories Identity, Change, and Evaluation (from which we get the acronym “ICE-9”) as shown in this diagram:

The ICE-9 questions are a honeycomb or structure of cubbyholes into which we can place new things we learn about technology. Asking those questions about technologies we encounter (directly or through TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, or books), we find patterns that hold true for many technologies. And these patterns form a context.

How might we apply these questions to a technology we return to later in this book, radios in North Korea? First, the background: any radios that can be tuned to frequencies other than the one carrying official broadcasts must by registered with the government. The tuners are soldered into place and police make surprise inspections, looking for tampering. Information is so tightly controlled that defectors are surprised to find that South Korea is more prosperous than North (which has had widespread starvation) and that U.S. donations of rice are not subservient gifts of tribute. Combating this dearth of information, a group in South Korea is smuggling in disposable radios. With ICE-9:

9. How do we evaluate it? The government of North Korea evaluates the radios in terms of their power. By promoting dissenting views, this technology is a threat to their control.

8. What are its costs and benefits? Like many technologies, radio offers tradeoffs between such goals as control and freedom. In this situation, radios subvert control and promote freedom.

7. How do we change it? Engineers design radios, activists distribute them, organizations fund them, and North Korean police hunt them.

6. How does it change us? Independent news sources heard over the radios change listeners’ conception of reality: they discover that starvation is not normal and that their nation is not the world’s most powerful.

5. How does it change? Electronic technologies, in particular, have become smaller and less expensive at an amazing rate, making disposable radios feasible.

4. How does it work? Many technologies can be characterized as either centralized or distributed. Unlike a large transmitter, the radios are highly distributed, so many could fail or be destroyed without affecting the rest.

3. Where does it come from? These radios come from specialization, designed by experts in microelectronics. Broadcasting, however, was an accident: radio was invented a century ago for one-to-one conversations where telephone wires could not be run.

2. Why do we use it? Communication is one of the oldest reasons we use technology and it still drives such devices as radios, satellites, cellular phones, and email.

1. What is it? Radio is a tool to extend our abilities, allowing us to hear something from far away. But the physical radio that we can touch is just the tip of the iceberg. Out of sight are systems of technical standards and networks of energy distribution and manufacturing just as important.

Technology takes on greater meaning when we understand its context. Oblivious of that context, many are satisfied to simply use technology, ignoring their relationships to it and its relationship to our environment. Dams also illustrate this point.

Looking down on the earth from space, some of the largest, most visible technologies are hydroelectric dams. Invisible from that high perch, however, is how interconnected the whole system is. Salmon feed in the oceans, enriching their bodies before returning to their spawning grounds. Unless dams block them. Salmon farms provide a spawning area below the dams, addressing the dwindling salmon population. But not a related problem: before creation of dams and farms, upstream bears, eagles, bobcats and many other animals ate salmon, and then fertilized inland trees with phosphorous and nitrogen from the ocean. Trees evolved over eons to thrive on that fertilizer, one of countless relationships now affected by technology.

But change is nothing new. Primitive tools changed how humans hunted, sheltered, and clashed. They changed the environment in which we evolve so, naturally, different traits became the most survivable—for instance, our ability to create and use tools. Medical technology, including antibiotics, has changed the environment in which viral diseases are competing to survive, helping to evolve antibiotic-resistant viruses. It has also extended human life, giving us time to philosophize or invent yet more technology.

…there could be a crucial hurdle
at our own present evolutionary stage,
the stage when intelligent life
starts to develop technology.

— Martin Rees

That we will change salmon, trees, viruses, and ourselves is inevitable. And, as technology advances, we will have greater power to cause change. The open question is whether we will effect those changes with a myopic view of the technology and its most immediate application, or with a view of the grander patterns.

We opened the Introduction with a quote from Carl Sagan cautioning us about the power and danger of our “world-altering contrivances.” The danger comes from blindly embracing or rejecting technology—rather than influencing our world based on understanding and evaluation. Creating an intentional future is a collective process, and it is our hope that you, and those you pass this book along to, will find this approach useful.

Chapter 1

What is Technology?

Technology is a gift of God.
After the gift of life it is perhaps
the greatest of God's gifts.
It is the mother of civilizations,
of arts and of sciences.

— Freeman Dyson

The Hawaiian bobtail squid would be easy prey on bright moonlit nights if it cast a shadow. But it does not. Instead, the squid projects simulated moonlight on the ocean floor where predators wait. How does a squid extend its abilities to include shining like the moon? It gathers and eats bacteria called Vibrio fischeri. These communicate among themselves with chemical signaling molecules so they know how many of their peers have gathered, and when their population hits a critical density, or quorum, they glow. The squid packs these glowing bacteria into an organ with shutters, lenses, and colored filters so that it can simulate a wide range of moonlight, keeping the squid virtually invisible to predators. Does ingesting and using luminous bacteria qualify as using technology?

Vibrio fischeri have cousins named Vibrio cholerae, the water-borne bacteria that cause cholera. While the Hawaiian bobtail squid shines light with the help of Vibrio fischeri, the Vibrio cholerae bacteria actually change their environment. They enter the human stomach when infected water is consumed. At first it might appear that they are doomed for, unlike the benign bacteria found in healthy stomachs, Vibrio cholerae are killed by human digestive acids. Only one in a million survives. The survivors attach themselves firmly to folds in the lining of the small intestine and then inject a bit of toxin. The stomach’s reaction to this threatened tissue damage is to flush the area with water, diluting the acid, washing away the other bacteria, and leaving the invader still clinging tightly. The Vibrio cholera procreate and, evolved to avoid putting all its eggs in one stomach, some ride the newly created river—diarrhea—in search of new hosts. All this flushing water dehydrates the human host and, untreated, cholera can result in death within hours. Is Vibrio cholerae acting as a technology because it changes its environment?

Is a sea otter smashing shellfish with rocks using technology? A chimpanzee smashing open nuts with rocks? A crow dipping for insects with sticks? Or a beaver damming streams to form ponds? Does instinctual use count? Or is being able to manipulate and share information about their tools—and being aware of these processes—necessary? It all depends on how we define technology.

The root meaning of technology, from Greek, is the study of a craft or art. John Lienhard, radio host and professor of both engineering and history, suggests that our species should not be called homo sapiens (the wise ones), but homo technologicus (those who use technology). He defined technology as “the knowledge of making things.” In his book The Technological Society, Jacques Ellul defined technology in relation to art and science:

Art is concrete & subjective

Science is abstract & objective

Technology is concrete & objective

In this chapter, we explore several slightly more specific and practical definitions First we consider “any tool that extends our abilities,” seeing how levers, pole vaults, and the Space Shuttle fit. Then we follow a story from one kind of rock that became important more than 2500 years ago to another kind of rock that has completely transformed our world in the past half century. Those two rocks and several technologies in between extended our ability to conduct commerce, which illustrates our second definition: “systems of tools.” Homer’s Iliad and the phenomenon of software piracy bring us to a third definition of “information as technology.” There is no universally accepted and timeless definition, so we test our proposals against a variety of inventions and developments to see if they seem to make sense. In the last section we show why “applied science,” although found in some dictionaries, comes up short for our purposes.

Definitions of technology help us to decide where to look for patterns. Too broad a scope may have few or no patterns that span it. Too narrow a scope hides patterns. Something true for televisions alone, for instance, is not nearly as valuable as a pattern common to prehistoric implements, agricultural devices, industrial machines, computer equipment, genetic tools, and even less tangible things, such as monetary systems. We want a tool for understanding and evaluating the technology of the future, so we look at technology of today and yesterday to get a feel for just what technology is.

Tools that extend our ability

How high can you jump? The Olympic record for the high jump is about eight feet. If you allow a simple technology like a pole, the record vaults to nearly 20 feet. Suppose you took a very large, hollow pole, and fill it with rocket fuel, add control systems, and provide a pressurized control module on top. Then, the record increases to nearly 300,000 miles with a trip around the moon.

Of course looping around the moon is not an Olympic event, but it does show that technology, perhaps by definition, extends our abilities. Testing out this definition, we will range from the first lever all the way to the bicycle and the Space Shuttle.

Unlike the moon rocket, the pole vault is simply a lever. Levers were in use long before Archimedes described them in 260 BCE, but he gets credit because his is the earliest known description. Long, long ago after a storm knocked down trees, one of our ancestors may have climbed atop one of them. With a lucky arrangement of trees, that stunned person would have lifted a massive tree off the ground.

The right arrangement involves three trees: lever, fulcrum, and load. The load tree lies atop one end of the lever tree, which lies across the fulcrum tree and extends up into the air. If the lever extends far enough from the fulcrum, the small force of the person’s weight will lift the much greater weight of the load. Another reason Archimedes gets credit for the lever might be his memorable proclamation: “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” Long before television, he understood sound bites.

If the fulcrum is near your end of the lever, you find it hard to push the lever, but the other end moves much farther than does yours. Consider the garden rake left lying so that you step on the tines, propelling the long wooden handle towards your forehead at speed far greater than the descent of your foot.

If the fulcrum is near the far end of the lever, you find it easy to push the lever, but the other end moves much less than does yours. Consider a hammer turned around to pull nails out of a board. The claw end of the hammer moves an inch or two with great force while the wooden handle that you grasp moves six inches or more with less force. Depending on where you place the fulcrum, you trade force for distance or distance for force.

We refined trading force for distance with the bicycle. Equipped with multiple gears, it allows you to crawl up a steep slope or speed on a level surface. The bicycle incorporates levers into the crank arms, which connect the pedals to an axle. Chain and gears connect this to the rear wheel. The bicycle is a simple, yet highly efficient, technology that extends our ability to move. With a bicycle, a person can cover 200 miles in less than half a day, or ride across the U.S. in less than 10 days. Well, not a typical person, but some do take their recreation to these extremes.

A couple of bicycle mechanics named Orville and Wilbur Wright combined the ancient technologies of lever and wheel with a newer one, the airfoil, to make a practical airplane. With some significant upgrades (such as rocket propellant), the airplane became the Space Shuttle attached to the modified pole we described at the beginning of this section.

Tools that extend our abilities is a broad a definition, and would include television, which extends our ability of seeing far distances, and the DVD player, which extends our ability to see to times past. This definition can also include destructive ends. On September 11, 2001, a few violent people used a very old technology (knives…well, technically, box cutters), to take control of another technology (four large jet airplanes). The airplanes, with their load of refined aviation fuel, caused far more damage than a band of prehistoric terrorists wielding knives could have. Even a drunk driver, erratically maneuvering a ton of steel and glass, has his or her ability to do harm greatly extended.

If we think of a tool as an isolated object—such as an airplane, car, or television—then we are still missing something essential. Take almost any technology away from its infrastructure and it will fail. A car transported back in time 500 years would have few, if any, suitable roads, no source of gasoline, no source of replacement parts, and nobody would know how to operate or repair it. This has been a stumbling block in developing and deploying hydrogen fueled cars: no infrastructure of refueling stations. Similarly, a television in the 16^th century would be useless. So technology must be more than individual objects; it must also include systems.

In addition to tools and devices, we should include systems and methods of organization...Any collection of processes that together make up a new way to magnify our power or facilitate the performance of some task can be understood as a technology.

– Al Gore

Systems: The Intangible Levers

A very special stone was discovered in the kingdom of Lydia (now Turkey) in 550 BC. A naturally occurring mineral containing silicon, this stone, called a touchstone, could reveal the purity of gold. As a result a new technology was invented. The “new technology” was not the stone itself, but the knowledge surrounding its use:

· Rubbing pure gold against a touchstone made a yellow mark.

· Rubbing gold diluted with silver made a white mark.

· Rubbing gold diluted with copper made a red mark.

This tool made possible a system of money by extending our ability to ascertain quality. The government minted gold coins imprinted with their guarantee of value…which could be tested by weighing the coin and rubbing it against a touchstone. Money—when trusted—extends our ability to trade. Think of it as an intangible lever.

Can you imagine trading without money? Suppose you wanted to trade goats for corn, but the person who had the corn you wanted was uninterested in goats? You would have to find someone who did want goats and would trade something of interest to the corn seller. Money could buy anything for sale, and, unlike goats, money did not become sick or die on your way to trade. While you could say that the coin, itself, is the technology that extends our ability to conduct commerce, the coin is just one component of a system—one that includes the government guarantee, touchstones, moneychangers, and knowledge among those who would accept it as payment.

That system became more sophisticated with the check or credit note, invented in 14^th century Italy. It allowed international trade without packing along large amounts of money. Being at the center of Mediterranean trade routes, Italy harbored the banks that issued credit notes. Merchants purchased notes that the bank guaranteed could be exchanged for a set amount of a foreign currency in a specific city. On the dangerous roads and sea routes that the merchants traveled, robbers were interested in goods and money, not written notes.

The importance of the system, including knowledge and trust, is much more important with credit notes than with coins, which could presumably be melted down into something of value outside the system. The credit note and paper currency relied on information. Who issued it? How much is it worth? What are the terms for its redemption? The U.S. dollar continues to display signatures of government authorities and the assurance that it is good for all debts, public and private.

The system becomes even more sophisticated in credit card technology. Predicted in the 19^th century novel Looking Backward, but made practical in the 1950s, the credit card allowed us to trade without carrying large amounts of cash or finding someone who would trust our check. Information from the credit card (the number) and the transaction (the amount) are transmitted to a central computer, which keeps track of credit limits, spending patterns, and stolen cards.

“Smart cards” further extend our ability to conduct commerce by carrying all that information on the card itself. Insert a smart card into an automated teller machine and “load” it with money from your bank account. What makes a smart card “smart” is an embedded silicon microchip that stores encrypted information about how much money you have transferred from the bank account to the card. You can then, for example, insert your card into a soda machine, and if there are enough funds on it, you will get your drink.

Money, in the form of encrypted information, is transferred to the soda machine, leaving less on your card and preventing you from spending the same money twice. Periodically, the information from the drink dispenser goes to a clearinghouse computer (which could be located anywhere on Earth) that credits the owner’s bank account with the amount you spent. A credit card, by contrast, must immediately contact a central computer every time it is used, which can be slow and, for very small transactions, relatively expensive. By coincidence, the touchstone (the first tool extending our ability to conduct commerce) and the smart card (the most recent tool to do so) both contain silicon.

Money, checks, credit cards, and smart cards are all systems that extend our abilities. Beyond monetary systems are economic, legal, and business systems that also extend our abilities. Public and private organizations have countless linkages determining how they interact and cooperate. Look at a part of these systems in isolation and it will not make sense because its environment defines its behavior. And that environment is the system. We cannot understand technology without understanding its context.

Let’s come full circle to the touchstone. The touchstone is not an invention—it is a naturally occurring mineral containing silicon. Yet the system of information surrounding its use (such as how to interpret the results) could be called technology. So, could information alone be considered technology? If so, the invisibility of information will make it harder for us to recognize new technologies that are largely or completely comprised of it.

This is not a new concept. As noted at the start of this chapter, the root meaning of technology, from Greek, is the study of a craft or art. In other words, it is the knowledge someone has of a practice, perhaps making pottery or sailing ships. Perhaps technology, then, is not just the tool that extends our abilities, but the whole system of tool and information about the tool.

One cannot really understand [technology]
without an understanding of the
roles, incentives, skill, and behaviors
that define its use.

– L.G. Tornatzky

Information: The invisible ingredient

Take away the information that surrounds the physical artifacts we call technology, and they don’t work. That information specifies how to operate, manufacture, and repair, and ranges from ancient human techniques to modern computer code. You cannot always see those instructions, but knowing what to do is a critical component of technology.

Before Homer committed the story of the Iliad to writing in the 9^th or 8^th century BC, it was a song that included technological information, such as techniques for launching and landing ships. Recording information took a leap forward with writing, about 5000 years ago, and then again with the interchangeable type printing press almost 600 years ago.

In the 20^th century, computers took on the role of manipulating and transmitting information. In fact, in a circular manner, they record information about the design of their successor computers. Engineers continue to design the next generation of technology by using the current one. At the end of the 20^th century information sharing accelerated with the Internet.

Some technology is more information than material. For example, the cost to make one microprocessor is almost as much as the cost to make a thousand. The material cost of the silicon in a single microprocessor is nearly zero. The expense comes from manufacturing facilities, manufacturing setup, and research and development of the design. So the essence of a microprocessor is in how the few square centimeters of silicon is arranged into millions of tiny transistors. A lump of silicon is almost worthless, but a microprocessor sells for hundreds of dollars. And the information that separates the two is worth billions (one microprocessor manufacturer, Intel, spends that amount each year on research and development).

In some technology, the material surrounding the information is nearly irrelevant. Microsoft earns billions of dollars selling compact discs and lots of empty space in cardboard boxes. The value of their software technology, which can sell for hundreds of dollars, is in the information represented on the discs, not in the material of the discs, which is worth pennies. And even those pennies can be eliminated from the mix. Many companies allow purchase of their software by downloading it over the Internet. The buyer provides information (credit card authorization) and the company provides information (software instructions for the buyer’s computer). No physical substance moves from the seller to the buyer. The technology is 100% information. And that invisible information we call “computer software” generates many billions of dollars in corporate revenues each year.

The fact that the technology can be 100% information also makes it easier to steal. Stealing 1000 cars is much harder than stealing one. However, making 1000 copies of pirated software is not much harder than making one. So, while the creators of information technology enjoy the economy of distributing their information, they also suffer from it.

This pattern of technology as information has a dark side, too. Weapons of mass destruction are sometimes classified as nuclear, chemical, or biological. Technologies in these categories have material and informational components. Those trying to limit proliferation of these have a much easier time controlling the material components because information moves so quickly and easily.

Years ago, publication of plans for an atomic bomb caused widespread concern. Fortunately, the critical materials are still hard to obtain. Nuclear technology was a huge advance in power, but if someone wished to use it—for instance, to blow up a city—that person needed refined radioactive materials. Although the collapse of the Soviet Union left some of its nuclear facilities vulnerable and countries such as North Korea are developing their own nuclear facilities, plutonium and similarly suitable materials are still much less accessible than information.

Chemical weapons use more commonly available materials, such as agricultural fertilizer. Publication or distribution of bomb recipes has made it easier for terrorists to create these. Although established terrorist networks can readily share this information, now any aspiring terrorist with an Internet connection can also easily obtain it, as we saw with the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.

Biological weapons may be of greater concern than chemical because they can reproduce on their own. A bomb explodes once, but a plague can procreate and spread. Information about how to culture and reproduce disease agents (e.g. smallpox) is generally available. To avoid the danger, governments attempt to control the material component: strains of disease agents.

However, there is a more dangerous form of information concerning biological weapons technology: genetic engineering. In the near future, a disgruntled university student could take public information about how to modify microorganisms (e.g. viruses) and then use what will be common laboratory equipment to create a plague for which we have no protection or cure.

Information is a large and growing component of technology. It moves easily in books, on computer discs, and over the Internet. When it is part of a technology we consider “good,” that speed benefits us tremendously. When it is part of a technology that threatens us, that speed undermines our control.

The trend appears to be toward information being more important than material in future technology. For example, nanotechnology (a new technology that we describe later) promises the capability of assembling almost any physical object from cheap, microscopic raw materials (e.g. the carbon atoms polluting our air). Companies could then sell the design for a toaster, bed, car, or almost anything. This information would be downloaded to a matter compiler, located anywhere, which would assemble the product, virtually out of “thin air.” Today, that is still science fiction, but unless we become aware of this pattern of technology as information, we could still be hunting around for the tangible in a future that is all about information.

Excerpt from 1949 Webster’s Dictionary. Note definition 3.

Not applied science

In the 1930s, a scientist at a dinner party used the back of a napkin to calculate whether a bumblebee’s wings were large enough to lift it off the ground. The preliminary answer was that if the wings were rigid like those of an airplane, then the bumblebee could not fly. However, the bumblebee tilts and strokes its flexible wings quite unlike an airplane, so the scientist left the party to figure out how to take these complicating factors into account. In his absence was born the myth that, according to science, the bumblebee cannot fly.

The myth is popular to this day because it is an apparent flaw in one of the most powerful forces of the modern world. If someone had said that patterns in tealeaves deny the bumblebee’s ability to fly, how many friends would you pass that on to? For centuries, science has been the world’s leading source of truth, so it should not be surprising that some, including the 1949 edition of Webster’s dictionary as shown in the box above, define technology as the application of science.

We have plenty of evidence of this application of science. When we ride a bicycle, drive a car, or fly in an airplane, we are relying on engineers who relied on science. Science predicts how things will work, often more quickly and economically than waiting until it is built. For example, the Wright Brothers used a wind tunnel to experiment with designs for their airplanes. And today equations can replace many physical experiments. But there are two reasons this is a poor definition: (1) scientific understanding often follows the creation of a technology and, (2) when science is applied to developing technology, the process changes from science to engineering.

One example of science trailing technology: thousands of human generations chipped at stones to create wonderfully sharp knives before the laws governing fractures of solids were uncovered. Another example can be found in radios. The “crystals,” vacuum tubes, and transistors that made the first three generations of radios work were accidental discoveries, not applications of scientific knowledge:

· Early radios were called “crystal sets” because the radio wave detector was a crystalline nugget of germanium, galena, or silicon. Getting them to work required probing the crystal with a wire until a signal came through and then keeping the wire pressed against that magic spot. This allowed electricity to flow in only one direction (rectification), but “crystal set” radios were used for years before the rectifying properties were identified, and they were not understood in a scientific sense until after the transistor was developed.

· The vacuum tube came from the incandescent light bulb, in which Thomas Edison had noted what he called the “Edison Effect,” but saw little use for it. Others developed it into a rectifier and amplifier, indispensable components of radio, television, and computers.

· The transistor came from crystal sets. Why these minerals rectified electricity was not understood scientifically, but Bell Laboratories thought they could improve on the vacuum tube (which, like their light bulb forebears, consumed lots of energy and easily burned out). That refinement of germanium and silicon crystals into transistors with precisely controlled amounts of impurities inspired scientific research into semiconductors, which led to integrated circuits and the boom in electronics and computers.

Science did lead the way in the discovery of germanium, if not its use in electronics. When Dmitri Mendeleev presented his periodic table of the elements in 1871, there was a gap between silicon and tin. His scientific approach told him that even if nobody had yet discovered it, there must be an element to fill that gap. Calling the as-yet-undiscovered element “eka-silicon,” Mendeleev accurately predicted its weight and properties well before 1886, when it was discovered in Germany and officially named “germanium.”

A more recent example: in 2001 Bell Labs created transistors so small that each used just a single molecule, so 10 million would fit on the head of a pin. The director of quantum-science research at Hewlett-Packard, Stan Williams, remarked, “They don’t have a clue how or why this works and I don’t have a clue how or why it works either.” IBM’s director of physical sciences research, Thomas Theis, agreed: “It appears to be a very interesting result, but nobody, including the authors of the paper, seems to fully understand what is going on here.” Sometimes inventing is easier than explaining.

A second problem with defining technology as applied science lies in science being abstract and technology being concrete. Applied science bridges that gap, but it is only the bridge. The engineering process incorporates formulas and laws from science, but goes well beyond them in balancing costs and benefits. How strong does something need to be? How long do we have to test it? What are the costs of designing to far exceed the expected range of use? These are practical questions that have little do with science and everything to do with actually making something useful.

We are not done with the Hawaiian bobtail squid. The light from its luminescent bacteria is reflected by platelets composed of an extraordinary protein named reflectin. Scientists are studying that protein to figure out how it works, which may help engineers create microscopic optical devices. So, even if the Hawaiian bobtail squid is not using technology, it may inspire some. We can appreciate the importance of science in arming our engineers in their quest to create useful things, but we are better off without an applied science definition of technology.

_________________________

I don’t know who discovered water,
but I’m sure it was not a fish.

— Marshall McLuhan

Can you imagine trying to explain “water” to a fish? You couldn’t point at water because, where fish live, it is everywhere. You have to stand apart from something to point at it. In the 21^st century, technology is to humans as water is to fish. Opening the chapter with squid, two kinds of bacteria, sea otter, chimpanzee, crow, and beaver was a trick to get us to stand apart from technology and point at it.

What makes understanding and evaluating technology urgent is its rapid change, pointing to a future in which it will be even more powerful. Whatever your personal conclusions as to whether these or other animals use technology, it is clear that, so far, only humans have consciously changed it. Instinctual use allows tools to change only as quickly as instincts. Even imitative use, as chimpanzees and birds demonstrate, keeps tools relatively static. It is the dynamic nature of technology that makes it interesting. Carl Sagan would not have warned us of the “times of peril” had technology been frozen at the stage of stone tools.

But even as we collectively change technology, individually many of us are tricked into the myopia of equating computers and electronic equipment with technology. Those who can’t see beyond those current specimens are swept along. While fish have the choice of fighting the current or going with the flow, humans have the further option of guiding its course…if we are aware. And awareness is what this chapter is about. It sets the scope for investigations to come about our relationship with technology.

The definition tools that extend our abilities is an important step beyond computers and electronics. Both stone tools and technologies not yet invented fit this definition. To prepare our eyes for that yet to come, we recognize the modern trend of technologies fitting within ever more complex systems.

Perhaps many of the inventions that can stand apart from modern systems were long ago invented. For modern inventions, survival of the fittest is determined within an environment of systems. Recognizing technology as systems, the intangible levers, we are more likely to spot future developments. Other trends suggest that information, the invisible ingredient, is becoming ever more important in and as technology. Designing, manipulating information, pays better than manufacturing, manipulating material. Nanotechnology could one day automate manufacturing, making it so inexpensive that what we care about is the information in the design of technology, not the material.

While our criticism of “applied science” might be seen as an exception, our purpose in this chapter is not to arrive at a single, universal, eternal definition of technology. Rather, it is to provide some thought-provoking answers to the question, to help you come to your own definitions. Each of the nine chapters in this book has a similar goal. The question that heads each chapter is nearly timeless, but the answers cannot be—technology changes too quickly. Picking a single best answer would be no more than an intellectual exercise, so, instead, we offer context as a platform from which to launch.

In this chapter we give examples for the four categories in bold. You may think of reasons to use technology that do not fall into one of these categories. Or, you may find them too specific, and be tempted to generalize them into five or six, similar to the taxonomy of life.

But more important than the specific categories is the benefit of having some categories. Basic human needs and desires change little, and we can expect that future technology will simply find ever more creative ways to satisfy them. These categories—or whatever set you adopt—can be a template to place on unfamiliar technologies.

While this may temporarily blind us to a truly new purpose, handled carefully, it will help us past the marketing hype of new technologies. In most cases, that “completely new, does everything, unlike anything that has ever existed” innovation will satisfy one or several of these common reasons for using technology. Determining which needs it satisfies will help us find other familiar patterns (e.g. the printing press made it easy to print trashy novels; the web made it easy to publish trashy websites).

In the following sections, we illustrate each category with one or several technologies. Finding examples was easy—every newspaper or magazine article that mentions a technology includes some implied or explicit reasons for its use. Deciding which to include was not. A comprehensive list of all technologies used for a given purpose would be endless—we would have to include every technology in existence. And a ranked list showing only the most important technology in each category could be predictable and even dull.

So instead, we looked for the most entertaining illustrations for each category. Do not be disappointed if something as important as the printing press has been pushed out of the limelight by the “high-tech” cigarette, or if we spend more time on Entertainment than Communication. Neither is a claim of relative importance, but simply an acknowledgement that, elsewhere, the likes of the printing press have received “plenty of ink.”

For thousands of years, kings, queens, and generals
have relied on efficient communication in order to
govern their countries and command their armies…
It was the threat of enemy interception that
motivated the development of codes and ciphers.

– Simon Singh

Communication

On a winter night in 1985, an Iraqi shepherd felt warmth coming from the hill he was sitting on. The surrounding slopes where his sheep rested were cold, so he was very curious. Digging into the earth on that remote spot 300 miles west of Baghdad, he found a warm metal tip connected to a machine. It was connected to Iraq’s main telephone trunk line with Jordan. A nuclear cell powered it to transmit everything it heard to listeners unknown. Demolitions experts tried to open it, but it exploded, killing two.

In Saddam’s Bombmaker, Khidhir Hamza reported that, “According to interviews the security people conducted with other shepherds and Bedouins in the area, helicopters with Iraqi markings had unloaded soldiers on the hill a few months earlier. They’d seen the soldiers digging on the hill, and even heard them talking in Iraqi slang.” But those soldiers were not Iraqis. Few neighboring countries trusted Saddam Hussein, but Iraq was sure that Israel, alone, had the capability for this elaborate telephone-tapping operation.

Eavesdropping probably predates writing, but we have historical evidence for the use of secret writing shortly after the development of writing itself. In ancient Egypt, priests used Hieratic (“sacred writing”) to keep communications secret. Cryptography, the science of encoding and decoding information, has made use of many technologies, and it has spurred the development of some.

Hidden beneath the rough, dark waters of the Atlantic German U-boats searched for Allied ships to sink. World War II German naval commanders were so confident of the imperviousness of their Enigma encryption machine that they regularly radioed orders to their subs at sea. But, within half a day, Britain could figure out where the subs were heading. How? British code breakers used Colossus, the first electronic computer (though some call the machine, built from 1500 vacuum tubes, a calculator rather than a general purpose computer).

This is how it worked. Enigma machines used a typewriter keyboard and electrical connections routed through several 26-sided wheels or rotors, which scrambled the letters that were typed. On the receiving end, another Enigma machine with identically wired rotors unscrambled them. When Germany suspected that their codes in their three-rotor machines had been compromised they then added a fourth rotor.

Even with information about the Enigma machines captured by Polish and French resistance fighters, England could not take a brute force approach to figuring out how the Germans wired up the rotors each month. Even if they could test 200,000 states each second, it would have taken more than 15 billion years, roughly the age of the Universe!

To overcome this challenge, England needed three things: its Colossus computers, human ingenuity, and human fallibility. The ingenuity was analyzing the encrypted messages for patterns in the German language, which could show through the encryption—even if so faintly that only a computer could detect it. The fallibility was the German practice of announcing each victory to every far-flung military unit in precisely the same language. This gave England multiple copies of a message, each encrypted differently by the same wiring of the rotors.

In the 21^st century, our reliance on telecommunications is even greater and encryption has become a political issue. The National Security Agency in the U.S. works with Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand to monitor and analyze global communication. Telephone, fax, and computer messages are intercepted by “Echelon” computers, which look for the signature of a terrorist plan or other security threat. Humans review the most interesting material once it has been filtered down from an immense number of intercepts.

Some European nations complain that this monitoring picks up business information, which is then shared with U.S. companies, giving them an unfair competitive advantage. As with any arms race, encryption has been improved to foil the Echelon monitoring, but U.S. law prevents export of any encryption system beyond a certain ability (presumably that level above which government computers could not decrypt).

Some communications are easier to monitor than others. The increasing use of cellular and satellite telephones is broadcasting more conversations into the atmosphere, but, as the Iraqis discovered, even “land lines” are not secure.

While the Internet and Web are capable of much more sophisticated applications, two of the most popular have been email and instant messaging—simple, quick, inexpensive communication. Future technology, however strange it may appear, may also satisfy this enduring human need to communicate.

I felt as comfortable operating on my patient
as if I had been in the room.

— Jacques Marescaux, MD

Health

How could a surgeon operate in a room distant from the patient? Cameras transmit views of the patient to the surgeon and remote controls allow the surgeon to operate robotic manipulators. This technology was developed for surgeons in the same room as their patients because it can be slipped through tiny incisions, which are much less traumatic for the patient than holes big enough for the surgeon’s hands. Another advantage is that relatively large finger motions can be translated to miniscule knife or probe motions, giving the surgeon much steadier and precise hands.

Why would a surgeon operate in a room distant from the patient? The surgery you need may have been studied by a local surgeon, but actually performed hundreds of times (successfully!) by a surgeon in another part of the world. The odds are better with the veteran…if the technology gives the surgeon a good enough feel.

The key to remote surgery is dividing the process into stages some of which involve only information, such as steps two and four below:

1. The patient is viewed by digital cameras

2. Information from them is transmitted to a computer screen

3. The surgeon views screen and manipulates computer controls

4. Those controls transmit information to robotic “hands”

5. The robotic hands interact with the patient

Our global communication network is good at transmitting information anywhere. As long as the cameras and robotic manipulators are in the same room as the patient, the viewing screens and controls are in the same room as the surgeon (and the system does not crash), then the distance does not much matter.

Computers can further change the motion of manipulators by incorporating the typical movements of recognized experts in each surgical area. These expert systems imitate the best practices, allowing them to be used even when the experts are not present. Eventually, this may go beyond minor modification of surgical movements with computers performing surgery on their own. An attending surgeon would switch on an “auto pilot,” much as airline pilots commonly do today.

Still very expensive, computer-assisted surgery is not yet bringing the best of surgery to poor areas that lack any form of it at all. Do benefits once reserved for the few ever trickle down to the many? Well, in 1836, one of the richest people on earth died from something that, today, any pharmacy with antibiotics could cure.

At the time, germs—the invisible creatures that we so carefully sterilize from open wounds and surgical instruments with heat, alcohol and high-tech substances today—were not yet discovered. So Nathan Rothschild, an otherwise healthy 59-year-old banker, died of a simple infection from an abscess or boil—or from the surgeon’s attempt to open it with a non-sterile knife.

Medical technology was primitive by current standards, and did not include the antibiotics that could have saved him. And current antibiotics are primitive compared to the eventual products of biotechnology.

Rothschild could not have imagined the reach of current medical technology. Cochlear implants are electronic devices placed in the inner ear, or cochlea, that bring hearing to the deaf. They convert sound waves into electrical impulses to stimulate nerve endings. For those with nerve damage in the cochlea itself, newer implants connect directly to the brain stem.

To test this technology, a cat in California has a brainstem implant for hearing and a person has a brainstem implant to control a cursor on a computer screen. That person suffered from a brainstem stroke and lost use of his hands, but he can still interact with a computer, which picks up his thoughts on wires that pass through his skull to the implant.

Advances borrowed from other areas—for example the sophisticated audio analysis and signal processing done by spies at the KGB, CIA, and NSA—could make future cochlear implants superhuman. Expect that the future will bring more and more technology to satisfy our quest for health because the consumers with the most disposable income have many of their other needs, such as food and shelter, already met.

The constants all through the centuries
will be the same: wine, women, and song.
Other than that, life will be very different technologically.

– Phyllis Diller

Entertainment

Smoking tobacco, which we categorize as a form of entertainment (albeit, an addictive and dangerous form) has its share of technology. The cigarette rolling machine, invented in 1881, helped cigarettes eclipse pipes and chewing as the most popular form of tobacco. But as important as that mechanical technology was, chemical technology is the key to cigarettes’ insidious power.

Here is how it works. Two types of tobacco go into most cigarettes: reconstituted and puffed. Puffed tobacco is made from tobacco leaves saturated with freon and ammonia before they are freeze-dried, which doubles their volume. Reconstituted tobacco is made from tobacco stems and parts of the leaf that cannot be used in puffed tobacco. These are pulped and then sprayed with hundreds of chemicals including nicotine, which is also found naturally in the leaf.

Nicotine is the most important chemical in cigarettes. Highly addictive, it diminishes appetite, affects mood, and can, at least temporarily, improve performance. Tobacco company laboratories developed chemical additives to improve delivery of nicotine. Ammonia, for instance, makes more of the nicotine vaporize when heated by the burning of the cigarette. Vapor can readily travel to the lungs, where the nicotine accompanies oxygen into the blood, which flows to the heart (which can speed 10 to 20 beats per minute with the first nicotine “hit” of the day), which pumps it to the brain.

In the brain, nicotine affects neurons, the nerve cells behind our thoughts and feelings. Specifically, nicotine mimics chemicals that neurons use to communicate with each other, over-stimulating the neurons with many false signals. By interfering with normal neuron communication, nicotine can alter mood, often pleasurably.

Since the brain, like most life, is highly adaptable, it accommodates to the over stimulation of neurons. As a result, when a smoker stops smoking, the brain initially perceives the normal level of stimulation that resumes as inadequate. The unpleasant symptoms the former smoker experiences are called “withdrawal,” and they can be alleviated by resumption of smoking.

A Spanish historian noted the addictive nature of cigars in 1527. When science caught up with conventional wisdom and declared smoking dangerous to one’s health, the highly profitable industry started working on a “safer” cigarette.

The first danger their scientists took on was tar, one of the many chemicals that smoking introduces into the lungs. They created filters, air holes that dilute the smoke with fresher air, and low-tar blends of tobacco to reduce the amount of tar going into smokers’ lungs.

But they also reduced the nicotine, which smokers’ brains were finely attuned to. Just as your brain can adjust your throw when the ball falls short of the basket, smokers’ brains adjusted the puffing when the nicotine fell short of the “norm.” By inhaling deeper, covering the air holes with fingers or lips, or smoking more cigarettes, smokers were able to get their accustomed nicotine levels. This also restored the previous levels of tar.

The Accord^TM cigarette, introduced in 1998, is a “high tech” approach to safer cigarettes. The smoker inserts one end of a special cigarette into the microchip-based heating unit. Because the tobacco is not burned away into ash, the unit has a liquid crystal display (like those found on watches and calculators) to indicate how many puffs remain in the cigarette. After each pack of cigarettes, the smoker must recharge the batteries in the Accord.

The Irony of “Safe” Cigarettes

Heating tobacco, as the Accord does, rather than burning it, as conventional cigarettes do, produces no carbon monoxide or secondhand smoke. Carbon monoxide is also found at the tailpipes of cars, and can be fatal when a car is run in a closed area, such as a garage. Secondhand smoke has led to many state laws prohibiting smoking in public buildings and even at outside areas like theater lines or building entrances, where smoke might be drawn inside. And yet, manufacturer makes no health claims about the Accord. There is a good reason for this.

The technological problems with “safe” cigarette are dwarfed by the political problems, a pattern we will see with other technology. Tobacco companies worry that developing and selling “safer” cigarettes would be viewed by courts as an admission that other cigarettes are not safe. The lawsuits have stakes in the billions of dollars.

Further, tobacco companies are concerned about regulation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Current tobacco products are exempt from FDA scrutiny due to a “grandfather clause” under which a new law does not affect someone (or something) that preexisted the law. But a new class of “safe” cigarettes might not fall under that clause. The irony is that the safest course for tobacco companies—if not for their customers—seems to be to avoid “safe” cigarettes.

In the movie Sleeper, Woody Allen plays someone cryogenically frozen and then thawed in the future. There, a favorite form of entertainment is touching a metal ball that makes you feel good. Humans already spend lots of resources on feeling good, and any technology that effectively and efficiently does that will be in demand.

…social groupings larger than 150-200
become increasingly hierarchical in structure…
There must be chiefs to direct, and a police force
to ensure that social rules are adhered to.

— Robin Dunbar

Organization

Why would we need technology in order to organize? An answer comes, circuitously, through a story about the brain’s neocortex. And we start with chimpanzees.

Take three chimps in the same band. Each chip is aware of his relationship with the other two and of the relationship between the other two. Who is dominant, who has done favors for whom, who can be trusted to repay favors, and who cannot? Chimp decision-making has been observed in the wild. Two chimps may team up to attack another chimp to steal food…unless the victim is near others who may come to his aid. Any chimp for whom the victim has performed a recent favor, such as grooming, is suspected of being a supporter.

Social animals keep track of their relationships with other group members and they also keep track of the relationships between them. In highly social groups, it is a matter of survival to know how others will interact.

As groups become larger, there are more relationships to track. With just two individuals there is just one relationship. With three individuals there are three relationships (shown as arrows below) and with four there are six:

Metcalfe’s Law

Chimpanzees in a tribe form a network. In a network, the number of possible one-to-one relationships is proportional to the square of the number of individuals. Doubling the tribe quadruples the number of possible relationships. Multiply the tribe size by three and the possible relationships multiply by nine.

People, telephones, computers, and railroads form networks, too. Robert Metcalfe suggested that the value of a network is proportional to the number of possible relationships, which is the square of the number of nodes. Those who accept this “law” as true are equating value with possible connections.

Network technologies such as telephones, fax machines, pagers, cellular phones, and email accounts have grown slowly at first, but accelerated suddenly once they reached some critical mass. The first person to own a telephone could do little with it, but today, having a phone is indispensable because it can make so many connections. When just a few university scientists used email, it had little value to most people. Today, many rely on email for both work and play.

A primate study has shown that the size of the brain’s neocortex correlates with the size of the social groups in which that individual lives. Based on the pattern found in non-human primates, the human neocortex suggests a maximum group size of 147.8, or about 150. In a group of 150 individuals, there can be 11,175 such relationships, too many to memorize as a list, but not unreasonable to learn in context. A soap opera aficionado has no trouble remembering which of dozens of characters hate each other, for instance.

While that number of 150 still guides the size of clans, military “companies,” fraternities, and church congregations, technology has steamrolled over it with cities. Technology concentrated people with agriculture and then united disperse populations with various communication technology. How do we cope with more relationships than we can remember?

We define relationships with technology. Stoplights and traffic systems define relationships with other drivers. Uniforms define relationships with police, fire, and medical personnel. A judge’s black robes are symbolic of the system defining our legal relationships. Symbolic language