Friday 26 March 2010

Website content guru Gerry McGovern has written about the benefits of technology. Surprisingly close to some of the material used by Peter Joseph - including in his weekly (ish) blog talk radio show on the web (24 March episode), McGovern writes:

"The relentless march of technology-generated evidence is everywhere, from teaching, to medicine, to website management. And what are we learning? That doctors and web managers make much better decisions when they have evidence, data; facts, not opinions. We need to embrace technology and allow it to extend our capabilities. If we resist, and believe in the infallibility of humans, we don’t undermine technology—we undermine ourselves."

McGovern's point of departure is the use of technological aids for football (soccer) referees. He argues that they should not be prevented from benefiting from this technology any more than any other. He scoffs, basically, at the idea that humans should stop extending their capabilities by use of technology - the decision of when to do so must surely be arbitrary.

At the Z-day event in London, one of the speakers recounted how a passenger on the Docklands Light Railway was freaked out by the lack of a driver on the train, such that they had to put someone up front to 'pretend' to drive. This shows the underlying belief that a human is more reliable than a machine - which is patently untrue (perhaps not in every example, but generally overall). We see technological advances in cars from automatic gear boxes, through ABS brakes to SatNav. It is not lack of technology that stops the driverless car appearing, but the mistaken belief that the human must ultimately be in control.

http://newsweaver.ie/gerrymcgovern/e_article001706037.cfm

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