So Long, and Thanks for the Bits

For two-and-a-half years, I’ve imposed myself on your editorial page with oft-inane, always obscure commentary about the ways technology has transformed and will transform our lives. I’ve spoken about privacy, about copyright, about free discourse and the democratic process, and about how to procrastinate during reading period…and it all ends here.

I used to frown upon columnists who threw themselves narcissistic going-away parties in prose, but it turns out that the temptation for retrospective justification is irresistible. And so as I depart, I leave you with a pithy summary of my long project in the form of an admonition: Don’t forget the technology. Don’t forget the transformative influence it has right now, and never underestimate the long-term importance of future invention and progress.

It’s easy to anesthetize ourselves to the machines that sit on our desks. They’re small and, in most cases, unimpressive to look at. We see dozens or hundreds like them daily, their owners clicking and clacking away, transcribing lectures or chatting with friends when they should be transcribing lectures. Indeed, much of our interaction with them is plain silly—we read drunken late-night email list traffic and poke friends of friends on the Facebook.

But, and it sounds trite to say so, computers aren’t silly. They, and the network that connects them to one another, have revolutionized the meaning of the term “information.” Questions that once took days or weeks to answer now take seconds or minutes, and that doesn’t just mean shorter waits, it means we can ask many more questions. Scholarly research, certainly, hasn’t been the same since computerized catalogues like HOLLIS, but wikipedia throws into the mix something completely different altogether: a collaboratively generated store which will someday contain a good portion of all human knowledge.

It’s not just the academy, either—nearly every sphere has been touched. Sports managers can crunch statistics for hours on end to figure out their lineups, politicians can better understand (and tweak) the demographics of their electorate, and financiers have a picture of the market which would have been considered unfathomably complex just a few decades ago.

Technology, properly distributed, is a great equalizer as well: it gives little guys with big ideas a chance to compete against big guys with little ideas. It can bring the third world into the global economy—once an Internet connection is available, voice over Internet Protocol makes it possible for real time collaboration even if one party is in Tijuana and the other in Tanzania, at essentially no additional cost. Lest this devolve into feel-good boosterism, it’s worth noting technology can be used to further less noble goals as well—as soon as Internet pipes hit the ground, oppressive regimes put their hands on the faucet.

The moral of this story, the reason not to forget technology, is that it really can solve problems. Not only comparatively little problems—computationally intense questions in theoretical physics—but really big ones as well: A non-profit organization called “One Laptop Per Child” started by an MIT professor aims to use today’s technology to distribute robust $100 laptops to the world’s poor as a step towards improved education. If we’re going to make progress on the difficult problems we’re going to face as we leave Harvard, we’re going to do so because the solutions we find will have been enabled by technology.

Or, if technology doesn’t provide answers yet, someday it probably will. Many of the problems we face are long term problems. Poverty isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. And the most interesting feature of technology lately isn’t what it can do, it’s how fast it’s changing.

We’re terrible at predicting what will happen—flying cars, a perennial favorite of science fiction writers for three-quarters of a century, are barely closer to reality now than they were when my parents were born, and then-president of the Royal Society Lord Kelvin, after whom the temperature scale is named, remarked back in 1897 that “the aeroplane is scientifically impossible”—but something invariably will. Since the Harvard class of 2006 arrived on campus four years ago, wikipedia has grown tenfold, the Facebook appeared out of nowhere, the number of blogs in the world has multiplied by what some estimate to be 100 times, and iPods have quadrupled in capacity (or, depending on how you look at it, halved in price).

If a problem can’t be solved today, it will probably be solved next year, and it’s almost impossible to imagine what will be doable in 20 years that isn’t doable now if, and it’s a big if, we let that happen. We should be extremely skeptical of anyone who makes a proposal which puts a damper on innovation, and there are dozens of such proposals floating around right now.

Copyright holders are afraid of computers becoming copy machines, phone companies are concerned that Google is using their lines for its own profits, and even the government has worried that encryption technology might someday endanger its ability to enforce the law. In each case a suggestion has been made that, through rules or fines, makes invention expensive, creating long term costs that are impossible to foresee but potentially disastrous.

So don’t forget the technology. As we future political leaders, entrepreneurs, doctors, lawyers, whatever venture out beyond the Yard, we need to remember what these stupid machines we spend so much of our lives using can actually do for us and those around us. We need to think up ways of applying old technology to new problems, and at every step, we should consider what we’re doing, what we’re gaining, and what we’ve given up. “Technology” isn’t new—it’s as old as flint for making fire—but the rate at which it’s now changing is unparalleled. If we remember it, if we invest in it, and if we foster its growth, it will change the world for the better.


Matthew A. Gline ’06 is a physics concentrator in Quincy House. His column appears regularly.