3 Perspectival Foci on Consumer Technology

My interest in consumer technology is broad and varied. It is however only tangentially involved with the technical aspects of this gadgetry, but rather what I find fascinating is our relationship with the technology. The following are areas of this relationship that find really interesting:

1. What are the impulses that drive the changes to our tools? Maybe immortality, dominance over the world, and power are driving forces, as well as sloth and greed. But maybe also we are driven by an altruistic will towards equality or an instinctive thirst for liberty? These also seem possible. What does it mean that the technology of tomorrow is actually fairly obvious to us today? Writing in the17th century, Bacon was able to predict the telephone and the submarine. What is it for instance about androids, arcologies, telepathy, flying cars, central computing networks, houses that respond to vocal commands, and teletransportation that are so attractive, for instance? Does technology have a telos?

2. How does technology enable and disable? What are its implicit hegemonies? How does the existing technology itself, rather than more important human concerns, drive the design and production of new technology? How do tools intended for one purpose inadvertently make demands of us that are unrelated, or disable certain activities and behaviours? What are the unintended consequences of technology?

3. If architecture is a form of technology, as we move forward, how will it begin to incorporate the changes taking place in other sorts of consumer technology? How will it incorporate accelerometers for instance, or RFID tags, or the availability of cheap digital display systems? Architects require some sensitivity in guiding these shifts. How do we mediate the negative consequences of the changes and encourage the positive consequences? If indeed huge changes are in the offing, how do we develop an ethic for guiding these changes?