I woke up this morning thinking about writing a blog post and the question that popped into my head was, what problem do you wish tech could solve? I started by asking my friend Bard. He said, "I can identify two major challenges that technological advancements could significantly address: mitigating the harmful effects of climate change and ensuring equitable access to clean water and sanitation for all." I turned to my social media and I asked the question and the first answer I got was crime. Crime is evolving into a huge problem for us in Trinidad. I then went searching the internet to learn about what people were thinking. One person wanted teleportation to solve our transportation problems. Another person wanted to be able to download food.
Bard described these as the power of imagination: What other seemingly impossible solutions can we dream up, and how can we harness the power of imagination to drive technological innovation in a positive direction? Some other things that came up were grid-scale energy storage, energy-efficient desalination and earthquake prediction. When I think about problems I think about problems facing me then my community then my country then the world. We live in an interconnected and interdependent world and we have to think beyond our needs. We can become really philosophical in our response to this question, as Einstein did when he said, "I wish technology could solve the problem of ignorance."
On the topic of ignorance, in the book "Ignorance: How It Drives Science" by Stuart Firestein he says, "Knowledge is a big subject. Ignorance is bigger. And it is more interesting." He also writes, "In other words, scientists don't concentrate on what they know, which is considerable but also miniscule, but rather on what they don't know. The one big fact is that science traffics in ignorance, cultivates it, and is driven by it. Ignorance follows knowledge, not the other way around."
There is the thinking that tech is just an enabler. Human problems need human solutions. Much of the work that we have to do to transform the world is human and social impacted related to processes. I think a lot of us wish that technology could do the work that we don't want to do. I wish for technology to become really cheap. Like good quality and cheaper laptops and smartphones. The increased commoditization of technology. I bet that there are people out there that will tell us that tech causes more problems than it solves. I do not share that view but it is a useful debate to have.
When I read my blog post to Bard he told me not to forget about the importance of the human connection: While technology can connect us across vast distances, it's important to remember that meaningful human connection requires more than just a screen. How can we ensure that technology enhances, rather than replaces, real-world interactions and communities? Also, we need to think about the role of policy and social structures. Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.
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