David Edgerton -- The shock of the old: technology and global history since 1900
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I've mixed feelings about this book.  In many cases I'm a fan of and
am excited by the latest new-new thing.  But, other new-new things
seem like a waste of money and time; they're mere amusements or
worse.  For example, it's 2013 and I *still* don't text or tweet.

But, perhaps that's Edgerton's message: that we should choose our
new technologies selectively and carefully.  Some are worth
developing and using.  Some are a waste of time, money, energy, and
other resources.  Some are worse than that.

Another valuable message from this book is that we should all be
skeptical (and maybe cynical, too) about new-new technologies that
are promoted by those with a financial (or other) interest.

One of Edgerton's worries is that technological boosterism and
promotion by interested parties determines the future (or history as
the case may be).  In contrast, I'm sure that *most* of us would
prefer to have technologies that work the best and that give us the
most power at the least cost become the ones that are available.

Edgerton has several approaches to evaluating new technologies and
what were once new technologies.  One is to focus on the amount of
use, rather than inventiveness, cuteness, and, especially,
promotion.  Another is to look at usefulness and how effective a
technology is at what it is intended to do.  And, still another is
to look at macro effects, macro economic benefit in particular,
asking whether adopting a new technology actually improves the
wealth and GDP of a nation that adopts it.

Some technologies are major and primary.  Some technologies are
important because they support or are necessary for and enable other
technologies.  This implies that we should not devalue some
technology just because it is not of *direct* benefit.  And,
Edgerton's historical perspective of inventions and their use
actually encourages us to unintended uses, uses that were not
originally intended, and benefits that are indirect.

One criticism I have is whether we should *always* be looking at
*only* economic or health benefits.  In some cases, these are the
point.  In other cases, perhaps not.  When there is a
new form of entertainment, radio or motion pictures, for example, it
seems a bit philistine to look only at the economic gains, though
they may be significant, when there are significant cultural
effects, too.

However, Edgerton's chapter titled "Significance", in which he
describes and analyzes a variety of ways of evaluating and comparing
technologies, shows that he is a good deal ahead of me in this kind
of thinking.  Edgerton is well aware of details and nuances like
these; and it's likely this is why he spends so much time talking
about individual instances of innovation in chapters titled "War"
and "Killing".

Perhaps, Edgerton's principle point is that we will not learn these
lessons about what was adopted and used, about what did give
significant benefits as opposed to only seeming to, and what merely
seemed important but was only slick, cool, the latest fad, etc
unless we look at some significant portion of history.  For example,
we need to be aware that some technologies take longer before
adoption and use of that technology is significant.

I'd like to add one more point, possibly an obvious one, but
important I think: our view of history is always telescoped or
foreshortened.  We see the recent past much more clearly, in more
detail than we see the long ago past.  Just as with respect to
geography, I see things close around me here in Sacramento,
California "at the street level",
whereas I see North Dakota and Minnesota "at the bird's eye level"
(I know about Minneapolis and Fargo and Minot, perhaps, but not the
name of the streets in them, so too,  we see recent history both in
more detail and in finer increments of time (years, months, and
even days), whereas we see far history in centuries and even
millennium.  With respect to technology, that seems especially
important, because we usually believe that technological change has
accelerated and is happening more quickly in the recent past that in
the far past. [1]

What this compressed perspective means is that users of innovations
in the distant past have had much more time to select those that are
useful and discard those that were not.  They have also had more
time to improve those innovations and to eliminate problems.  In
contrast, with respect to more recent innovations, we are often
still using the latest fad, the new-new thing that is being actively
promoted by the company that sells it, and the new device or the new
version that still has bugs.

Since I'm fascinated by innovation and what causes it and what
effects it has, I feel that Edgerton's book is important because of
the thinking it encourages us to do and the materials it gives us to
help with that thinking, even though we can argue whether he is
right about specific historical claims (for example, whether the use
of the atomic bomb by the U.S. during W.W. II was cost effective).

If these kinds of consideration interest you, then I'd suggest
reading "The innovator's dilemma: when new technologies cause great
firms to fail", by Clayton M. Christensen.  That book spends a good
deal of time describing how difficult it is for a company attempting
to provide a "new and improved" technology to drag an existing
customer away from the old technology with which they are satisfied.

Some summary pieces of advice:

- Look for value and usefulness that really matters, not for
  inventiveness for its own stake.

- Pay particular attention to the value of older technologies and to
  technologies that have been tested, that are proven, that have
  been proved, that have been made convenient to use, that have lots
  of support, etc.

- Ignore the boosterism and promotion by interested parties,
  especially by companies that have a financial interest.

- Study the history of innovation and the history of the adoption
  and use of specific technologies.  Doing so can help you
  understand how the current latest and greatest gizmo may or may
  not be put into broad use and how it may or may not turn out to be
  useful.

These kinds of considerations should not surprise us.  Anyone and
any company that considers the advantages of investing in
mechanization vs. the (continued) use of more and more intensive
labor makes similar evaluations.

And, a "bottom line" -- Evaluate each technology separately.
Sometimes the old is to be preferred over the new and sometimes not;
and better or worse here will be decided on the basis of reasons
that might be important to some of us at some times and in some
places, and sometimes not.

Notes:

- [1] I believe that we can argue about isolated instances.  For
  example, although it happened 600 years ago, the introduction of
  the printing press in Europe was possibly more radicalizing and
  its effects felt just as fast as the introduction of the Internet.
  (See Elizabeth L. Eisenstein; "The Printing Revolution in Early
  Modern Europe")  And, I'm one of those who believes that Moore's
  law stopped being true several years ago, unless you count those
  extra three cores in your quad-core computer, the ones that sit
  doing nothing most of the time.  Notice that the actually clock
  rate (the MHz) of your CPU has not increased hardly at all for the
  last two years.  So, in some respects, technological change may
  not continue to be so rapid after all.

04/10/2013

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