From the Journal of Democracy, Larry Diamond (Stanford): Liberation Technology. The BP accident presents an opportunity for us to reflect upon what it means to be a society reliant on complex technologies whose failures can cause disaster (and part 2). Can technology bring on a world wide social revolution? Technology is rewiring our brains: Touchscreens, TiVo, the undo button — these new technologies and others have changed the way we interact with the world. New technologies and social media are training up the next generation of superbrains, but are young people emotionally all there? New research shows that the majority of children and teenagers are not the Web-savvy digital natives of legend — in fact, many of them don't even know how to google properly. A review of The Breakup 2.0: Disconnecting over New Media by Ilana Gershon. Emerging technologies now include the GNR technologies plus cognitive science and neurotechnology: the newer formulation is Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno (NBIC). What does technology want? Change, and lots of it. We are not living in a time of technical decline exactly, but we are also not living in a time of great technological progress. Analog Nostalgia: Paul Waldman on making peace with the relentless pace of technological change. There’s no question that technology has overrun our lives, but a creative backlash is underway, helping human beings cope with the avalanche of data that passes in front of most of us every day through the use of computers and cell phones. A review of The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future by Martin Ford.
