Technology is becoming increasingly complex and interconnected. Cars, airplanes, medical devices, financial transactions, and electricity systems now rely more heavily on computer software, making them harder to understand and sometimes harder to control. Government and corporate surveillance, along with information processing, predominantly use digital technologies and artificial intelligence, reducing human-to-human contact and increasing the risk of embedding biases in our systems unnoticed. Advances in bioengineering raise challenging philosophical, political, and economic questions about human-natural relations. The management of these devices and systems is increasingly done through the cloud, making control remote and removed from direct human oversight. The complexity of technologies like artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things has given rise to a new field of research focused on making them “explainable” due to the difficulty in understanding their operations and diagnosing faults.
This growing complexity makes it both more difficult and more crucial for scholars to examine how technological advancements are changing lives globally in both positive and negative ways. They must identify the social, political, and legal tools needed to steer technology development and design in beneficial directions. Despite the rapid pace of technological change and the perception of its inevitability, many countries are only beginning to take significant regulatory steps. They are in the early stages of rethinking the rules governing global data flows and the exchange of technology across borders.
Advancing Technology and Evolving Policy: Shaping Our Future
These times are thrilling for both technological advancement and technology policy. Our technologies may be more advanced and complicated than ever, but our understanding of how to leverage, protect, and constrain them is also evolving. The structures of technological systems, determined largely by government and institutional policies, have significant implications for social organization and agency. These structures range from open source, distributed, and decentralized systems to tightly controlled, closed, and hierarchical models. As our comprehension of technology governance develops, so does our understanding of the social, cultural, environmental, and political dimensions of emerging technologies. We are recognizing both the challenges and the importance of mapping out how technology is changing our society, envisioning the changes we desire, and identifying the tools to influence and guide these shifts.
The Dual Nature of Technology: Promises and Pitfalls
Technology can inspire tremendous optimism, offering solutions to some of society’s greatest challenges such as climate change, famine, and disease. For proponents of innovation and creative destruction, technology is a vital driver of economic development and improved quality of life. However, it can also be a source of fear and oppression, embedding biases in automated decision-making and information-processing algorithms, exacerbating economic and social inequalities, and creating new weapons and avenues for attack. Scholars have noted that the term “technology” emerged in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, marking a shift from viewing machinery as a means to achieve progress to seeing complex technological systems as autonomous forms of progress. Recently, technologists have criticized what they see as a new wave of Luddites, who seek to slow technological development to mitigate its societal impacts.
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Conflicting Visions of Technology
At the heart of debates over new technologies are two conflicting visions: one optimistic, seeing technology as a tool for achieving greater goals, and one pessimistic, viewing technological systems as beyond our control. Technology philosophers argue that neither perspective fully captures the nuances and complexities of our relationship with technology. Understanding technology and making better decisions about its design, deployment, and refinement requires nuanced, in-depth analysis of its impacts and the ways they manifest globally.
Unpredictable Impacts and Contextual Uses
The impacts of technology are often unpredictable as they are adopted in new contexts and used in ways not envisioned by their designers. The internet, originally designed for information transmission, became a crucial vehicle for commerce and financial fraud. Social media platforms, intended for connecting friends and families, became focal points of election controversies and political influence. Cryptocurrencies, meant as decentralized digital cash, have become significant environmental hazards due to the computing resources required for mining. Recognizing, documenting, and anticipating these unexpected consequences is crucial. Technologists need mechanisms to think through the impacts of their work and consider alternative paths to different outcomes.
Balancing Risks and Benefits
Technological innovations can cause unexpected harm, but they can also bring extraordinary benefits, such as new vaccines and medicines to address global pandemics, new energy sources to combat climate change, and new educational modes to reach underserved populations. Regulating technology requires a careful balance of mitigating risks without overly restricting beneficial innovations.
Governing Emerging Technology: National Approaches
Nations worldwide have adopted diverse strategies for governing emerging technologies, reflecting varying priorities and regulatory philosophies. In Europe, the precautionary principle drives anticipatory regulation, aiming to address risks before they fully materialize. For example, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation emphasizes data controllers’ responsibilities to provide individuals with access to their data and information on its usage, safeguarding against future risks posed by artificial intelligence and automated decision-making. In Germany, Technische Überwachungsvereine (TÜVs) conduct regular tests to assess and mitigate risks in evolving technological landscapes. In contrast, the United States relies more on litigation and liability frameworks to address safety and security issues post-occurrence. These differences highlight varying priorities between promoting rapid technological development and ensuring safety, security, and individual control. However, governance innovations typically lag behind technological advancements, with regulations often trailing years or even decades behind.
International and NGO Contributions to Technological Governance
Various international and nongovernmental organizations, such as the International Organization for Standardization and the International Telecommunication Union, contribute to developing standards, rules, and norms for new technologies. They help define appropriate boundaries for governments’ use of technologies as instruments of control.
Scrutiny on Policymakers and Technologists
Policymakers face scrutiny for their decisions on technology regulation and adoption, especially concerning technologies like facial recognition. Similarly, technology firms and designers face increasing criticism for the societal and political implications of their designs. There is growing pressure on technologists to consider these consequences early in the design process. Despite longstanding debates on incorporating social dimensions into technology development, this remains an urgent and often overlooked aspect. Many mechanisms for assessing technology impacts in both public and private sectors are bureaucratic and symbolic, lacking real influence.
The Influence of Big Tech on Governance
Technologists often deflect responsibility for addressing social problems exacerbated by their creations, instead urging governments to intervene. Governments grapple with the challenge of establishing clear standards and regulations amidst the swift evolution of technology, particularly considering the substantial economic impact of the tech sector. Enforcement of these standards proves difficult given the pace of change. There’s an urgent call for clearer incentives and policies to guide both private and public entities. Moreover, novel mechanisms are necessary to incorporate broader perspectives into the technology development process, ensuring that the resulting innovations benefit society as a whole.
Tech Companies: Power and Regulation
Tech companies are accused of wielding excessive power, potentially surpassing governments and international organizations in influencing global affairs. Regulators worldwide are grappling with whether these companies violate antitrust laws due to their dominance, yet identifying violations, particularly in industries offering free services, proves difficult. Moreover, these companies’ platforms are often exploited by states for misinformation campaigns, complicating regulatory efforts.
Global Challenges to Governance
Major tech entities operate globally, often outstripping individual states and regulatory bodies in implementing changes to the technological landscape. Oversight of these companies poses significant challenges, given their vast resources and influence, as well as the emergence of networked organizational forms and the gig economy. Public-private partnerships in various sectors further blur the distinction between public and private roles, raising questions about governance and regulation.
Addressing the Influence of Private Tech Companies
Governance of private tech companies operating across sectors requires careful consideration. What influence do these companies exert over regulators, and how should they be governed? Policy proposals aimed at technological innovation must be evaluated for feasibility and potential unintended consequences.
State Competition and Technological Conflict
In recent years, there has been a notable escalation of conflict extending beyond politics into the private sector. The strained relations between the United States and China, particularly regarding the adoption and acquisition of domestically produced technologies, highlight a global tension. While competition for technological supremacy among nations is not new, the current disputes carry substantial global ramifications. They exert a profound influence over global infrastructure, shaping it for the foreseeable future. Thus, it’s imperative to grasp the underlying factors driving these conflicts and discern their beneficiaries and the disadvantaged parties to navigate this complex landscape effectively.
This comprehension is vital for facilitating effective governmental support for domestic technological progress and its global impact. Moreover, as much of the world finds itself at the crossroads between American and Chinese technologies, it becomes essential to weigh the enduring consequences and explore alternatives, especially for nations lacking robust domestic tech sectors. Do global technology spreads fuel innovation in smaller tech markets or reinforce dominance of already prominent states? How can research universities maintain global collaborations amid national competitions, and what role does government research spending play in fostering innovation globally? How should intellectual property protections adapt to technology industry demands and be enforced globally?
Challenges to Global Technological Harmonization
Country conflicts hinder global tech networks. Organizations aim to harmonize policies. Global cooperation is vital. Governments struggle with norms and processes. Can the internet endure without cooperation? How to spread sustainable tech globally?
What incentives might encourage cooperation, and what might new governance structures for global technologies entail? Why does the tech industry’s self-regulation culture persist, and do traditional drivers for public policy sufficiently explain outcomes in this space? As new technologies spread unevenly across the globe, how and when do they catalyze change from unexpected quarters?
Exploring Technological Impacts on Global Change
The section explores designing, deploying, and assessing technologies for global challenges. It synthesizes knowledge from various fields. Understanding tech’s role in global change requires untangling complexities. Scholars from diverse disciplines are invited to participate.