January 14, 2004

NYT Thinks Technology Of Little Impact

A century or so ago, the New York Times was published using metal type smeared in ink and pressed against paper. Today, the NYT rolls off modern high-speed offset presses - and also rolls around the world on digital pixels in cyberspace. But the New York Times editorial writers think technology doesn't do much to revolutionize the human experience, judging from a rather silly editorial they published a few weeks ago. I'll let Chris Alden, one of the founders of the old Red Herring magazine, explain...

I try to avoid reading most of the NYT's editorial page when at all possible, but occasionally I slip up when I'm on the hunt for a Safire or Brooks column - and regret it. Even when there are useful points made, the tone tends to be off, as in this piece: The Battle Against Junk Mail and Spyware on the Web. Take the leading graph:

Americans are smitten by the idea that new technologies will revolutionize life as we know it and greatly expand human potential. This was true of the inventor Thomas Edison, who predicted in the 1920's that the motion picture camera would transform public schooling and might even replace textbooks. An early broadcasting executive, Margaret Cuthbert, made a similar leap when she envisioned radio as "a great national headquarters for women," which would elevate housewives everywhere through high-minded programming like lectures and university courses. Instead of edifying housewives, however, radio gave them long-running melodramas that were dubbed soap operas because they entertained while selling laundry detergent.

The hypothesis: technology hasn't revolutionized life as we know it and hasn't greatly expanded human potential. The proof: Thomas Edison thought the motion picture camera would revolutionize education but he was wrong.

Come on. Never mind that motion picture cameras and the TV cameras that followed them have revolutionized many, many other aspects of life as we know it and has greatly expanded human potential in innumerable ways.

And by the way, is it a shortcoming of the technology (and its inventors) that video technology hasn't revolutionized education, or is it a shortcoming of the education establishment, which happens to be one of the least innovative industries of the last century? Edison knew his technology, he perhaps didn't understand what would become of the education industry.