Exponential: Order and Chaos in an Age of Accelerating Technology

by Azeem Azhar

We often assume that tech is somehow independent of humanity – that it is a force that brought itself into being and doesn’t reflect the biases and power structures of the humans who created it. In this rendering, technology is value-free – it is made neutral – and it is the consumers of the technology who determine whether it is used for good or for evil. This view is particularly common in Silicon Valley. In 2013, Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt wrote, ‘The central truth of the technology industry – that technology is neutral but people are not – will periodically be lost amid all the noise.’6 Peter Diamandis, an engineer and physician – as well as the founder of a company that offers tech courses, Singularity University – wrote that while the computer ‘is clearly the greatest tool for self-empowerment we’ve yet seen, it’s still only a tool, and, like all tools, is fundamentally neutral’.7 This is a convenient notion for those who create technology. If technology is neutral, its inventors can concentrate on building their gizmos. If the tech starts to have any insidious effects, society – rather than its inventors – is to blame. But if technology isn’t neutral – that is, if it has encoded some form of ideology, or system of power – that might mean its makers need to be more careful. Society might want to manage or regulate the technologists and their creations more carefully. And those regulations might become a hassle. Sadly for these engineers, their view of t...