Advances in technology provide more positives than negatives and do not cause as many problems as people think, Paul Streeten, an economics professor at Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee Center, told about 50 people Tuesday night in the School of Management auditorium.
Streeten’s lecture covered the effects of modern technology and what it holds for the future of mankind and was the first of two in a series titled ‘Technological Nightmares.’
Despite the constant blame put on today’s highly technological creations, Streeten said he does not believe technology leads to pollution and doom, and maintains the prediction that the world will end soon because of it has no validity whatsoever.
Streeten praised some of today’s helpful inventions, including the internet and genetically modified foods. Technology greatly helps productivity, enables people to live longer and healthier lives, creates efficient services and benefits society as a whole, he said.
We would not own half the things we do today if it were not for advances in technology, Streeten said, praising those inventions that are essentially benign to the environment.
The discussion was then moved into some of the ‘nightmares’ that the title of the lecture series implied.
Streeten cited novelist Sir Arthur Clarke, former Sun Microsystems chief scientist Bill Joy and science fiction writer Michael Crichton as pioneers who have warned against the dangers of nanotechnology the art of manipulating materials on an atomic or molecular scale, especially to develop robots.
Nanotechnology discovered only 12 years ago is constantly under ethical debate and the prime concern of today’s concerned luddites, or technology worriers, according to Streeten.
Streeten remained rather indifferent on the topic, not criticizing its limitations, but also not glorifying its capabilities. He did, however, go on to consider what ‘all-powerful robots’ could do to employment.
Streeten questioned the audience on whether or not these robots would take the place of unskilled, low IQ workers, increase the demand for more skilled workers or even take the place of skilled workers. He also said programs to replace skilled workers, including medical-diagnosing computer programs, are already in place.
The Pardee Center will hold lectures throughout the year at the SMG auditorium, all concerning topics dealing with society’s long-range future. Streeten’s second lecture will be Tuesday at 6 p.m., and professor Murray Gell-Mann, a Nobel laureate, will give two lectures titled ‘Regularities and Randomness in the Past and the Future’ in December.