John Naisbitt has been heralded as one of America's leading
thinkers on the future. He is the recipient of 12 honorary degrees,
is a former executive with IBM and Eastman Kodak, and also served as
a presidential appointee in the Kennedy administration and as a
special assistant to President Lyndon Johnson. Previously, Visions
talked with John Naisbitt as he was beginning work on a new book.
That book, High Tech, High Touch: Technology and Our Search for
Meaning, co-authored with his daughter Nana Naisbitt and Douglas
Philips, has now hit the streets. Visions revisited John and Nana to
explore what they learned in writing the book. In John's own words,
the book turned out far differently than he first envisioned because
the research began to reveal previously unseen pitfalls in America's
new high-tech focus.
Q: In your new book, High Tech, High
Touch, you talk about the way America is intoxicated with
technology. Can you explain what you mean by this?
John: That might be too strong a word.
Intoxication, by the dictionary definition, also means wildly
excited. And I think we can certainly say that people in the United
States are wildly excited about technology; so much so that we sort
of mindlessly, in some cases, go from upgrade to upgrade without
thinking about it. And our plea in the book [is that] we are not
against technology, we just think that people ought to be more
reflective about it. And also think about the possibility of
unintended consequences.
Nana: As a society we now tend to turn to
technology for any solution, as if technology is the end-all and
be-all solution. A rather funny example is that we even turn to
technology to solve problems caused by technology. For example,
there was a researcher at St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital in New York
who was studying obesity in children. He developed something called
a TV cycle, where in order to get the screen to go on, the kid had
to sit there and peddle. It decreased television viewing and caused
the kids to lose weight, but it is ironic to turn to technology to
solve a problem rather than simply turning off the television.
John: And going outside - what a
concept!
Q: The example of privacy also
comes to mind, and the notion that technology may be the only
effective way to safeguard against new kinds of privacy invasion.
Nana: Or,
another example, filters to cut out the junk e-mail.
John: So we see one layer of technology
being placed upon another, and along the way, technology promises to
save us time. And really, it takes our time. The more technology we
employ, the more people are running around saying they have no time.
We certainly have less and less time for high touch, which includes
the integration of technology into meaningful human experience, an
understanding of new technologies through the human lens of the
cultural, artistic and spiritual dimensions of humankind, and all
those things that give real meaning to being alive.
Nana: And we have less time for any real
reflection.
Q:In the book, you say that
while we are intoxicated by technology's pleasures and promises, we
also turn our backs on technology's consequences and then wonder why
the future seems so unpredictable. You mention Marshall McLuhan and
the need to evaluate the relevance and consequences of technologies.
In the past few years, I've heard many government leaders say that
it is now impossible to predict the future, that technology is
changing too fast. In this context, how do we go about assessing the
consequences of the technologies we are using?
John: I think a very good example is
computers in education. It is almost as if, if you put that great
technological icon, the computer, in the classroom, that solves
everything. We are all concerned about the receding qualities of
education, or the perceived receding qualities of education. So we
now think, give a kid a computer and that will take care of it.
President Clinton is advocating that all classrooms be on the
Internet and so forth. But how many people are asking, "How will the
computer actually help children to learn?Ó Because it seems to me
that the whole purpose of education is to learn how to learn. Is the
computer going to teach kids to learn how to learn? In fact, it
tends to do the opposite. It is a closed system. It is a
point-and-click system and really doesn't deal with or stimulate the
creative or intuitive side. So we have said that if you put a
computer in the classroom, that's okay, if you know how that is
going to contribute to education. But also, how about a poet in
every classroom? Of course that's a metaphor. But now in the U.S. we
are robbing energy and funding to give to the computer at the
expense of music and the arts and those things the metaphor of the
poet represents.
Nana: One of the unintended consequences of
the Industrial Revolution was a lot of pollution in our waters. It
took a long time for people to recognize that pollution was a
problem. But now we have lived long enough with advanced technology,
and we should be wise enough to begin anticipating possible
unintended consequences, to really keep an eye on the technology as
it's deployed so that we constantly review it and revise standards.
And in that sense, it is not unpredictable. It becomes much more
manageable. Look what has happened now with genetics. Some
scientists, theologians and artists are beginning to say, "We need
to understand the real consequences of these technologies before we
use them. So let's talk about them now.Ó I'm tired of hearing that
the future is unpredictable. I worked at a company where that was
kind of the bylaw: "Unless you are out there being the most
innovative company in the world, it is all going to pass you by.Ó
Because the future is completely unpredictable, we just have to
innovate like crazy to keep up.
Q: John has had a very good track record
in recognizing the undercurrents of transformation, what he called
"megatrends.Ó What he was saying 20 years ago about the future still
stands up, which is relatively rare. How do we improve our ability
to see the consequences, to see the eventual effects of the
technologies we are using? Is there a methodology here?
Nana: One of the things that we are
advocating is that there be far more public forums or public
debates, something that we are actually going to be organizing to
include theologians, artists and policymakers.
John: If you have interdisciplinary
discussions and if you have enough people from enough different
fields, the questions, the issues and the subtleties will surface.
And they are otherwise pretty invisible in something as technical as
genetic engineering. And if no one else sponsors these discussions,
or even if someone else is sponsoring them, it is a great
opportunity for government to be the enlightened party here and to
bring together scientists and theologians and artists and people
from all walks of life to talk about the issues.
Nana: On issues of technology, governments
generally listen mostly to scientists who often can't set the
broader context. The scientists are shaped and formed by their own
disciplines. They certainly don't set the context of who we are, who
we want to become and how we are going to get there. They tend to
see things in the context of what is possible and what the promises
of this new technology are. But they don't typically raise the real
ethical concerns. They may raise some, but they don't really offer a
broad range of ethical concerns, nor do they usually reflect the
more philosophical or theological concerns.
Q: Part of that is the idea that we need
to decide what kind of world we want to create using these new
technologies, rather than simply letting technological possibilities
dictate the future.
John: And we can do that by involving
people who understand the technologies and can explain them to us,
which helps to dissipate the whole thing about the hidden or the
mysterious. And then we can think in a public-policy way about what
we want to support or champion or prevent. So I think governments,
almost by default, could do something very useful here by organizing
public discussions about new technologies like genetic
engineering.
Q: Going back to the idea of our
intoxication with technology, in your book you list some very
specific symptoms that perhaps give a better understanding of what
you mean by this.
Nana: First I would just like to say that
we did not go into this project with a preconceived notion. We
didn't say, "We are intoxicated with technology, and let's prove
it.Ó
John: Actually, as we wound up this
process, we were a little concerned that the publisher might check
to see what the book proposal said. The book was a 180 degree
reverse of the proposal.
Nana: And we all came into it with very
different biases. Of the three of us, John tended to be the most
pro-technology. He really equated technology with progress. I tended
to be the skeptic about technology, and [co-author] Douglas
[Philips] was the most facile with it. We were not happy to discover
that America was intoxicated with technology. We were not happy to
discover that we really now accept violence as normal, one of the
symptoms of the intoxication. Most of the symptoms we discovered
through the method of content analysis, which John championed in
Megatrends. And we extended that methodology to include the popular
culture of television, but principally magazines - because the ads
in there coincide with the ads on TV and everywhere else - and the
articles these magazines ran. But we truly let the research reveal
certain patterns without any preconceived notions, and these
patterns were often disturbing when one really looked at
them.
Q: The issue of violence as a symptom of
technological intoxication is a good one to look at - the way in
fact we have become desensitized to violence. We think high levels
of violence are normal and an inevitable part of modern life.
Nana: Looking at the big picture, it is
also curious that the Europeans, for example, are much more able to
look at this book and nod their head, and say, "Oh, this is so
true,Ó and see in themselves where this applies to their culture.
John: Not as strongly maybe as it does in
the States.
Q: But they are much more conscious of
the points you are making?
John: Yes.
Nana: It is also easier for them to look
critically at America than it is to be American and look critically
at America.
John: Going back to Marshall McLuhan, we
use that wonderful quote about the fish in the book. He didn't know
who first discovered water, but it certainly wasn't the fish. And
you know, in this country, people are so immersed in this that they
can't see it.
Q: It just occurs to me, in terms of
violence in entertainment, the usual argument against it has been
that it leads to more violent behavior. That is a very difficult
case to make as an absolute. But the other factor, which really
never has been looked at as a primary problem as far as I'm aware,
is the way that violence in entertainment desensitizes us to
violence. That in fact might be the biggest problem, that we
consider high levels of violence as a normal or natural part of
human society.
John: Absolutely.
Nana: Though there are a lot of studies
that do reputedly prove that violence in the media does lead to
violent behavior. There are a lot of people who don't want to
believe that. We go into the case of the Littleton killers in the
book. They sent out signals for about a year to adults all around
them, saying, "We are going to commit some sort of terrible mayhem.Ó
And systematically, these adults ignored the signs because they were
soaked in the violence.
John: The signals were so "normal.Ó
Q: On the Internet, if you look at the
"hacker culture,Ó you definitely get a keen sense that images
carried in the media, and that includes the Internet itself, greatly
affect how these kids look at the world around them.
John: So one symptom of technological
intoxication is that we accept that violence is normal. Another is
that we blur the distinction between real and fake. Technology is so
good, and is getting so good at simulating almost anything, it is
becoming increasingly difficult to tell what is real and what is
fake. And in such a culture, from the movies to auction houses, what
really becomes attractive is authenticity. People really want
authenticity, and that spills over into people and politicians as
well.
Q: Another symptom you mention is the
quick fix. Democratic governments have always been prone to the
quick fix. To get elected again, politicians naturally favor
anything that is going to give the impression of immediate results,
because this will help them get re-elected. Long-term consequences,
on the other hand, often tend to be ignored until a crisis looms. If
the quick fix is also a symptom of technology intoxication, then as
government and government processes become even more centered around
technology, the tendency to look for the quick fix might become
increasingly problematic.
Nana: That is an excellent synopsis. That
is absolutely right. Technology now conditions us to believe that we
can get something instantly.
Q: Which brings us back to the subject
of accurately assessing long-term consequences of the technologies
we deploy. We didn't see, for instance, that the automobile would
devastate inner cities.
John: Or the connection between the
introduction of telephones and the death of the art of letter
writing.
Q: Examples abound that clearly teach us
that we have rarely understood the full consequences of any new
innovation. Is there anything that would counter government's
tendency to look for the quick high-tech fix?
Nana: One thing, one purpose of the book,
is to raise our awareness and to raise a new consciousness. We
believe we have addressed why are we in the state that we are in. In
writing this book we really had to become clear on where our society
is today. It is very much like when John was asked by President
Lyndon Johnson to explain the effect of the Great Society
legislation he was enacting. John felt that he couldn't do that
unless he understood what was happening today.
John: And I couldn't understand what was
happening. It was so complex.
Nana: And so you discovered a method, not
by trying to predict the future, but by trying to understand the
present. Very few people have the luxury to sit back and understand
the present. But that is critically important today. We discovered
in writing this book that it was important that we change our
cultural mindset about technology. If we do that successfully, and
if our readers change their minds about that, then every way they
look at technological processes will be different.
John: That is a very good way of putting
it.
Q: Really, what you address in terms of
the symptoms are some of the downsides of the technology we are
using. Can you comment on those liabilities in governance? How do we
have to start changing governance to better deal with the new
technology-driven social realities?
Nana: Well, one thing we really advocate is
government's role in protecting our children from media violence as
a specific example.
John: We do have laws that say children are
a special consumer category. They cannot buy cigarettes. They cannot
buy alcohol. But we let them buy and ingest violence. The people
selling this violence hide behind the First Amendment. But there are
exceptions to the First Amendment, which we point out in the book.
First Amendment rights do not allow you to falsely cry "fireÓ in a
crowded theater. Well, we say that these electronic games and
especially the levels of violence in them are poisoning the souls of
our children. And that this should not be First Amendment-protected,
just as crying "fireÓ in a crowded theater is not First
Amendment-protected.
Q: So you see a much stronger role for
government in this regard?
John: We think it needs a three-pronged
attack. It requires legislation, litigation - and that usually comes
from the private sector, although governments do sue - and
education. School systems can really become involved in what is
sometimes called media literacy.
Nana: What the government has started to do
in America, and what city governments have done in just the past
year, really since Littleton, which has proved to be a far bigger
watershed event than we ever anticipated.
John: Although we called it that.
Nana: American cities have begun suing gun
manufacturers because of they believe that gun advertising is done
in such a way as to excite crime. I can't remember what their legal
argument is exactly. But these gun manufacturers have the technology
to create smart guns, yet they are not doing it.
Q: This whole idea of protection and the
role of government in regulating things is a very fundamental issue
that we are just now grappling with on a number of fronts. We so
often hear that the alternative, letting the market regulate itself,
might be better. America's current approach to Internet privacy is
an example.
John: But here with media violence, I
think we have the exception. And this has a long history. The most
fundamental reason for government is to protect its citizens against
the armies of other governments. That is absolutely core and has
been there from the beginning of history. So in a sense, this has an
incredible legacy: to protect the life and well-being of citizens.
Q: And protecting across the board,
rather than protecting particular interests that might have money or
power.
John: Absolutely.
Nana: There is, for instance, a huge issue
involving protection of privacy and the misuse of genetic
information.
John: Now that is serious. I think the
software is going to outwit many of the other privacy issues, such
as people looking at your credit rating. But protection of genetic
information is serious.
Q: You talk about in your book about the
sequencing of DNA and make the point that this technology will
permanently alter our understanding of man himself. So this is one
area where it is vital that we anticipate the consequence of
technology.
John: Yes.
Nana: There is a lot of concern over the
American government's approach to genetically modified agricultural
products. We are assuming any product is safe until it is proven
unsafe. The Europeans, on the other hand, are taking exactly the
opposite approach. They are only allowing them once it has been
proven safe. My personal view is that we are marching ahead much too
quickly when it comes to genetically modified agriculture. We
certainly don't want to mindlessly march into genetically modifying
human beings. Even the scientists, for instance, say that the gene
pool does not belong to any individual. The genetic pool belongs to
all of society and it belongs to future generations as well. That
makes genetic medicine a very different category of medical
treatment. So we have to be especially careful. Again, I don't think
our government leaders understand how powerful these technologies
are.
John: While we were in Europe, we
viscerally experienced how concerned the Europeans are with
genetically modified agricultural products, a concern that I don't
share. But when it really sinks in that we have begun to go down the
path of genetically modified human beings, you can imagine their
response. And in that case, it is certainly a legitimate
consideration.
Q: So again, part of the solution
involves a lot more discussion from many different quarters.
John: And it is totally legitimate for
governments to assert leadership in doing just that.
Nana: We believe that with broad-based
dialogue, we can really begin to shape wise, thoughtful public
thinking about cloning or genetic enhancement. Government can take a
leadership position here, educating itself and educating the public.
And they can go into this with the idea of discovery rather than
with some preconceived notion. They can ask what the implications of
these technologies are and collectively begin to shape where we
think these are most prudently applied, where we think they are
dangerous.
John: I think that it is very important
that governments educate themselves.
Q: The underlying theme of the book, at
least for me, seems to be the fundamental question, "What does it
mean to be human?Ó
John: Absolutely. That's the question
for the next century.
Q: And it seems to me that this is much
more than a philosophical question. It is an issue that lies at the
heart of changes ahead for government in the United States and
elsewhere. All our concepts of society, and our ideals about the
kind of society we want for the future spring out of our notion of
what it is to be human, and the rights and obligations associated
with that.
John: And in that regard, just ponder this:
As the scientists complete the cracking of the DNA code and map out
the human genome, they will have a book, as it were, on the
physicality of our being. They will know everything about the flesh
and bones of the body parts. What they will not have a book on is
our souls or our spirituality. So what people are going to do is to
hold onto that more and more and think about that more and more in
that context - what does it mean to be human?
Nana: And this is also at a time when
computers are increasingly being built to "think.Ó Machines have
already taken over our physical labor as human beings. And now they
are starting to take over our mental labor. There are
science-fiction movies like "The MatrixÓ that point to our fear of
computers being smarter than we are. That, along with the scientists
being able to explain physical life itself, really heightens that
question of what it means to be human. And we believe that it is
going to be the overriding question for the next century.
Q: And that ties
into questions about participation in the new global economy by
developing nations. These nations are seeking to participate as
equals. And as has been said before, technology does tend to level
the playing field a lot more. So this whole question of what it is
to be human somehow includes the associated right to flourish and
prosper through one's own honest efforts. And this becomes more
possible as business moves to an electronic or digital base.
Nana: You are absolutely right. But there
is an underlying assumption there that technology will make us all
rich, that technology is the solution. We have spoken to various
people who have worked in various third-world countries who have
seen exactly the opposite, that technology is brought in as the
solution, but it is not supported. It is misfit with that particular
culture at that given time and so it is ill-conceived. I think it is
dangerous to proceed with the notion that technology equals progress
and to believe all that is promised by technology.
Q: Well, we do tend to see technology,
especially the Internet, as the new engine for wealth creation. What
we often don't do, however, is define wealth in human terms. The
wealth of a society is made up of much more than just money. The
culture and art, which you talk about in your book, is a part of our
wealth.
John: That is the part that I would
emphasize.
Q: Governments are seeking to embrace
new technologies as solutions to a lot of problems. An overriding
concern of governments is that citizens are increasingly
dissatisfied with their government, or they are skeptical, to say
the least, and don't feel represented. Governments are looking to
Internet-based technology not just to deliver services more cheaply
and efficiently, but beyond this, as a possible way to win back
greater participation, public support and appreciation. In terms of
electronic government, what would you caution governments about?
John: There is an almost hilarious example
with Celebration, the Disney World artificial town. They are really
wired. They say, for instance, that to attend the town hall meeting,
you don't even have to go to the meeting. You can get it all on the
computer and do it online. Yet what's needed in a technologically
saturated or intoxicated zone is exactly the opposite of that. What
is needed is for people to go to the meeting and to be with each
other.
Nana: One example of this is Chicago. The
police force found that they had completely lost touch with their
neighbors and with the neighborhoods they were patrolling. And this
created such a distance that many people no longer trusted the
police. So what they did is get rid of the cars and put cops on
bicycles. What a difference that has made! That is an example of
being aware of where technology distances us.
John: Absolutely.
Nana: And that is another of the symptoms
we discuss in the book; that we increasingly live our lives
distanced and distracted. Technology can distract the electorate and
it can also distract the legislators from what their constituencies
really want.
Q: So a fundamental question is what
these technologies really do to community.
Nana: There is a lot of discussion about
virtual community and the Internet. But what you have on the
Internet are groups who have a shared interest. That's undeniable,
and there are a lot of good things done and a lot of information
that can be passed. But that is not community. The company I
previously worked with did a whole study on what community is. They
basically came up with six attributes of community and then applied
these to various things like the Internet. And it failed miserably.
One way to look at it is simply that communities have a shared sense
of purpose, not just a shared sense of interest. I don't share the
same interests as my neighbor at all. But I share a sense of place.
I share a sense of well-being. If the technology distances and
distracts, then governments need to take steps to counter that by
doing what will help to create a stronger sense of community, a
stronger sense of shared purpose. And high tech isn't necessarily
the answer. High touch is also desperately needed.
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