- The world has many social problems. And different people have different ideas on how they should be solved. People like Douthwaite believe that technology gives us the building blocks to solve these problems but on the other hand there are people like authors Johson and the Huesemanns’ that believe technology should not be involved at all when it comes to solving these problems. Douthwaite argues that technology gives us a temporary solution that buys time until a permanent one can be found. The other two authors believe that technology and social problems do not mix. They state that technology starts as a temporary solution but then turns into a permeant solution that has long term consequences because it only conforms to the current social standards. Both ideas make sense but I have to side with Douthwaite because I believe that it gives us a good starting point to tackle these problems. But I do not believe they are permanent solutions.
- I believe technological fixes can cause negative repercussions because they are not very well adaptable. When they are designed, only the current state of the social environment is taken into account. The only problem is our environment and social ecosystem is constantly changing. The Huesemanns’ argue in their paper that it’s impossible for humans to improve on the social environment in which we live in and it’s completely controlled by forces out of our control such as natural selection. Another reason that there are consequences as Johnson argues is that we put too much faith into technology itself fixing these problems and become over confident in our abilities which can cause problems.