Designing Digital Futures - Informing Digital Futures: Strategies for Citizen Engagement - page 20

items that have embedded intelligence and sensors enabling them to detect
changes in their environment. Computing, communication and intelligent
user-friendly interfaces are converging to create the “ ambient intelligent
landscape ” where intelligence will be embedded in our phones, in our
clothes, in our household appliances, and even in our pets. But such devel-
opments raise significant questions about control, authority, security and
privacy - who is in control of these technologies that we cannot see, are
not aware of ? How do we know what they are doing, what data they are
collecting about us, how it will be used?
While new technologies have undoubtedly delivered many exciting and
rewarding opportunities, it is clear that they have not come without a cost.
The vision of fulfillment and opportunities to enjoy human-computer sym-
biosis can seem a long way off. Although there are undoubtedly many
benefits from the advent of new technology, it could also be argued that, in
many cases, the technology has simply brought new kinds of drudgery and
different kinds of routine tasks. Since such systems now underpin every
aspect of our lives in the Information Society their impact is considerable.
In the sections below we consider some of the factors which might have
led to this situation, and examine possibilities for influencing ICT design
in order to deliver more desirable digital futures.
2.4 How Did We Get Here?
There has for centuries been a strong body of opinion that technology is
deterministic, that is to say, that the developments themselves are inexorable,
and that despite the benefits, negative impacts are inevitable and unavoid-
able. Negroponte (1995) for example asserts that being digital is inevita-
ble, “ like a force of nature ”. It is suggested that both the speed and the
scale of technological change that we face in the modern world contribute
to this sense of inevitability; Toffler (1980) calls this 'future shock'. Nardi
and O'Day (1999) make the point that the speed of communication in the
modern world has had the effect of accelerating the speed of change in
every aspect of life, and note the erosion of tradition and identity entailed
by the constant necessity of moving on to the next tool, the next technol-
ogy, the next fundamentally different way of doing things. “ We are adapt-
ing to technology rather than controlling its fruitful and pleasurable use. ”
They add that nothing about tool use is fundamentally new to us as a spe-
cies, but that our ability to absorb new tools - and the different ways of
“ doing ” and “ being ” that emerge with technological change, are chal-
lenged by the avalanche of innovation we are experiencing. The suggestion