Posts from — March 2010

The Future State of Humanity? Photo by Aaron Haussman

Friedrich Georg Jünger, translator of the Iliad to the German and expert on Pre-Socratic philosophy has written one of the most powerful critiques of technology named “Failure of Technology: Perfection without Purpose.” I will present some of his most important criticisms of technological progress in general and their relevance for the technological development we are seeing today.

For better or worse, it is certain that technological development is truly changing our society and the way we live. [Read more →]

Above: Nanotech is coming to get you

One of the first definitions of Economics I came across in my life was “the study of scarce resources and unlimited wants.” That is, how choices are made with regards to which of the unlimited wants are to be met and not, or in other words, how resources are allocated. Here, markets come in as one of many possible mechanisms for making such choices socially.

In the context of Technology Governance, another way of understanding economics appears. That is, in recognizing that in the presence of innovation and changing technology, economic systems are not static, the extent to which resources are scarce depends on our ability to produce. As such, economics in this context can be better described as the study of how humans mitigate scarcity of resources by means of technology. Here, the core questions do not so much relate to allocation of scarce resources but to our changing capacity to make available those resources.

However, technology does not only change which resources or goods are available in which quantities, they also strongly influence the market (or other) mechanisms by which they get distributed. [Read more →]