Samuel Reddick

Professor Ingram
UWRT 1102
January 24, 2017
Is the Future Really Darker?
I found the search for my first research topic to be very difficult. Im the type of person
who is always looking up new information and learning new things so I expected that doing a
research project on a subject of my choosing would be extremely easy. I was very quickly
disappointed when I realized that being curious in general can make narrowing down a search
difficult. The lesson that I thought I had learned from the challenge of my first research paper
was that my original topic, computers, was far too complicated and broad to be assessed in a
relatively short project. For my second research topic I decided that I would veer far away from
computers and cover something much narrower that I was still passionate about.
Of the ideas that came to mind, the best I thought was that I would focus on the future
and the opinions of various people on that topic. In particular I would focus on the dystopic
visions of the future offered by minds like Orwell and Huxley and analyze them. In my
preparation for this paper I decided that I would look at peoples visions for the future in general
to expand my base of knowledge on the subject and came across the Ted Talk of MIT Media Lab
founder Nicholas Negroponte.
The title of the video was A 30 Year History of the Future which intrigued me more
than seeing MIT in the job description of the orator. It took me several hours to find something to
write about in the first paper. It took me ten minutes to find this video and all I had to type was
future.
It goes without saying that the talk was eye opening. TedTalks usually have the formula
down and its hard to finish one without coming away with some new insight. This one in
particular thought surprised me. I went from thinking (explitive) this ones about computers
again. I wont be able to use it, to I have never thought about that, and I have never heard
about that, in a matter of seconds.
To briefly summarize, Negroponte proved that he was a clearly brilliant computer
scientist who to date had made numerous accurate assumptions on the future of computers and
their relationship with people. One example he shared from 1995 showed a writer from
Newsweek laughing off his apparently ridiculous idea that people would eventually start buying
books online for them to read on electronic devices. He spent some time on his accurate
predictions which I found interesting, but what really left an impact on me was his optimism for
the future.
Im not sure that optimistic visions of the future are common when considering the field
of technology. In fact, my last paper was about how computer scientist have developed programs
capable of making learning programs. Information like that comes with a bit of implied gloom.
How can we survive in a world where our possibly sentient creations evolve at an astronomically
faster pace than we do, and all of our livelihoods could be lost within one generation?
Negroponte looked beyond the obvious implications of technological advancement and
gave an enlightening example of an unexpected positive one. Earlier in his career he worked on a
project to deliver laptops to children around the world who previously did not have this access.
In one of these places in Ethiopia, the workers gave electronic devices to the children of a
particular village and gave them no instruction on how to use them. Within a week the average
child was using around 50 applications, and eventually the children started teaching themselves
things like the alphabet.
This occurred without instruction from the adults of the village or the workers apparently
which left me with a more positive opinion on the strengths of our species. It left me a little more
hopeful. If children only need access to information to become their own teachers maybe the
inequalities of the world could be overcome in a relatively short amount of time because of
technology.
Perhaps we are far less threatened by technology than my first paper would have us feel.
It seems like if children can go from educationally underprivileged to teaching themselves how
to read in a matter of days, there is something that the bleak imagination of dystopia and the
fearful interpretation of technological growth ignores: that is the flexibility and ingenuity of the
human spirit.