The Trouble With Ubiquitous Technology Pushers

A discussion with Nicolas reminded me of a text that have been lying forever in my absurdly oversized stacks of papers to read. In “The trouble with ubiquitous technology pushers or: Why We’d Be Better Off without the MIT Media Lab” (part 1, part 2, and part 3 – written in 2000) Stephen L. Talbott summarizes quite well why I have a hard time following the decontextualized celebration of wireless, sensor and mobile technologies, and enjoy grounding my work on the organic complexity of cities and people; a rich context that multiple approaches such as sociology, geography, urban planning or architecture have a tradition in observing and shapping.

In these texts Stephen Talbott makes 2 main complaints on ubiquitous technology pushers:

A technology-focused consciousness — and you could fairly say that our society is becoming obsessively technology-focused — is a consciousness always verging upon emptiness. It is a consciousness whose problems are purely formal or technical, with precisely definable solutions. They can be precisely defined because they lack context, they have no significance of their own.
[...]
technology pushers too often fail to recognize the difference between solving a problem and contributing to the health of society. Solving problems is, in fact, one of the easiest ways to sicken society. A technical device or procedure can solve problem X while worsening an underlying condition much more serious than X.