Time for an Inquiry into Values
Thomas Mahon
In 1974 my first technology client as a freelance writer and filmmaker told me to stress the social benefit of his mainframe computers: safer air travel, more affordable health care, greater availability of educational resources.
I met a tech writer at that company then, Robert Pirsig, who inspired me with his new book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, with the subtitle An Inquiry into Values. I have never once in all the years since heard the word ‘values’ used in conjunction with technology.
In 1984, I wrote an award-winning book on Silicon Valley, Charged Bodies, in which I saw (or hoped to see) a progression from data processing in the ’60s, to information processing in the ’70s, to knowledge processing in the ’80s and ’90s, to eventual wisdom processing in the 21st Century.
And here we are in the 21st year of the 21st Century:
The tech icons are not prophets. They are profiteers.
They have changed the world. But they have not made it any better.
© 2021 Thomas Mahon
