Children are probably already interacting more with technology than with anything else in the world. Given that there are sex education classes and others, there should also be much more extensive and in-depth technology education classes, which mainly address the risks associated with them .
In fact, according to various surveys, all of us are generally ignorant about the negative consequences of many technologies that we use on a daily basis.
Techno-neutrals and technostructuralists
According to communication expert Majid Tehranian , the way we approach technology divides people into techno-neutrals and technostructuralists.
The former tend to have few theoretical or sociological claims and argue that technologies are not good or bad per se, but depend on how we use them. The same as with a knife: it can be used to harm someone or to cut bread.
That is, they consider that technologies are, all of them and without distinction, neutral in themselves , and therefore there is a tendency to pay little attention to the hidden intentions of their creators or how their use conditions the lives of their users.
For their part, technostructuralists would consider that the impact of technologies is conditioned by social forces, institutions and companies . In other words, a given technology does not have inherent or natural qualities, but rather its features are defined by how they relate to society while influencing it.
For example, a technoneutral would argue that an autonomous vehicle, by itself, would reduce traffic fatalities and is therefore desirable. A tencostructuralist, however, would argue that a reasonable mode of transport should serve many other ends: perhaps its mere existence would increase the number of drivers, thereby reducing the number of public transport users, ultimately contributing to an increase in public transport. the pollution in the air and, also, to a greater number of victims for this reason. Greater urban sprawl could also take place: by being able to work or indulge in leisure while the autonomous vehicle drives you from home to work and from work to home, people would live further and further away, which would also lead to a less sustainable lifestyle .
The Internet is the paradigmatic example of how the same tool has one aspect or another depending on how it is judged . On the one hand, it communicates us all with everyone, without borders, which necessarily makes us more open and allows us to abandon provincial prejudices, because it is an ideal means of communication for this. On the other hand, however, the most reactionary religions are taking positions and strengthening themselves thanks to the network, as are dictators and bloggers who sympathize with their ideas, and algorithms favor that through social networks we tend to read ideas that agree with our prejudices, reinforcing them.
This happens because social networks, for example, are not designed so that we communicate with everyone easily (although that is what can be done with them), but their developers want us to spend as much time as possible connected to them to make them profitable by including advertising. And an easy way to spend more time on a social network is to make the ideas we read pleasant and familiar to us .
As the expert Evgeny Morozov explains in his book The madness of technological solutionism , technology is important, but not everything can be solved with technology, and considering that technology is good only because of its inherent qualities, in general terms it compels us to carry out analysis too simple.
In his book, he gives as an example the algorithms used in blogs, social networks or YouTube videos to determine if content is spam or incites hatred: “As far as intermediaries are concerned, this is something shocking: a single Californian company decides what is considered hateful or irreverent on many of the world’s most popular sites without anyone examining whether their own algorithms are biased or overly conservative. “
For Morozov, this critical analysis of any technology, taking into account all its facets and edges and how they are intertwined with society, without forgetting that behind the developer companies only the profit motive prevails, is something that should be part of the academic curriculum of any student . Because all of them will begin to relate to new technologies from a very young age, and these will influence how they act, how they think, and even how critical they are with those same technologies.
