9 tools to navigate an ‘uncertain future,’ from new book, Whiplash
Tech Republic - 12/06/2016
“Humans are perpetually failing to grasp the significance of their own creations,” write Joi Ito and Jeff Howe in Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future. In the new title, released today, Ito, director of the MIT Media Lab, and Howe, a journalism professor at Northeastern University andWired contributor, make the case that technology moves faster than our ability to understand it.
As technology quickly advances, it’s important to separate inventions from use: Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, but it was Eldridge Reeves Johnson who brought it into homes and laid the groundwork for the modern recording industry. In the same way, we often don’t know how modern technology—from the iPhone to the Oculus Rift—will truly be used after it is created. “What technology actually does, the real impact it will have on society, is often that which we least expect,” write the authors.