What Is It To Be A Technology Optimist

Not so long ago I was thrown the line, "Ah, but you're for ever the tech optimist Mike", and I believe is was meant as a put down, or at least a means of trying to keep me quiet. It failed.

It is true that I have grown up (I'm 52 years young) with computers and seen their magic* transform lives, from my own through friends and family to the wider Western society in ways that are truly remarkable.

I still express childlike wonder at how these boxes of wires (I know, I know), that are mostly air, can, when they are put into the hands of astoundingly clever humans, produce tools that add joy and knowledge to my life.

Take these boxes, connect them with light wires so they can share the bits and bytes, whilst also sticking as many of them as you can into a warehouse and you have the means to share the joy and knowledge to every person on this planet.

Stick the means to access these magic warehouses to a small slab of glass that can do it's own magic and I challenge anyone to not smile and sit back with a sense of slight disbelieve.

I watch a YouTube video that explains what neutron stars are. WTF! I ask a question and a person on the other side of the planet answers me. WTF! I want to warm the house before I get home and I push a button on to glass slab. WTF! I sit in a pub and watch my daughter typing her classwork whilst we all chat with her teacher who explains what the lesson is aiming at. WTaF!

All this is to say yes, I am and always will be a person that sees the magic, wonder, and potential of "tech". I see no shame, no weakness in this.

Wizards of Christchurch

* Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. [Arthur C Clarke, third of his "three laws"]