Psychology of Technology in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

The impact of technology has been overwhelming and its usefulness, as far as adaptation is concerned, continues to increase, but it is difficult to predict how it would shape our behavior during this millennium. At best, we are currently able to predict its influence for the next 20 years, as argued in an NSF study. Kurzweil had also predicted that we would witness a furious growth of technology during the current century but would be unsure of its impact on us. One can say that the adverse effects of technology have been historically documented, from the Mayan prediction of the Balktun period to George Orwell’s 1984, but the violation of personal privacy through surveillance techniques and questions about our very existence as humans has never before been so obvious. This chapter focuses on how, in our craving for more technology, we have reduced human beings to factors (as in human factors engineering), and put the user of technology in the back seat. During the twenty-first century, new technologies would continue to challenge its users in a variety of ways. Some of these new challenges would be the creation of new moral dilemmas, the inability to differentiate between what we are born with and what has been made for our body, the assessment of the impact of genetic engineering and neurosurgery, and the experience of why changes caused by technology could not be identified in advance. The chapter discusses some of the ways in which psychology would thrive through extended interdisciplinary research, such as in convergent technologies (a combination of nanotechnology, biotechnology, informational technology, and cognitive sciences (nano-bio-info-cogno). This would certainly go to increase the scope of technology, in terms of forms of intervention for human behavior during the twenty-first century. Many of the ethical issues that would apply to this subfield of psychology of technology in such a scenario have been identified and analyzed. They would range from our understanding of “what does it mean to be human” to the elimination of certain myths. Of prime concern, and one that would have to be tackled, however, would be the fact that though the role of psychologists in the twenty-first century would expand, working as they would, hand-in-glove with engineers, biologists, and other specialists, their work or comments might not receive the type of attention required to put the user in the driver’s seat.

“I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots”

—Albert Einstein.

Appendices

Chapter Summary

Continuing from Chap. 6, this chapter starts out by pointing out favorable and unfavorable aspects of behavior in the context of interventional technology and the impact of the greater availability of free-market type of products. The focus is on, “where is the user in user technology?” and shows how psychology of technology will help us to understand the user as an actor, not merely as a factor. In short, the growth of psychology during the twenty-first century will continue to focus on two viewpoints: the Engineer’s Psychology of Technology (EPT) and the Humanists’ Psychology of Technology (HPT). Second, the growth of this subfield will become increasingly interdisciplinary with the advent of new techniques of research, for example, convergent technologies comprising inputs from nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science. Third, several social psychological explanations of behavior will need to be adapted in the context of technology, for example, how our attributions will change—say, attributing failures to the machine or its operators, treating robots and humans alike, blurring the boundaries between what is technologically determined vs. what is naturally determined, and more. Obviously, such issues will raise questions regarding “What does it mean to be human?”, as Nikolas Kompridis put it. Undoubtedly, such ethical issues will continue to dominate the relationship between technology and human behavior in this millennium. The applicability issue, as discussed in Chap. 1, will, thus, often set limits to the role of technology. Overall, predicting behavior in the context of technology will become a challenge for the psychological sciences, with technology making it easier on the one hand but more complex on the other.

Suggestions for Further Reading

Kurzweil, R. (1999).The age of spiritual machines: When computers exceed human intelligence. New York: Penguin Books.

Roco, M. C., & Bainbridge, W. S. (2002).Converging technologies for improving human performance: Nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science. NSF/DOC-sponsored report, Arlington, Virginia.

Salvendi, G. (2012). Handbook of human factors and ergonomics (4th ed.). New York: Wiley.