New Technology Will Save Us All

One of the FallaciousArguments, one which is particular to tech.

Sometimes, advocates of a new technology (of any sort) make grandiose claims about the new technology - it will double productivity, save lives, cure cancer, end war, and eliminate spam and telemarketing (the last one is far-fetched, I know). They produce all sorts of literature (from advertisements and trade-press articles, to scholarship and pseudo-scholarship) enumerating the advantages of the new technology. Invariably, the new technology is immature - often available in prototype form, if at all (it may be little more than BrochureWare). However, that doesn't matter, because:

• Look at all the cool things the new technology can do. (In particular, it solves many problems you never knew you had!)

• The current immaturity/instability/unreliabilty and other drawbacks of the new technology (which usually go unmentioned in the above literature - you have to dig, or even buy the stuff, to find them) are mere implementation details that need to be worked out, whereas the drawbacks of the old technology are fundamental limitations which cannot be designed out or designed around.

• Our toll-free number is 1-800-GEE-WHIZ. Operators are standing by. (AmericanCulturalAssumption; 1-800 is one of several phone prefixes in NorthAmerica for toll-free long-distance dialing. The call is paid for by the party which owns the number - not the caller).

What really happens is one of several things:

1. New technology becomes irrelevant. Problems it solved were unimportant.

2. New technology's features are subsumed by old technology (which is seldom as limited as claimed). New technology may become a player in the market, or maybe not.

3. New technology really is a DisruptiveTechnology (see InnovatorsDilemma), and the rules of the marketplace are rewritten.

Often times, when #1 or #2 happens, there is an equally fallacious backlash (NewTechnologyHasFailed).

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All technology was once new technology. New technology has extended our life spans, raised our standard of living, augmented our understanding of the universe, etc. New technology has saved many of us.

This is not a Luddite argument against technology; it is an argument against how many new technologies are overhyped. That many new technologies do save us is not disputed. However, to cite a recent example, I seem to remember reading that cities would have to be rebuilt to accommodate the SegwayScooter?. Maybe if they can keep 'em from tipping over when the gyros stop spinning due to a dead battery....

Some new technology is over-hyped. Some is under-hyped. I wouldn't classify this as a fallacious argument.

Perhaps we should write it up as "Marketing"; which tends to be so far removed from logic and common sense that we perhaps ought not mention it in the same breath as "rhetoric". :) Barring that rhetorical sleight-of-hand, NewTechnologyWillSaveUsAll is often fallacious when used. Keep in mind that just because an argument is fallacious, doesn't mean it's conclusion is wrong (see DisproofByFallacy). Also keep in mind, that this is an existential and not universal fallacy - not all new technologies are over-hyped, as you point out. To make the point clearer (I can see how the introductory paragraph may have been misconstrued), I added the word "Sometimes" up above.

"Sometimes" is just another way of saying ItDepends.