What does technology say about society?

Or how to understand contextualized creation

To understand the nature of the prompt, I first must explain what I mean.

Technology is, by its very function, a social element. You cannot create technology without peers to cooperate with, whom in turn cooperate inside of a social system. That social system can be a family unit, a tribal unit, a national polity or even planetary level, but it is the most basic fundamental essence required before you can actively create a technology.

For the purposes of this prompt, I will be throwing things like “I use a rock” under the umbrella of simple machines, rather than actual technology. Technology will be used to refer to devices of varying sophistication designed to achieve a specific working task.

To use a real world example - let us look at the nature of technology in the current world. Technology is, prototypically, developed in answer to the economic paradigm of profit. For success at scale, there most be a profit margin of some fashion. This is a simple truth of our world, and easily expresses what can and cannot be created in that framework.

If a technology is not profitable, it will not be developed. If it is created, it will have value only within the cooperative system it was created within. If there is profit that can be gained eventually from this item, it will be subverted and subjected to the same standards of social mechanics as everything else. Ergo, only the hegemonic social paradigm allows for the broad conceptualization of technologies.

Now, to address the prompt itself: technology tells the story of the society that creates it. If a society values profit above all, you will be able to trace the development pathway of that society through that lens. If a society values a specific type of technology - biological technology - so too will their pathway be apparent. But something else begins to arise as well when you analyze things through this perspective. What happens when you have two totally different technology bases? I don’t mind something as banal as a “communist/capitalist” paradigm. I mean in the sense of radical difference.

Say for the sake of argument we were to take a relatively simple Saxheelian technology, such as a biological quantum computer. What does its creation and use say of the society that built it? It is biological, so clearly they have a focus on organic technology. How is that biotech expressed? Did they use what we understand as computers to figure it out, or was there some other mechanism in play? How does that then effect the expression of this technology? Is it clearly something designed by intelligences to mimic nature, or is it something that feels a product of evolution?

This may seem like a series of random questions, but they are driving at a highly specific point. If we look at the requirements for a biological quantum computer, we arrive at a rather amusing conclusion. A human brain is, arguably, a biological quantum computer, so if a society has the ability to create these at will, it means a fundamental understanding of the neurology of the brain. It demands extreme precision in its engineering and a degree of artistry for like a human brain, each biological quantum computer would be unique.

It also speaks towards a social system that does one of two primary things: it either fully integrates nature, or it fully dominates nature. Because of the complexity of the task (it is truly enormous) of creating such a machine, I am of the opinion that it would demand a far higher level of cooperation than as exists in the human paradigm currently. The greater the sophistication, the more levels of specialization are needed, which gives diminishing returns in profitability. You can’t simply throw people at this off the streets and expect results, you need extremely educated and specialized people to handle each individual piece of assembly.

That denotes a few things in of itself. If you can produce this technology, you’ve solved the paradox of infinite growth in a finite system (which is impossible) or you’ve found an alternative mechanism of social interaction and cooperation. In the latter case, this in turn implies a society that has transcended much of the current modes of understanding. If specialization is not rewarded by a share of the profits gained by the matrix of modern economics, then how does it organize?

This brings us to the actual use of such devices. A quantum computer could calculate an incredible amount of data almost instantly; it can crunch numbers that would take a normal machine trillions of years. So, with a machine that can solve any math problem you can throw at it (for average individual utilization anyways) what happens when you use it to say, play the stock market? Guess the lotto number? Project out the economic conditions of the next few years? What happens when you have thousands of these working in parallel?

As you can quickly see, using this technology or those like it would be a powder keg to an economic system such as ours, and anyone in a position of economic power would probably be aware of the lethality this device would represent to them. So that gives them two choices: heavily limit access (which is futile, since their competitors would use it anyways leading to MAD) or don’t develop it. It’s a bit of a nuclear arms race in terms of computers really. I’ve not scratched the surface of their potential (breaking all known encryption methods etc.) but from that snippet we can easily see how the introduction of a device like this would spell rather rapid economic doom.

Between escalation of the existing conflicts over resources and the rapid collapse of OpSec, they’d upend anything resembling a world order as understood currently.

Let’s contextualize this further: with one piece of relatively simple (for Saxheelians anyways) technology, the whole of our understood economic reality is undone. It isn’t even a replicator or any other particularly super fancy device we commonly worry about. It isn’t even an AI, though it can be if designed that way.

So what does it say about a society that can not only build these, but builds them with extreme commonality? Where a handheld device could very well be one?

It says that society has moved far, far beyond anything we reasonably associate with in terms of social systems. Externalizations are taken into account, assessed, mitigated, and fully recontextualized into that society. It means an economic system that we’d not really understand, because it would either be something based on an alternative form of currency (not a clue what that would be) or does away with currency all together. What would be the point, if in any fiscal system a quantum computer can just guess work everything?

It also means a society that must, by its very nature, be extremely interconnected and cooperative. To survive a transition state into a post-economically driven social system (again, no idea what to call this) would demand that the individuals come together into a new mechanism of understanding both of each other and of their relationship with the universe. What are they? What do they want to do? Who will they be? Why are they here?

It is a technology that demonstrates relentlessly the actual potential of a social system. Can a social system cope with the development of a biological (or other) quantum computer disrupting its markets? If the answer is no, then that is a social system doomed to extinction. It could come with the introduction of that machine, it could come at a later date when resources run out, but it will go extinct eventually. It’s just not built to last.

The society that created that biological quantum computer on the other hand? Given they still exist, given they continue to use them, and given that they continue to possess the sophistication to create them means they will last a long, long time.

So if a someone walks up to you and offers you a quantum computer, ask yourself: what are they truly saying to you? What do they truly want for you? Because it may well be a Trojan Horse worthy of the Outside Context Problem and eventually, becomes a Black Swan.