IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2017 - 26

tion Sciences at the University of
Wollongong, Australia. Email: Katina@
uow.edu.au.

"Doug Hill's insights into technology are both original and profound. I've travelled in
the highest reaches of the tech world for more than twenty years, and I still learned
much from this book. He will be recognized as a leading thinker on technology and
its impact on our world. In an industry that too seldom stops to think through the
implications of the products we produce, his is a voice we need to hear."
-Allen Noren, vice president of online, O'Reilly Media

for years, a faint voice in the back of
their head reaffirming truisms - but
because it reveals socio-technical
patterns and trends happening all
round us. Hill also makes observations about things that others would
at best say to leave alone.
It's time for those brave conversations, about technology in our homes
and our schools, about technology
in our industrial and military sectors,
about what we should be pooling
our resources into to ensure environmental sustainability, and about what
should be better left alone. Whether
hype or hope, we've embraced a pseudo-truth, that our human salvation will
come from technology, abandoning
myths 2000 years old.
And while Hill does not make reference to this specifically, I think we

GUEst EdItoRIal

[1] "The Betrayal by Technology: A Portrait of Jacques Ellul", https://www.youtube
.com/watch?v=LdogID589Mk, Accessed 31
March 2017.
[2] Jacques Ellul, 1964, The Technological
Society, Vintage Press.
[3] Katina Michael, 2003, "The technological trajectory of the automatic identification industry: the application of the systems of innovation (SI) framework for the
characterisation and prediction of the autoID industry", PhD thesis, School of Information
Technology and Computer Science, University of
Wollongong, http://ro.uow.edu/theses/309,
pp. 44, 80, 287-288, 335, 336, 350, 373.
[4] Doug Hill, Jeff Weingrad, 2014, "Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday
Night Live," Untreed Reads Publishing, LLC.
[5] Katina Michael and Terri Bookman, 2013,
"Augmentation and Transcendence: an interview with Ray Kurzweil", IEEE Technology
and Society Magazine, Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 5-6.
[6] Emily Dreyfuss, March 23, 2017, "Silicon
Valley Would Rather Cure Death Than Make
Life Worth Living", Wired.com, https://www
.wired.com/2017/03/silicon-valley-rathercure-death-make-life-worth-living/?mbid=
social_twitter, Accessed April 1, 2017.
[7] Doug Hill, October 17, 2016, "The
Politics of Technology", The Ralph Nader
Radio Hour, https://kpfa.org/tag/doug-hill/,
Accessed April 1, 2017.

are unashamedly worshipping at the
foot of technology, believing this will
be our ultimate destiny, our chance
to live forever on earth. And yet, our
sensibilities should tell us that eternal
life on earth, would be not unlike living in an endless loop, and as spiritual beings, get us nowhere. I return
back to those fundamental human
principles, are we bettering ourselves,
our nature, because we are surrounded by so much technology, or are we
just becoming less able to discern the
good from the bad, the useful from the
useless. And who or what is behind
that wheel driving us to our destinies?
It's time to get back in control.

Reviewer Information
Katina Michael is professor at the
Faculty of Engineering and Informa-

(continued from page 17)

[5] N. Wiener, "Father of Cybernetics Norbert Wiener's Letter to UAW President Walter
Reuther", libcom.org, 1949; https://libcom
.org/history/father-cybernetics-norbert-wienersletter-uaw-president-walter-reuther, accessed
Jan. 15, 2017.
[6] C. Boggs, "The corporate war economy,"
The Global Industrial Complex: Systems of
Domination, S. Best, R. Kahn, A.J. Nocella
II, P. McLaren, Eds. Plymouth, MA: Lexington,
2011, p. 38.
[7] R. Kline, The Cybernetics Moment, Or Why
We Call Our Age the Information Age. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2015.
[8] F. Conway and J. Siegelman, Dark Hero of
the Information Age: In Search of Norbert
Wiener The Father of Cybernetics. New York,
NY: Basic, 2006.
[9] G. Adamson, R.R. Kline, K. Michael, M.G.
Michael, "Wiener's cybernetics legacy and
the growing need for the interdisciplinary
approach," Proc. IEEE, vol. 103, no. 11, pp.
2208 - 2214, 2015.

26

References

[10] N. Wiener, I am a Mathematician- The
Later Life of a Prodigy. Cambridge, MA, M.I.T.
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[11] N. Wiener, Invention- the Care and Feeding of Ideas. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press,
1993, p. 2-3.
[12] N. Wiener, The Human Use of Human
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[13] M. Saler, "The man-machine myth," Wall
Street J., Sept. 2, 2016; http://www.wsj.com/
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accessed Nov. 7, 2016.
[14] D. Blumenthal, "Profile: Lewis Mumford,"
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[15] L. Mumford, "Playing russian roulette
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IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

[16] S. Cutliffe, Ideas, Machines, and Values:
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[17] Union of Concerned Scientists: Science for
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[18] UCSUSA, "Union of Concerned Scientists: Science for a healthy planet and safer world," 2017;
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[19] D. MacKenzie and J. Wajcman, Eds., The
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[20] S. Sismondo, An Introduction to Science
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[21] Intersticia, "The world around us is changing. We need to talk," BraveConversations.
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∕

june 2017
https://www.youtube http://ro.uow.edu/theses/309 http://www.Wired.com https://www http://www.wired.com/2017/03/silicon-valley-rather https://www.kpfa.org/tag/doug-hill/ http://www.libcom.org https://libcom http://www.ucsusa.org/publica http://www.wsj.com/ http://www.ucsusa.org/ http://www http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1969/1/27/ http://archive.ilwu.org/wp-content/
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2017
