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Is technology corrupting humanity? History says no.
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"Every time that there's a new technology, particularly around media, there's a set of outcries around how that media is corrupting culture or how it's destroying certain aspects of our life," says entrepreneur and author Elad Gil.

In some cases there are real concerns, but taking a historical view can quell unnecessary panic. Progress and cynicism work in a cyclical fashion. New tech is unveiled, the media builds it up, then the media tears it down in a wave of backlash.

Today we worry about kids and smartphones; 80 years ago we worried about kids and the radio; same cynicism, different day. Technology lifts the lid on human potential and quality of life, says Gil. We should be duly cautious, but optimism is more valuable (and arguably more rational) than pessimism.
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ELAD GIL:

Elad Gil is an entrepreneur, operating executive, and investor or advisor to private companies such as Airbnb, Coinbase, Checkr, Gusto, Instacart, OpenDoor, Pinterest, Square, Stripe, Wish, and others. He is cofounder and chairman at Color Genomics.
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TRANSCRIPT:

Elad Gil: So one of the things that worries me the most in the technology world today is the degree to which the external world has viewed technology with more and more cynicism and the degree to which there's a little bit of a backlash starting. And I think that there's a few drivers for that here. I think the recent elections is sort of one example where people feel they were manipulated I should say by third parties abusing technology. And I think separate from that there's also just these sort of media waves where media tends to go in cycles where the press will build something up and then tear it down and then build something up and tear it down. And I think technology was really built up in the media for a 20-year period or so, and now it's sort of a time of reckoning to some extent.

I think that's very unfortunate because I believe that optimism is a reflexive asset in sort of the George Soros' view of the world where something that people give value to gains value by that belief in the value of that thing. And if you actually look at the major changes that have happened in the world it's because people have been extremely optimistic in ways that some folks thought was irrational, but that optimism allowed them to actually accomplish that giant goal.

I mean think of putting somebody on the moon and what we were able to accomplish in the '60s, or think about a variety of other examples like that the Manhattan Project or major breakthroughs have all sort of come through an enormous sense of optimism and "we can do this." Manifest destiny and sort of the development of the United States as a country is a good example of that on the sort of country and governance level.

And so one thing that I've seen more and more increasingly is an increase in cynicism and people being made fun of. The first thing they want to change the world and they're genuine about it and I think that's a very big negative. And so one of the things that I've been thinking a lot about recently is: how can you actually increase societal optimism?

What are the mechanisms by which people can become more enthusiastic about their future and more enthusiastic about technology? Because if you look at the changes that technology has rote over the last 20/30 years it literally has lifted tens or hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. It has created access to global markets and it has created access to global information. Everybody is walking around with literally a super computer in their pocket that gives them access to the sum of all of humanity's knowledge with maybe the exception of the scientific journals, which are still blind. So I do think that people should be incredibly optimistic about the future and one thing I wonder about is how can you help spread that optimism? Because I think if people believe they can do something they often achieve things that they never thought was possible.

So, a lot of people have recently had a lot of very cogent concerns around the rise of misinformation and disinformation on social media platforms and how that impacted our last election. And I think those are very legitimate concerns and I think some of the platforms have made pretty major mistakes in terms of how they've approached some of those things. It's interesting though, because if you look at it over the arc of ...

For the full transcript, check out https://bigthink.com/videos/should-yo...