 Thank you very much. Good morning. Bonjour mesdames et messieurs. Je suis très heureux d'être dans un région francophonique parce que je vis maintenant en Californie où on parle seulement anglais et l'espagnol. Mon français est très faible. Je vais parler en anglais. Je vais dire bonjour à tous. Avec mon français en Angleterre, en Californie, on parle anglais et en spanish. Je vais dire pour favor, pour tous ici et ils sont très confusés. Merci à tous. Ce matin on va parler des technologies et des valeurs. Je dois aux amis très amusant sur le panel avec moi, Mitra Naimi Solomon et Matt Weinberg. Je les appelle de amis. Nous connaissons l'un de l'autre depuis des décennies. Nous allons parler sur des questions que l'exécutive commissaire pose pour nous. J'aimerais introduire avec Mitra et Matt. Mitra est currently the senior director of internet marketing at Shutterfly, but she's founded and led a a number of technology companies before that. She's also served for a number of years on the Baha'i internet agency under the auspices of the international teaching center. Matthew, but we just call him Matt, he was a research director at the Baha'i international community's office of public information and he was also a senior analyst with the United States Congressional office of technology assessment where he directed studies in the areas of environmental and technology policy and he's currently the director of the Baha'i internet agency. So now I'm going to share with you what we'll be talking about this morning and we're actually going to divide into three segments. So can we have the slides on the screen please. So I've just introduced everyone so we've already accomplished our first goal. I will share with you the questions that the executive committee has put to our panel. Then we'll each present for about 15 minutes each. And then we'll have an open discussion amongst ourselves and it's hopefully going to be fueled by questions from you. And so I'd like you to jot down my email address tophi at gmail.com, T-O-W-F-I-Q at gmail.com, or you can send me an SMS 415-97195-95. I will collect those questions as they filter in while we're talking and then and hopefully they will provoke some good discussion at the end. Okay. 415, it should be on the screen. Oh, it is not advanced. Uh oh. Are you projecting or am I projecting? They're going to fix it. Sorry. Can you advance to the next slide while you swap it? Sorry, it's 415-97195-95. And I'm sure we'll show it on the screen momentarily. And I'll discuss the questions while we do that. So the questions, there we go. Thank you. So the questions the executive committee put to us were for. The first one was that new and old technologies alike play increasingly important roles in our lives, both individually and collectively. In what ways are the designers of these technologies influenced by particular values? The second question was how do technologies in turn influence the values of their users? How can we be more reflective about our technological choices? And in turn, how should we think about technology design in ways that are coherent with the Baha'i teachings? And so what Matt, Mitra, and I have done is composed three different presentations to address different aspects of the questions here. There's some overlap to be sure, but hopefully at the end of this we will have at least touched on some themes in our brief time. Pardon me. And then that'll be able to provoke some further discussion. So I'll start the presentation by addressing technology in general as well as design of technology. And so let's first talk about the term technology. It comes from the Greek word technologie, which is the systematic treatment of an art. And it speaks about art and the skill designed there. And actually, this term doesn't appear in our writings. Thank you, Mitra. But we do have terms such as crafts or arts, the reference to arts and sciences, craftsmanship, invention. And so you'll see in our discussion reference to those terms from our sacred writings have a direct bearing on the topic. So let's first talk about what is technology. And Abdul Baha says that man is the ruler of nature. According to natural law and limitation, he should remain upon the earth. But behold how he violates this command and soars above the mountains and airplanes. He sails in ships upon the surface of the ocean and dives into its depths in submarines. Man makes nature his servant, harnesses the mighty energy of electricity, for instance, and imprisons it in a small lamp for his uses and convenience. That's a funny picture, isn't it? When they first introduced the light bulb, clearly people had no idea what was going on and they were trying to light it. He speaks from the east to the west through a wire. He is able to store and preserve his voice in a phonograph. Though he is a dweller upon earth, he penetrates the mysteries of starry worlds inconceivably distant. This is a picture from the Hubble space telescope, by the way. He discovers latent realities within the bosom of the earth, uncovers treasures, penetrates secrets and mysteries of the phenomenal world and brings to light that which according to nature's jealous laws should remain hidden, unknown and unfathomable. Through an ideal inner power, man brings these realities forth from the invisible plane to the visible. Isn't that really an apt description of technology? It's harnessing the things that God has put latent in the earth and bringing them out and applying them to transform. He also says the human spirit discovers the realities of things and becomes cognizant of their peculiarities and effects and of the qualities and properties of beings. And so we all have in us this faculty given by God to extract these properties of things. And so if you think about what Abdul Baha is describing at the time he was living of the progress of technology, it's really quite all encompassing. And this is mirrored by sociologists who regard technology as essentially every tool, machine, utensil, weapon, instrument, housing, clothing, communication, everything. And so I'd like to suggest as our first observation that technology is people discovering properties hidden in nature, applying them to change our environment and that this is a God given ability. We all have it. So let's talk about some specific examples of technology through history. Since we agree that technology is really almost everything we've done as human beings, even though we're going to talk about high technology, internet and all that stuff, let's go back in history a bit. And there's an expression, necessity is the mother of invention. People also say laziness is the father of invention. But we as human beings if we're confronted with a problem we try and solve it as this gentleman did when he didn't have a wheel. Imagine if we go tens of thousands or maybe even more years ago, to the first human being who figured out that fire would be usable. Maybe there was a lightning strike and the forest burned next to where they were living and maybe some kids were playing with a stick or an adult figured out, hey I could transfer this wood over here and it gives me heat, it gives me light, I can cook with it, all these things become possible. And at that instant the first job was created maybe of fire keeper because now we don't know how to start this thing but we really don't want it to go out. So immediately technology is addressing a need that these people had against the elements. We can talk about food. Hunting was a technology that was developed early on. Arrows, spears, traps, snares, all with the goal of feeding people. Farming is also a technology that we've developed. The observation that things started to grow where seeds had been left and we could actually plant those things ourselves and then fertilize them and harvest them and many people trace the origin of agriculture to creating free time and an expanse of possibility for humans to engage in other activities. The ability to create bread for example, once you have some agriculture in place and that's one of the staple that have been developed and we'll talk about bread a little bit more later but obviously a technology. People being freed up were able to use their time and energy for other things that were important. So for example, spiritual pursuits. Everyone agrees that the engineering feet designed behind the pyramids was formidable. They've only recently figured out how they were able to move the heavy rocks given what they had but this was clearly a reflection of what was important to them, that burial of the dead and entouement or we can look at Stonehenge and what it reflected about technology and the importance to the people of that time or the statues of Rapa Nui in Easter Island and then we ourselves use technology to reflect what is spiritually important to us. Of course we have the beautiful lotus temple in Delhi but it's an engineering feat unto itself. We have the temple in Chile about to be dedicated and it itself is drawing on massive technological achievements to be created. Other examples of technology and service of spirituality. This is a page from the very first book ever created so paper and books are technology and of course Johannes Gutenberg when movable type had been created recognized its ability to help him create something to promote the word of God. This is a Gutenberg Bible. If we think about Samuel F.B. Morse, of course we Baha'is know him famously for transmitting a message via telegram what hath God wrought in 1844, the same evening that the Bob was declaring his mission halfway around the world but in researching for this talk I went back to find out how he came to do this, what was the genesis and it turned out that 20 years earlier than that moment he was a painter, a portrait painter, he had been commissioned to paint Lafayette and in New York he was doing that and he received a letter by horse from his father-in-law that his wife was sick and he started to arrange his affairs to go and visit her. The very next day he got another letter saying that his wife had died. Now those two events had occurred days apart but because of the transmission at the time by horse they happened to come closely together and he didn't have time to react. That tragic event for him actually created the seed in his heart to figure out a way to have rapid communication be possible and for 20 years he labored at it. He was on a transatlantic voyage when he met a gentleman who was an expert in electromagnetism and they began to talk and collaborate and that was finding out that property of nature of electromagnetism combined with the need that he had to lessen tragedy by improving communication was really the seed of what came to bear fruit 20 years later. And of course in the 30s our guardian told us that a mechanism of world intercommunication will be devised embracing the whole planet freed from national hindrances and restrictions and functioning with marvelous swiftness and perfect regularity and it's hard for us to read that now and not think about the internet. It's not always perfect but it's getting pretty close to this instant swiftness global communication and this the internet itself was created out of a need of scientists to share access to a research computer. So if we take these observations and these are just a few different technologies, there's many more of course to talk about. We could talk about medicine, we could talk about sports, entertainment, clothing, transportation, music all of these things we've created technologies as human beings for hundreds of thousands of years but one thing to note about these technologies is once a technology is created it immediately creates new possibilities that can be built upon and the possibilities can be good or bad. The properties that we discover in nature may be value neutral but the way we create technology certainly has a value to it. You saw Samuel Morse's value was communication but the hunting implements that our forebears created can of course be misdirected and used against each other in violence. So the spirit itself could be used to feed or to hurt. On the other hand we have great possibilities created and I'm going to go back to bread and I apologize my wife is gluten free but so of course the pinnacle of bread making is the crouton I think we can all agree on that but it requires that in French onion soup or on a salad and you know this required that first we had to have agriculture and then yeast was discovered and then bread was created and then someone figured out to slice it up into cubes and fry it in olive oil or butter or what have you maybe with some parsley. So that shows the possibilities of technology and we see them layered on. Another observation is that embedded in the technologies that are created are the interests and the purview of the people who created them and going back to bread we can look at ingredients now this bread is a very different kind of bread than what our ancestors created and you know if you ask your parents for their bread recipe they're probably not going to say and I always like to add a little sprinkle of azote carbinamide it just rounds it out. So clearly somehow we took a left turn and moved away from addressing our fundamental human needs and perhaps optimizing for something else and so let's talk about that in the context of modern technology. This is a diagram drawn by the head of IDEO to illustrate what is design thinking and what he said is that when desirability viability and feasibility come together you can create a great product a great experience. Now what do those terms mean viability means that the thing you've created can be a good business it can operate within your organization in a productive way. Feasibility means can you build it in other words going back to technology the input is is this a property can we take advantage of what's been created to actually make the thing we're imagining and desirability is will the people use it will they appreciate it. Now you see embedded in this term is desire it's not actually need and so let's look at a quotation from Reid Hoffman who's the founder of LinkedIn he said social networks do best when they tap into one of the seven deadly sins. Facebook is ego Zynga is sloth LinkedIn is greed with Facebook it's vanity and how people choose to present themselves to their friends. Now of course you know I'm a user of many of all of these tools actually so and Mitchell will be talking about how we engage with them from the but I'm more interested on the side of producer and creator of technologies he's saying you know that embedded in these things and he's not alone he went on in this interview with the Wall Street Journal to say but you know it's okay to have a little bit of fun it's not really sloth and it's not really greed you just want to secure your economic station but he's not the only person to say that I've spoken with investors and they've told me they look for companies that tap into the seven deadly sins that exact phrase because that's going to be a big company so we have to understand that that is on the side behind a lot of the technology that we're interacting with and that's being created and what does that mean for us as behinds it if we're trying to engage in technology creation Buckminster Fuller the famous designer architect futurist said humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the right wrong reasons and and so if we think about the challenge presenting humanity right now I'm going to show you something this is a a slide from a futurist and don't read the whole thing it's very dense I'm just going to give you an image but this is a futurist named Frank Frank Diana and what he does is he thinks about technology now and what he can see developing and the possibilities that creates but also the challenges that that creates and he's created this graphic to depict it and and as he sees things like automation and robotics and advances in medicine he sees you know humanity growing people living longer people becoming unemployed because of robotics he thinks that we'll need something called institution 2.0 and democracy 2.0 to confront that human 2.0 and if you look at the things that he's forecasting will be challenged with you see an opportunity for how we might be able to engage with technology and apply it to these needs as in it so what how can we if we're not going to create technology to fulfill the 7 deadly sins how what model can we look at in the Baha'i faith to help us decide what to do and to talk about that I'd like to go back to the story of Baha'u'llah in Aqqa you after a period of time as people became accustomed and and attracted to Baha'u'llah they they often came to seek his advice and at one point the governor of Aqqa came to Baha'u'llah and he said how could I be of service what could I do and Baha'u'llah asked him to restore a decrepit aqueduct that had previously furnished the city it had been destroyed Napoleon had rebuilt it it had fallen into disrepair clean water was no longer flowing to this city and the governor immediately began the task and soon potable water was available to the people if we look at this example we see several things that Baha'u'llah was engaged in first all he was observant of the situation in the city he was aware of the need of the people for water and that it was not being met he was showing empathy for the people and and he was showing awareness of the technological possibilities at the time that's a guidepost I think for how we're supposed to use technology so let me share a few or not use but create technology let me share a few other passages that speak to this Baha'u'llah said be anxiously concerned with the needs of the age you live in and center your deliberations on its exigencies and requirements notice he's using the word needs in the tarazat he says it's permissible to study sciences and arts but such sciences as are useful and would we're down to the progress and advancement of the people and he says that the the energies that that god has given us they can be obscured by worldly desires so the these powers the power to take the properties of nature and bend them to serve humanity can be obscured so so we seem to start seeing a shift between needs and desires if we're using technology to serve the true needs of humanity it's powerful if we're using it to serve the desires it may not be uh there's another passage that struck me he said consider for instance such things as liberty civilization and the like however much men of understanding may favorably regard them they will if carried to excess exercise a pernicious influence upon men i've read this many times before i've always focused on the liberty part of this quotation yes of course too much liberty will be a pernicious but baha'u'llah saying civilization itself which is really embodied in a lot of our technological event too much civilization will have a pernicious influence so what does that mean for us who are creators of these technological advancements uh two more things baha'u'llah says be not intent only on your own ease so there's something you know we can have pastimes but we really should be focused on something more important uh and and finally abdulbah says no matter how much material civilization advances it cannot attain to perfection except through the uplift of spiritual civilization so we can make these material advancements without informing it with a spiritual view it's not going to attain to perfection i had 10 more quotes but i cut them because i'm i'm almost at my time um uh associate a writer on the internet recently made the following observations she said the startup world gets a lot of flak because the problems they seek to solve are such first world problems many seem to be just fixated on building apps to solve the problems only wealthy young men have living in san francisco and then she goes on to decry the fact that there are six apps that you can use to order ramen to deliver to your house and so on and she's right she's just dead on let's let's contrast that scenario with what the house of justice wrote in this year's resume message oh i'm sorry i'm speaking too fast for the translators i'm sorry i'll slow thank you uh they they said the the signs of their progress meaning progress of our community are more and more apparent in the readiness of institutions agencies and individuals to think in terms of process to read their immediate reality and assess their resources in the places where they live and to make plans on that basis in the now familiar dynamic of study consultation action and reflection that has cultivated an instinctive posture of learning now the house of justice is speaking of course of how we're engaged in the current plan and advancing the process of entry by troops and community development but this model is one that's actually mirrored in the technological community this is a graphic from a book written by Eric Reese called lean startup and it depicts a lean process build measure learn and and this book and and many others the the toyota production system have advanced a process in the technical world called the lean production system or agile development uh that is really the the cutting cutting edge of of how companies function basically if you're not functioning like this you're creating waste you know this is the lean model because it's the most efficient and it means you're probably going to be unsuccessful because your competitors are moving towards this model it it means though that it it's it's designed to be efficient so that you can optimize for something and the question is what are you optimizing for as a company uh in in this instance uh you know the data that you measure to decide what to do can be data about revenue or it could be data about how many eyeballs you're getting which you can then monetize with advertising so the input into this process can vastly determine what direction your technology takes and and so uh you know as we think about how we're engaged in the process of technology creation the input to this has to be something based on true needs of humanity as we were saying earlier the final point i wanted to make is uh is to share some positive examples of how i think people are trying to use technology in a way that speaks to the needs of humanity that we might be able to assist or or or share with uh there's um there's a movement in america an organization actually it was founded three or four years ago called code for america and what it does is uh creates uh an annual a way for someone to offer a year of service a year of volunteer service uh in government uh because what this woman Jennifer Palka found is that at the local level technology is very very bad for people for example the food stamp program uh in in california the the website uh to fill it out it it's about 60 screens it takes two and a half hours for someone to fill out and it's it's almost unusable uh and people go hungry as a result of not being able to fill this out and and so she's she's enlisted the help of people in this volunteer capacity to help build up government use technology to help serve and and uh and one of the people who's uh who's been involved in that is another woman named Lauren Ellen McCann and she's created a movement called build with not for that within this realm saying if we're going to create services technological technology services for people we shouldn't build it for them we should build it with them we should invite them to be co-collaborators with us and understand their needs in an empathetic fashion uh so that what we create actually meets their needs there's another woman named Tiffany bell who was who was uh someone who participated in code for america she did her internship there uh she went on to uh start working in industry and one morning she read an article that said that a hundred thousand people in detroit were about to have their water service cut off because they hadn't paid their bill and she just thought what a tragedy that that was and being a technologically capable person she started consulting with friends about what could we do she went on the website she found out that the government had published a 400 page document with all the people whose water was going to be cut off so she started contacting some of them inviting them to be co-collaborators and asking them how could she serve them and what she wound up doing is creating something called the detroit water project which is a site where people can go and donate money to pay other people's water bills so that their water does not cut off so that they have clean water to drink and shower and so on yeah it's amazing and and she's now turned that into an organization called the human utility because it wasn't just detroit that was suffering from this so in a in an eerie parallel if we go back to the time when bahalla asked for the aqueduct to be restored we see in both instances technology being used to to give access to water to people and i i think that's a great example and i'll just leave with this final thought that technologists can use their god given ability to discover the properties of nature and apply them to the needs of humanity and that this service is urgently needed thank you now we'll have mitra hello everyone i'm gonna start off with a quote what abdo beha c'est in 1912 in denver i'm sorry cleveland i can't see this i can't see that through the ingenuity and inventions of man it is possible to cross the wide oceans fly through the air and travel in submarine depths at any moment the orient and oxidant can communicate with each other material civilization has reached an advanced plane but now there is need of spiritual civilization material civilization alone will not satisfy it cannot meet the conditions and requirements of the present age its benefits are limited to the world of matter we know that technology is changing how we connect interact and engage with each other there are and i'm gonna talk a little bit about online communities and social networks which have emerged in the last few years and how they are shaping people around the globe interacting and engaging and in fact impacting the society's values and i'm touch upon some of the examples of these networks as you see in this in this picture you know some of these networks maybe all of them the social networks like facebook snapchat instagram pinterest and then there's online communities that are very popular and very impactful like wikipedia which i'm sure you you all know about because when you search about any information most of the time wikipedia articles will come up github which is a an online community with our software developers contributes their code to it's for open source software and i'll talk a little bit about also a neighborhood social network next door that is very popular in some of the neighborhoods in the united states these online communities and social networks are shaping our interactions and sharing some of the mission statements of these of these large social networks this is facebook's mission statement to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected twitter's twitter's um which is cut off here to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly without barriers this is their mission statement snapchat doesn't really have an official mission statement but this is what they had they um the founder had mentioned a couple years ago in interviews the fastest way to share a moment with friends if you look at all these mission statements of these um of the creators of these and the companies of these social networks they're very similar they all want to empower people they want people to share and they want to connect the world and in some cases they want people to share really fast really quickly so the question is do these communities and social networks cultivate spiritual qualities i'd say based on what we see today their mission is not yet accomplished there's a lot more work to be done and this is this i'm gonna let you guys read this this is how maybe the values are changing in our societies but the social networks today social media and the online communities are helping connect and share there's no doubt about that right there's 1.7 billion users on facebook they share 300 million photos every day um getting updates from their friends they react to their friends 2.7 billion likes and and emotions on facebook that's a lot same thing with snapchat and instagram they're facilitating the in the moment behavior i was reading an article yesterday yesterday about snapchat and how it is actually shaping the way that the features that other social networks are building into their into their platforms facebook following snapchat because snapchat is so popular with the younger audience because it's so much in the moment it behavior and lets them share that in the moment behavior however the conveniences that these technologies offer also give rise to bad things trolling cyberbullying divisive language as we experience it every day on in our feeds if we are on social in these social networks there are increasing privacy concerns because of all the data that these networks collect and they use commercially and i know that because i run advertising for some of the brands and believe me advertisers love it every action that we take leaves a trail of information that's harvested by facebook by instagram which is owned by facebook by twitter by every by all the networks advertising networks included and if you look at the engagement on these on these social and on social media it's very limited to shallow conversations and it really lends itself to people just quickly liking and sharing and therefore all that information is gathered really quickly and if you look at the big data that facebook for example has collected there are 2.5 billion pieces of content 500 terabytes of data on daily basis that they process just one company so much of our data is with these companies the private companies and it is you know with brilliant technological work that goes on in these companies with advanced advertising techniques and algorithms makes the targeting of these ads of the ads that we see very very precise everywhere you go online you see that you're followed you experience it every day and but that's how they have to do it they they make money off of that and in some cases though the information is used by the bad actors and who can steal and really misuse and harm the individuals there are some positive positive signs out there too there are some communities that have made tremendous progress we look at wikipedia for example which is a collaboration of global group of editors that have created universally accessible useful information that is that keeps refreshing and they keep adding to it and we find it when we're looking for information it's in all different languages it still needs a lot of work but it's it's it's an amazing project and it's the non-profit same thing with actually next door is a private neighborhood network that is very popular in some of the metro cities in the united states and it's growing and i actually use their here you see their mission statement also using the power of technology to build stronger and safer neighborhoods they are a commercial entity but they have made some progress and i wanted to share an example of what happened actually last month on next door in east palalto which is a city in san francisco bay area one of the bahayese who lives there let me use their network because in order to actually be part of this you have to be you have to be a neighbor and you have to be living in that city so they had you know july 4th fireworks and independent day in in u.s so people celebrated with fireworks and in the crime and safety you know discussions on this network people started talking about how dangerous it's been because there has there were a lot of very heavy duty fireworks that were that were happening within the very close to the houses in the neighborhood and and then you know what happened was the threat started growing and a lot of the neighbors started talking about it and discussing it and talking about how they have to take action and instead of complaining get together and collaborate and see what they can do and come up with solutions there were lots of pictures posted in this thread there were suggestions made and long story short and even you know here you see there's a veteran who posted his pictures saying fireworks can create a lot of stress for veterans so there was a lot of also empathy within you know that threat and this is a very local no other neighborhood no other person if they're not in that neighborhood was seeing this threat so the neighbors were talking through this and it resulted in the east Palo Alto police getting to the source of the distribution of of these fireworks and being able to do something about it and as you see here you know they had an article then saying that East Palo Alto police are arresting a dozen of a dozen for fireworks use which was actually a network that was established in East Palo Alto that they got to so this is just an example of how a local and very close social network can make an impact in the daily lives of people and if you look at the characteristics of some of these communities that are cultivating discourse and action and learnings most of for the most part they're non-commercial entities that are garnering a large level of commitment and trust within communities larger global community and also smaller communities they do and people are volunteering for these for the you know on these communities and we know that when people volunteer they do much better job studies have shown this over and over again they do a much better job when you're doing something for free in the spirit of service and the quality of work and commitment is much better and there is a bond and trust that advances the interactions and engagement in these spaces and this is actually a quote from the University of Justice from a letter by University of Justice that I'm going to leave you with and one last quote as well fundamental to the welfare of the community our love and unity the very purpose of the faith of God I'm going to share one more this is from a letter on behalf of the University of Justice April 9 2008 it is useful to bear in mind that the internet is a reflection of the world around us and we find in its infinitude of pages the same competing forces of integration and disintegration that characterize the tumult in which humanity is caught up in their use of the internet Baha'i should stand aloof from the negative forces operating within it availing themselves of its potential to spread the word of God and to inspire and uplift others while ignoring any negative reactions their efforts may from time to time elicit thank you so good morning I would like to build on the comments of Mark and Mitra and take a broader look at some of the issues relating to the development and use of technology especially how more conscious and purposeful patterns of technological innovation might emerge that are truly in consonance with the values and aspirations that we have as individuals and communities and I think the value of such reflection is that it can point us to ways in which as Baha'i as we might constructively contribute to the various public discourses concerning technology the concept of human betterment of an ever advancing civilization in which material and spiritual well-being is continually fostered implies a central role for science and technology and in particular it implies an evolving capacity for making appropriate technological choices such a capacity represents an expression of the age of human maturity as Abdul Baha says would the extension of education the development of useful arts and sciences the promotion of industry and technology be harmful things for such endeavor lifts the individual within the mass and raises him out of the depths of ignorance to the highest reaches of knowledge and human excellence clearly technological change is inherent to human progress technology by definition as mark showed serves to augment our capacities and in so doing alters the very environment in which we act in a very real way social reality and technology co-evolve or are co-constructed it could be said that the industrial and information revolutions have fundamentally transformed the very conception and functioning of human society further as we've seen over the past century the relentless pace of technical and industrial advancement has altered the physical environment in which we live has fundamentally redefined the relationship between human beings and the natural world technology is a dominant fashion of reality influencing social arrangements goals and assumptions in a way that profoundly affects collective development individual behavior and the ecosystems upon which we depend in essence i think we can think of technology as a magnifier of human intent and capacity but it cannot become a substitute for human judgment and action so it's very important that we understand all the impacts associated with technology if you read the academic literature relating to technology and there's different sources of this literature there's historians of technology philosophers of technology there's science and technology studies i mean for those of you who are students and trying to figure out how can i study this there are many different avenues they're actually specific fields of environment of public health even you know engineering social development all of these things all these areas where technology is explored sort of in a more conceptual way but one thing one major theme that emanates from all of these areas is the idea that technology both shapes and is shaped by social economic political and cultural forces so automobiles and road networks communication systems and the internet are not simply technical systems but also social processes shaped by social context technologies can empower us but may also embody or express existing relations of power and characteristics of culture can reinforce social inequities or pathologies or embody ideological or strategic goals so an example of the ladder was in the 60s when the united states was in a race with the soviet union to get to the moon that was a strategic goal even an ideological goal perhaps all the resources of american society were in fact devoted to this effort an example perhaps of where social inequities or characteristics of culture are expressed by technology was the apparent decision of transportation planners in new york in the 1950s in their building of highways to create bridges that had very low overhead clearances that in effect prevented public buses from new york city from going out to the beaches on long island so in a sense the biases the values of the transportation planners were embodied in the infrastructure technology also in the words of one thinker has become a powerful vector of the acquisitive spirit it expresses wants or desires and feeds those wants and desires so in many many ways our identity and roles in contemporary society are strongly mediated by technology it is something we create but it also recreates and redefines us this brings us to the critical issue of technological choice technical choices shape the contours of everyday life and give real definition to modernity these choices take place at the level of societies and as well as individuals the variety of technologies we confront as well as the uncertainty about how best to use them if to use them at all is daunting further when we consider complex technical systems that evolve at the macro level such as the internet the ability to influence the overall development and deployment of these systems seem quite challenging yet because these technical systems and the specific components and innovations underpinning them are socially constructed human volition and values define their purpose and impact so as mark and meter we're just alluding explaining giving different examples the values of a designer or of a corporation behind a product are embedded in ways that may not be obvious to us so this is quite important a simplistic notion that technology is a neutral means to freely chosen ends is not tenable technological advancement increasingly shapes the very moral terrain in which we make decisions so I'll give you an example so one might be fetal ultrasound technology and for those of you who are parents and recently and maybe you've had children you know the rigorous protocols that you have to go through there's different stages of the pregnancy where you have to do ultrasounds and it provides a lot of information that in the past you didn't have access to this information actually I think directly confronts us as Baha'is about what we believe and in other parts of the world this technology is being used in a quite negative way for example in relation to gender selection so here technologies actually change the moral terrain it's changed the way we think about things because it has its own momentum technological development often proceeds in a manner that is decoupled from community values and broader questions of individual and collective purpose and using technology means and ends can be easily confused and consequently social goals collective goals can be wrongly defined so offer another example many of you have probably heard of the laptop for every child initiative and this was an idea that was generated by pushed by MIT engineers and scientists very eminent folks and had the backing of some major foundations and the idea was very simple to try to create a very robust computer laptop that could survive all sorts of conditions for as low cost as possible and technically they actually produced quite a nice device for about 200 dollars each and hundreds of thousands of these were made and then by and with the support of a foundation and then distributed to a few different countries and one country was Peru and the idea was by disseminating this these laptops and giving access to children everywhere to these tools they would somehow become empowered so the results are in they're not surprising they're in Peru there was no discernible improvement in educational performance why was that because it was a technology driven project there was no consideration given to how to integrate pedagogical curricula and the use of the devices since then there's been some effort in that direction but it's an example when means and ends got confused so when the link between material needs and values is ignored the role of technology as a vehicle for upraising the human condition becomes supplanted by a process that turns us into passive subjects rather than active users and shapers of technological instruments any tool can be used productively or destructively but the most serious consequences of technology are often quite subtle technology itself often becomes a bearer and even disruptor of values it can cause individuals and communities to adapt to technology rather than use technology to extend human capability in harmony with social goals and mores aise this pattern of what's called reverse adaptation where technology structures and even defines the ends of human activity is a widespread phenomenon so i'm going to give you an example how many of you have a smart a smartphone raise your hand wow there's someone how many of you check this every 15 minutes wow how many of you check it first thing in the morning when you wake up my friends that's reverse adaptation you have adapted your lives to this device now it's for you to decide whether that's good or bad there are different aspects of this there are apps on this device that are very useful that are based on algorithms where you can plan make can assist your personal decision making i submit to you though that outsourcing such decisions to an algorithm is a moral choice it may be affecting you in ways that you don't realize mitra and other companies that like hers are trying to figure out how to persuade you to do things that you may not be realizing that it's happening to you okay another example is sms texting so it's a very useful tool i can say just from the perspective of the bi-internet agency we've been studying this actually and how institutions around the world are using it everybody's using it okay it's changing the nature the style the substance of communication but it also may be causing us to maybe displace other forms of communication that are more meaningful so we have to think carefully about it and you know in one place that we saw in one of the countries i visited people at the grassroots where phones are now appearing we're saying we don't like text messages because they come to us as being authoritative or even imperious they're not it's not collegial it's not in the high spirit so we have to be careful about how we use these tools and in another case youth were using texting for their reflection about whatever activities they were doing the question is can it capture every all the learning is it excluding people and again what what are some of the limitations so the choices we make about technology particularly when not fully evaluating their implications may be at variance with our essential purposes ideals and norms technology embeds values in in many other ways technologies all about efficiency efficiency is good but it can also lead to a failure to recognize negative externalities or for example the classic example is not taking account of environmental impacts related to technical innovation or industrial activity technology also emphasizes can result in a reductionist approach to problem solving which leads to an atomistic versus a systems approach in addressing complexity so simple example of this might be if we recycle the materials that we use then that's really great but i think alluding to what dr arbor dr arbor was talking to last night we have to go deeper so recycling is this tinkering at the level of the current system we actually have to reconsider systems of production and consumption if we want to make true impact overall one could make the argument that technology fosters an instrumental rationality rather than a rationality a way of being that is concerned with overall quality of life and meaning so in the end such an orientation can result in an an exaggerated reliance on technology where it is easier to diffuse technology rather than affect change in human attitudes and capacity so an illustration of this is that many thinkers are now coming to the position that we're just not going to be able to reduce concentrations of greenhouse gases we're just not going to be able to do it so therefore our only option is to change the atmosphere itself right we're going to counteract the warming with cooling so there's some serious proposals for what's called solar radiation management or geo geoengineering where we inject aerosols into the atmosphere that counteract the greenhouse gases needless to say this is quite controversial right so this is the technological fix mentality that we have to be careful of so how do we as individuals and communities change this how can we be empowered to make meaningful choices about technology how do we move from being passive technological users or subjects to active agents and constructively shaping patterns of technological advancement developing the capacity for technological assessment innovation and adaptation is vital to social progress that is clear this requires the creation of grassroots participatory mechanisms that foster a dynamic process of learning about technology it entails the creation of social spaces where communities individuals families can evaluate technological needs options and impacts Langdon winner who's one of the main scholars in the area of science and technology studies observes that both evaluations of technology and the cultivation of lasting virtues that concern technological choice must emerge from dialogue within real communities in particular situations the main challenge in this regard is how to expand the social and political spaces where ordinary citizens can play a role in making choices early on about technologies that will affect them the philosopher Albert Borgman echoes this point by emphasizing that our use of technology has deep implications for our essential relationships as family members parents citizens and stewards of nature and it is necessary therefore for us to reassess notions of what the good life is so that technology can fulfill the promise of a new kind of freedom based on deeper human engagement in short we need to create opportunities for reflection at all levels of society that allow us to consciously build ways of life the integrate technology into a desirable conception of what it means to be human and such a conception cannot be dictated by prevailing materialistic structures and forces making proper technological choices is therefore bound up with processes of social political and moral development practices of collective reflection and consultation now operative in the Baha'i community would appear to be precisely those creative mechanisms needed to evaluate new technologies in relation to overall personal and community goals such practices move us away from simply being for or against technology and instead represent a way for generating and applying knowledge and harmony with basic community aspirations true community empowerment and learning and the real basis of sustainability requires local communities to define their own pathways of material development and progress so my friends we have the answer in our plan we have to consult we have to think about what we're doing we have to do at the individual level we always have to do this reflection in our family at dinner time we turn off all devices most of the time my daughter hasl yeah i don't know i have to read my book on this screen okay okay but the idea is to somehow connect right and this is this is what we have to do but at a community level we need to do this i think in western society i think jerald was alluding to it previously and in north americ in particular we have they have the individual and the state we have the individual in the market we don't have much in between the intermediate layers of society are not quite there and this is the importance of community the problem is is that we the forces of market forces and other aspects of technology are so swift and so rapid that we can't even we don't even have the opportunity to formulate the right questions about our choices and so all we can say is that we just have to have a strategy of participation and awareness we have to start somewhere so let me sort of bring this to a conclusion there were some other thoughts but we want to have some time for some feedback i want to say that it should be conceded that the manner in which technologies evolve and are used is is not readily predictable the whole history of technology is replete with examples of how particular devices and systems were ultimately used in unanticipated ways one example is the telephone which was originally designed as a tool to facilitate business transactions and that's how the bell system thought about it but then adaptation by users at home the so-called sources of idle chatter completely transformed the role of the telephone right so actually it was the user side not the designer side that changed the reality of what that technology was the internet of today is entirely different from what the military and scientific creators envisioned so we can through analysis from a functional point of view and a values perspective though modify these tools and this is ultimately the proper expression of technological choice still even if we have very vigorous processes of technological assessment and I used to work for an organization at the federal level in the United States that did this it's very unlikely that we can discern long-term implications of technological decisions we make now as behinds I think we can say this we can only do our best using both reason and rational faith to continually examine how technologies contribute to personal and collective advancement so the overall vision guiding pathways of technological development and use cannot come from technology itself it certainly can't come from Facebook it must be informed by our essential ideals spiritual perception and actual participatory practice that promote the common good raising the capacity of individuals communities and institutions and making appropriate technological choices is therefore critical for such choices express the full range of our values social, cultural, economic, political, ethical, and ultimately spiritual realizing this vision is extremely challenging it's as challenging as the overall behind commitment to bringing about profound social transformation but it is not a naive vision it is a vital necessity it's the work of generations so let's start now thank you Matt thank you so much well um questions have come in which is great we've got about 10 questions we don't have enough time to talk 10 questions so I'm just going to pick a couple and and interestingly the questions really divide into two broad categories one is some more questions about how we as individual Baha'is might be interacting with technology and how we can do that you know given the guidance and passages that were shared and the other one is trying to get deeper in how do we affect technology creation and use so maybe I'll pick one from each category and then for people who want afterwards we can you can come up and we can continue the discussion so let's start first with about use of technology and and a couple of questions are asking okay well given what we've shared you know it's really easy to engage with social networks hit the like button and so on but if we're really trying to advance a discourse and have something deeper how can what what would thoughtful engagement with technology look like in these realms how can we thoughtfully engage with in the social media discussions and someone even raises a question you know is there can it be related you know the the guardian warned against easy familiarity so is there are there boundaries or conditions which we can maneuver and engage in social media and I'll I'll leave it to either or both of you to share some thoughts there how should we engage with these things what should I do every day when I log on in the morning first thing if you should yeah so I like again going back to this idea that technology is an amplifier or a magnifier of our intent so I think we've been given oh I'm going to quote Star Trek we've been given the prime directive we're supposed to have meaningful conversations at least that's what I'm trying to do so whatever space I'm in I'm going to try to see if I can have a meaningful conversation and so I have to and I know in my Facebook feed I have I have relatives I have friends I have colleagues who are not Baha'is and so I try to use that feed to sort of reach them and so it's a different purpose Does this mean you're no longer going to taunt me about the Broncos beating the Patriots? That's a special discourse Mitra did you want to share some? Yeah I just wanted to just read once more this quote just part of it in their use of the internet Baha'is should stand aloof from the negative forces operating within it availing themselves of its potential to spread the word of God and to inspire and uplift others I think it takes a lot of discipline to do this but when we log in and we are on Facebook or we are taking pictures snapping them think about think thoughtfully I mean be thoughtful about what we share being thoughtful about how we interact with people and basically what we talk about and what we even like the content that we're liking there Thank you I'll just add two things I have a lot of unsent emails unposted Facebook posts and untweeted tweets because you know I realized I was getting sucked into some sort of negative thing and I had to put it aside I realized my motivation was not right and then some of those probably did get posted ultimately which is my my own challenge and you know a related question here which maybe I'll just take is a question of saying should we even be engaging in these things if they have these sort of premises behind them are we bending the nobility of the Baha'i communities pursues to fit a medium that has embedded in it certain materialistic implications and I think what Matt was sharing maybe addresses that the medium itself the tools themselves they may have some of those implications but we can bend the tools to serve God and so it is our challenge to operate in those spaces let's take one about this one about the implications of technology so a couple of questions at five minutes 5 minutes j'ai compris all right so two questions here really about this disruptive effect that technology is having so for example the futurist warned that a whole bunch of people are going to be unemployed as we get robotic things right but cars are going to be self-driving and and people are going to not have a job anymore so how do how do we react to that or blockchain the whole implication of the complete transformation of money banks may be you know not existing so the question here is what what how do how is humanity going to uh be helped or how are we going to help humanity adjust to these seismic shifts in in the population for example mass mass unemployment or uh complete transformation of the economic system what are we going to do matt the answer again is that the the individual community and institutions become protagonists and that means that they um become aware of engaged in understanding what um what uh first in the first instance of defining technological need assessing it and generating knowledge about its implications and its use and so we're not in that situation now we're very much in a passive mode and um so this has to change I have to say we're seeing inklings of this in different parts of the world even with some of our behind inspired projects development projects where actually local communities are actually taking the lead in defining what technologies they can use to assist in their community development I think that's the model we want to move towards and of course you know it's a very deep question because we are in a moment of great transition so these larger forces are operating and so that's you know we have to do our best do you want to share anything with that? no okay um I think we have time for one more question uh let's no c'est pas vrai okay okay so let's let's cap it there we'll continue the conversation in front