From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Wed Oct 16 2002 - 09:22:49 MDT
On Wed, Oct 16, 2002 at 02:52:52PM +0200, Eugen Leitl wrote:
>
> Technology is an asymmetrical enabler, since favouring centralism.
Could you expand on this, and especially give some evidence for it?
That some tech promotes centralism (client-server architectures) and
other promotes decentralization (like PCs and portable cameras) is
fairly obvious; statements about tech in general are far more
interesting. If we look at societies where technology is introduced, do
we see it causing centralism? If we look at the kind of societies where
technology develops fast, are they highly centralist or move in a
centralist direction? I think the answer to the second question(s) is a
clear no to the first part - the technological societies are on average
the least centralistic and power-distant societies - and the level of
centralisation change seems better described in terms of other
tendencies.
I also think that the changes in centralism in countries where tech is
introduced are far from irreversible; I could imagine that at first
elites get the expensive tech, but if the country starts to develop
economically there is also a high level of equalisation of tech access
and a general trend towards decentralisation. But it would be nice to
have some discussion about this.
Is there any good measure of how technological a country is? If there
is, I could play around a bit with some sociological data about
power-distance etc. Hmm, maybe one could look at the ratio of high-tech
production to low-tech production. Time to look up the CIA world
factbook...
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