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Dear Reader,

I have used this space in the past to highlight a certain tendency in our culture to overstate the power, stability, and safety of our emerging technologies. For lack of a better term, I'll refer to this trait as technical naiveté. This tendency does not stem from a lack of technical knowledge – in fact, many of the people who suffer from this malady have lots and lots of technical knowledge – maybe even too much. The real problem is a lack of awareness about everything else. The hope is that, if you imagine a new technology in a sincere and earnest way, and you have the best of intentions for what you are going to do with it, the world will play along. One views the new technology as if it were in the pages of a science fiction book: A central feature that the story is then draped around, and the reality of the story is gently shaped to reflect the grandeur and importance of the technology.

People often write these stories in their heads when they behold new technologies that we invent here in our real world, but reality is a little messier than the elegant spaces of a science fiction novel. That's where we get the debacle of an autonomous mall robot that falls into a fountain and shorts out or a social media system that is supposed to bring us all together but actually incites weird mob behavior. Sometimes it is just a matter of time until we fix the problems and make the technology into what we thought it was in the first place. Other times, we just keep on living in the story that glorifies our technology and understates the danger, because, well, reality is often a little more difficult and considerably more expensive.

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