Technology and objections

I went with Ruth to look at some cybercars in Daventry. I mention them to some of the people I work with who you know are computer scientists but the first reaction I got was. 'Won't muggers run out stop the cyber cab and then mug you in the cab'. I got this a couple of times.

Now I don't want to approach the issue directly - after all you might same the same thing about cyclists or indeed car drivers (if somone comes along waves you down smashes the windscreen are you going to be able to drive away?) - what makes me intreasted is that this was peoples first reaction.

I was looking at some big LCD displays used in an underground station and thought. 'If I proposed that the first recactoin would be whats to stop someone smashing the display then running away?'

I remember the response the PRT system got when I presented it to the students at the london bussness school they thought PRT was a more unusable than a perpetual motion machine (they called a free energy device) someone else had proposed.

Now I guess the probem is should people be blind to possible problems ? One of the victorian objections to rail travel was that traveling at such speeds as 30 miles per hour would make peoples head explode.

I guess people are just not that good at dealing with uncertainty. I said to Ruth about the cybercars is that with the new London Heathrow terminal that they will just have to be able to see them in action for a few months before people can 'adjust' to actual technology rather than anticipate problems.

For me the question is that it appears that certain technologies appear to be less critialcally assessed than others ( the Ultra/PRT system against the perpetual motion machine for example). Is this universal could this be experimentally assessed in some way - perhaps giving people a group of technologies and asking what they thought but how to allow for the same imagined problems? Perhaps the same technology but presented in diffrent ways to diffrent people?