"Book"pile 2: The Real World of Technology

If you don’t listen to Canadian public radio, you may not know about the Massey Lectures. Similar to the BBC’s Reith Lectures, the Massey Lectures offer a prominent thinker the chance to give a series of public lectures which are then turned into radio programs. Those lectures later become a book.

This week, I’ve been “reading” the 1989 Massey Lectures, Ursula M. Franklin’s The Real World of Technology. Her lectures make me realize (once again – it's amazing how often this realization happens) that so many of the problems we face today aren’t very new. She speaks about the importance of seeing nature not as a resource to be extracted, but as a common good. She argues that the crisis of technology is really a crisis of governance. And she gets a big laugh from the audience when she describes the great and good who get recognized in annual honours lists as being 50% captains of industry who rush ahead, make thing happen, and make money doing it, and 50% the people (including Franklin herself) who mop up after the first 50%.

These lectures may have been given 36 years ago, but Ursula M. Franklin’s insights keep on being fresh and relevant. They're worth a listen all the way through, for her context, her insight, and her hope.

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/the-1989-cbc-massey-lectures-the-real-world-of-technology-1.2946845