The Impact of Future Technology on Society

Abstract

The growing application of information technology in society, in both biological and computer networks, challenges us to understand a core issue in deciding future directions for our lives, our societies, and our environment : the relationship between identity and control.

Information technologies are technologies of control. In biological systems, growth, repair and reproduction are controlled by exchanging information about identity, in the form of encoded instructions for protein synthesis. In human and technological networks, identity is central to decide what will happen, when, among whom, including and excluding whom, drawing upon named and unnamed resources, exchanging value among named and unnamed entities. In economic systems, based increasingly on computer networks as the infrastructure of exchange, the central issues turn on establishing identity, then trust, then exchange, then audit and reporting. How we understand these issues will determine the impact of future information technology on society.

Curriculum Vitae

John Gage is the Chief Researcher for Sun Microsystems, an international information technology company based in California. He was one of the founders of Sun, in 1982, when a group of students and professors from Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley joined to create open systems in hardware and software. He has served on the Boards of Trustees of the United States National Library of Medicine, FermiLabs, the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, NetDay, Schools On Line, and other scientific and educational groups.

He serves on the Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security, the Board of Advisors of the United States Institute of Peace, and the International Advisory Board of the Malaysian Multimedia Corridor.

He attended the University of California, Berkeley, Harvard Business School, and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.