The biennale installation 2050 – An Energetic Odyssey looks at how far-reaching the energy transition from oil, coal and gas to renewable energy actually is. Photo Courtesy/ Hans Tak
Technology has been the point of focus in the whole world with majority of companies competing to produce devices, design automobiles, construct buildings or even develop an equipment that bears the best technological features as a way of competing.
Maarten Hajer who is a curator of International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam during an opening event for the biennale called for architects and designers to stop treating the advent of smart technologies as inevitable, and to question whether they will solve any problems at all.
“People with lots of media force pretend to know exactly what the future will look like, as if there is no choice,” he said. “I’m of course thinking about self-driving vehicles inevitably coming our way.”
“We think about big data coming towards us, 3D printing demoting us, or the implication of robots in the sphere of health, as if they are inevitabilities. My call is for us to think about what we want from those technological advances.”
The rampancy in technology development can be witnessed in mobile industry and app developments. The competition is high with product developers coming up with cheaper but more technological products full of “smart technology”.
This is not a secret at all when it comes to automobiles and aircrafts. German, for example developed a transparent car with other countries specializing in high tech electric train and in gaming innovators going for 3D decisions. However, smart technology may not be part and parcel of every technological devices since marketers are misusing the word smart to win more sales or purchases.
Technology has been widely used in job market with others terming it as “a threat to human labor”. For example, roboticists are trying to come up with smart robots that can perform human duties, and if they succeed, human race may in danger if an individual corrupts the chips with malicious intentions. That would not only be threat, if they are adopted in factories then many people may end up losing their jobs.
Speaking exclusively to a certain magazine in US, Maarten said that he has nothing against good technology unless it does not give social issues the first priority.
“It’s wonderful, but you always want social problems to be the priority. If it doesn’t help us get CO2 down, if it doesn’t help us make cities more socially inclusive, if it doesn’t help us make meaningful work, I’m not interested in smart technology. Sometimes I think: “if smart technology is the solution, then what was the problem again?” It’s almost like a solution looking for a problem.” he told the dezeen magazine.