Carver: Adopting new technologies

I think, as human beings we can handle the technology. But we do need to spend time thinking about the technology. At the moment we worry to much about the technology itself and not the consequences. We worry about how to move email faster. Fine, but for what purpose? And it's good that we can move it faster, because patients can talk to doctors faster or parents can get hold of their children in times of crisis or whatever. So there's a good side to it. But we need to not only spend time on thinking about how the technology will work, but also how do we apply it as human beings? When we buy a piece of software, how many of us really bother to learn how to use it properly? We load it onto our machines and we want it to work perfectly. We don't often think about how we're going to use it. It's just faster or better. But why do you want it faster or better? What's the end result? What's your goal? What are you going to do with it? And it's important that you think about that. It's not just technology for technology's sake. We are at a point where people are beginning to question, and that is good. Some people are saying: "We should stop all technology, we should go back, we should take a deep breath." I don't think that's realistic. Once you release the technology, it will carry on. But I think increasingly people now are saying: "Yes, that's fine. But we also need to address as human beings what that means to us and what impact it will have on us. And how we will then manage that."