I like to keep up with Dave Winer's Scripting.com blog, because he's been around for a long time and brings an important perspective to a lot of the conversation.

That said, something he posted this morning prompts me to comment. Dave wrote, "The answers to our problems can be found in the new tech."

To be fair, I'm taking Dave's comment somewhat out of context. I understand what Dave's saying here, that there are ways to develop technologies that help foster behaviors that are less "problematic," and I think I'd agree with that.

But, in general, I think it's incorrect to say that the answers to our problems are found in new technology.

I've said this for a long time now, technology changes how we do things, it doesn't change what we do. Our problems are in the latter.

Because of our facility as "makers," we are biased toward invention when seeking solutions. That is, we look for external solutions to our problems, when the source of our problems is mainly, internal, and related to desire. And there's no technology that can fix that.

There are few external rewards for introspection. No increase in social status. It's not especially difficult, but we don't introduce it in our educational systems, because we don't value it, and so we don't learn how. And when we do look inside, it's often responding to an inner voice that is a notoriously unreliable narrator, which can become problematic in itself.

But we do love our technology.