Can Technology Fix Everything?

With enough data and the ability to crunch it, virtually any challenge facing humanity today can be solved – Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO

If you’re a regular iluli follower, you’ll know that in recent months we’ve covered topics like the world-changing potential of superconductors, the pursuit of new frontiers in outer space, and how AI-powered breakthroughs in biology are transforming our understanding of life itself. Technology is revolutionising the world and solving problems that previously seemed insurmountable. When it comes to innovation, we’re living through a golden age. 

But is former Google CEO Eric Schmidt right to say that the solution to any challenge or problem is just a matter of data and processing power? Now that we’ve developed the most sophisticated tools in the 300,000-year history of humanity, should we use them for absolutely everything?

Whether it’s the way we work, date, vote or shop, there’s hardly an area of life that Silicon Valley hasn’t already tried to “solve”. And the stakes keep rising as we lean on technology to tackle bigger and more complex challenges. 

But sometimes, trying to fix a problem can actually make things worse – especially when we jump to a solution without fully understanding the issue. Take fires, for example: we know that water is generally pretty effective at putting them out. But try pouring water on a kitchen oil fire, and you’ll get a dangerous explosion instead.

Might there be similarly disastrous consequences if we rely too much on technology? It’s a question I posed in my recent video on the subject of solutionism – the belief that every problem has a technical solution.

Just because they could…

It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail – Abraham Maslow

Maslow’s hammer (also known as the law of the instrument) neatly captures our tendency to get so excited about a new tool that we want to use it everywhere. 

This is a recipe for solutionism: rather than starting with a problem and looking for ways to solve it, we start with a solution and go looking for problems… even where none exist.

Today, in the age of machine learning and AI, we’ve got a generative, state-of-the-art, neural-network-enhanced hammer. Who wouldn’t want to run around giving everything a bash with that? It certainly explains some of the less inspiring uses we’ve found for technology.

The sitcom Silicon Valley satirised smart fridges that use cameras, touchscreens and smartphone apps to let people see what’s inside. “What, like that one over there?” asks one of the characters, pointing to a good old-fashioned glass-fronted fridge in the corner. “This thing is solutionism at its worst.” (Warning: this clip includes some language that isn’t family friendly!)

Here are five more tech “solutions” that could give smart fridges a run for their money:

1. The Wi-Fi-connected juicer

When US start-up Juicero launched its high-tech kitchen gadget in 2016, it promised a nutritional revolution. Using an app-controlled system that required an internet connection for the juicer and QR codes on ingredient packs, these $700 machines leveraged four tonnes of force to produce a glass of nutritious juice, offering a clean, convenient and prep-free alternative to traditional juicers.

After fending off criticism about the environmental implications of a system that required users to purchase custom packs of diced fruit and vegetables to fit the contraption, an even more damaging revelation came to light: people could just as easily squeeze the juice packs by hand, rendering the expensive machines pointless. Juicero folded within a year.

2. The Bodega vending machine

In 2017, two former Google workers set out to transform grocery shopping. Their pitch? Smart “pantry boxes” stocked with essentials which could be installed in every apartment building, office, and lobby in the U.S. They aimed to become so ubiquitous that most people would never be more than 100 feet away from one. These five-foot-wide lock-ups were controlled via an app, utilised AI for stock management, and featured cameras and sensors to track purchases.

If you’re thinking that this sounds a lot like a glorified vending machine, you’re not alone. Worse still, the founders named their company Bodega, reminding everyone that the functionality they were offering was already fulfilled elsewhere… by actual bodegas (otherwise known as corner shops) – the stores they were presumably hoping to put out of business. A huge backlash followed. A change of name wasn’t enough to save them; the shutters came down on the company in 2020.

3. The social media smart bin

We all know we need to recycle more to help reduce pollution and better conserve Earth’s finite natural resources. Could the answer be an augmented “smart bin” that takes photos of our rubbish and uploads it to social media? That was the thinking behind BinCam, a prototype developed in 2011 by researchers at Newcastle University who believed that gamifying recycling might help nudge people to sort their waste more diligently and reduce the amount sent to landfill. The project got as far as trials in England and Germany, where participants were rewarded with virtual gold bars and leaves each week in proportion to how much they had reduced their waste. As author Evgeny Morozov drily noted: “Whoever wins the most bars and tree leaves, wins. Mission accomplished; planet saved!”

Morozov is the man responsible for popularising the term “solutionism” in the context of technology. His serious point is that incentive-optimising initiatives like this risk undermining what should be the real motivation – doing our bit for the planet. Even so, in a world where we can buy voice-activated Wi-Fi bins that automatically order new bags, perhaps there are more rubbish innovations in the field of waste disposal than BinCam.

4. Smart forks

Designed to buzz and light up if you’re eating too fast, the HAPIfork as marketed as a weight loss aid. It connected via Bluetooth to track your eating speed and sent data to your phone. The self-described “world’s first smart fork” was launched with a Kickstarter campaign in 2013 and, after a blitz of publicity, disappeared from sale. I guess the world just wasn’t ready for smart cutlery yet. See also SMALT – the Bluetooth-connected salt shaker that not only flavours your food (via your phone, naturally), but plays music too…

5. Bluetooth socks.

Cold feet? Luckily, there is an app for that. Heated socks can now connect to your phone via Bluetooth, allowing you to fine-tune the desired temperature for your toes to the nearest degree. But before you race out for an expensive sock drawer upgrade, the tide might be turning on smart footwear. After shoehorning Bluetooth connectivity and app integration into its trainers, leading sportswear brand Under Armour made a not-so-shocking U-turn. They’re no longer producing smart trainers, and support for their connected devices ended earlier this year.

I have a bad feeling about this…

Solutionism [interprets] issues as puzzles to which there is a solution, rather than problems to which there may be a response – Gilles Paquet

It’s easy to poke fun at examples like those above. But the real danger of solutionism isn’t gimmicks – it’s what happens when the same mindset is applied to serious issues that affect people’s lives far more deeply than the latest overhyped smart device. 

In his influential book, To Save Everything, Click Here, Evgeny Morozov explained why solutionist fixes to complex problems so often backfire – they fail to fully grasp what they’re dealing with. 

He writes that, “in solving the ‘problem’, solutionists twist it in such an ugly and unfamiliar way that, by the time it is ‘solved’, the problem becomes something else entirely.”

In the iluli video, we looked at the example of predictive policing, which has been employed by police forces across the world, including several in the UK and the United States. Data and algorithms are used to direct resources to areas where crime is statistically most likely to occur. The statistics show they’ve been an enormous success – machines are better than humans at predicting where officers are most likely to make arrests. But the reality is far more complicated. As mathematician Hannah Fry explains in her book Hello World:

If, say, a poorer neighbourhood had a high level of crime in the first instance, the algorithm may well predict that more crime will happen there in future. As a result, officers are sent to the neighbourhood, which means they detect more crime. Thus, the algorithm predicts more still, more officers are sent there, and so on it goes. These feedback loops are more likely to be a problem for crimes that are linked to poorer areas such as begging, vagrancy, and low-level drug use.

Crime prediction becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, while the deeper, more complex human factors that lead people to break the law go unaddressed. Worse still, as Fry warns, once decisions get delegated to technology, they often become less open to scrutiny:

There is a real danger that algorithms can add an air of authority to an incorrect result. And the consequences here can be dramatic.

This has sometimes been the case when governments turn to algorithms with the promise of streamlining processes and improving efficiency – for example, in managing welfare claims or processing visa applications. In Australia, a national Robodebt scheme automated the process of recovering overpayments from benefit claimants. But the algorithm was flawed – it oversimplified cases, leading the government agency to issue debt collection notices to thousands of people who hadn’t been overpaid. The result was public outrage and financial devastation for many innocent individuals. A government inquiry concluded that the system had “disempowered people” and the scheme was subsequently scrapped.

The unintended consequences of tech solutionism aren’t confined to headline-grabbing scandals or large-scale government programmes – they also surface in the everyday tools we rely on. Take online dating. In theory, it’s a great idea – with the power of modern communication technology, an app can make it easier than ever before for people to find “The One”. But has it ushered in a utopia of romantic fulfilment? Has the dating “problem” been “solved”? Of course not: we’ve just exchanged the old problems for new ones, including swipe fatigue, harassment, and the commodification of private life – leading some users to sue the dating app companies. The legal case is still ongoing.

While “solutionism” is often used as criticism, some thinkers have tried to reclaim the term. Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen wrote a techno-optimist manifesto in which he argues that harnessing technology to solve problems is a moral imperative: “Give us a real world problem, and we can invent technology that will solve it.” Meanwhile, writer Jason Crawford proudly calls himself a solutionist – but a pragmatic one. He advocates for a form of solutionism that is grounded in realism. The challenge, of course, is that no one sees their own optimism as unrealistic…

Solution or solutionism?

When we hear that governments are investing billions in AI, launching digital platforms to “transform public services” or that environmental catastrophe could be averted with an innovative feat of engineering, it’s worth considering where these solutions come from. 

Our technological capabilities are increasing faster than ever, but it's important to realise that “more powerful” tools aren't necessarily “better” ones – depending on how they're used, they might just be “more dangerous”. 

Many areas where we’re applying cutting-edge technology – like mental health support, government bureaucracy, and climate change – are fiendishly complex, dynamic systems, in which tiny changes can trigger a cascade of unpredictable outcomes. And, despite the hubris of today’s titans of technology, the intricate and difficult business of, say, making government more efficient, is not something that can be “solved” with more data, better algorithms and a “move fast and break things” mindset.

But we shouldn’t dismiss the incredible, life-changing potential of technology and innovation either. All solutions involve trade-offs, and for every Juicero or flawed algorithm, there are countless tech-driven breakthroughs – like advancements in medicine, renewable energy, and global connectivity – that have undeniably improved lives and made the world a better place.

We can’t always know whether a bright idea will light the way or cast dark shadows. But keeping solutionism in mind can help – by reminding us to ask whether what we’re being offered really is a solution to the problem at hand… or just a bigger, shinier hammer.

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Recommended links and further reading

• What is ‘techno-optimism’? Two technology scholars explain the ideology that says technology is the answer to every problem (The Conversation)

• No god in the machine: the pitfalls of AI worship (The Guardian)

• Why AI can’t solve everything (The Conversation)

• The techno-optimist manifesto (Marc Andreessen)

• Why I’m a proud solutionist by Jason Crawford (MIT Review)