 |
| Photo by Joi Ito |
Haegwan Kim: You have been engaging in the field of technology and culture for a long time. What was the beginning of your career?
Howard Rheingold: I started because I’m a writer and when personal computers came out they were a better tool than the typewriter. That led me to become interested in where they had come from and where they were going. I’m not particularly an expert or particularly interested in technology before I had a personal interest in using it as a tool.
HK: Since you became interested in technology, do you consider the importance of technology has increased, and will continue to do so?
HR: It depends on what context you’re looking at that, but I think we have five billion mobile phones in the world, and there are over six billion people. That’s a pretty rapid, probably the most rapid expansion of access to very sophisticated technology in history, so the social effects always lag the technology, and I think we’re only beginning to see the impacts of almost everyone on earth having a mobile phone, and those phones are increasingly devices that access the internet, so increasingly a very significant percentage of the human population is going to be connected to the internet. I think that’s very significant in the next ten to 20 years.
HK: As the power of internet and technology increase, will the power of human beings decrease?
HR: I’m writing a book about digital literacies because I think the important critical uncertainty is how many people know how to use the technologies that are available to them to their advantage, so just having a mobile phone or an internet account does not mean that you know how to use it to your advantage.
HK: When you say digital literacy, what kind of training and education is needed, especially for young people?
HR: I think that because information is uncertain on the internet and because media and technologies change so quickly, young people need to learn to think critically and learn how to learn, so education in the 19th to 20th century has consisted of delivering a body of knowledge to students who really did not question it. Students need to know how to question and collaborate and inquire on their own beyond simply memorizing what the teacher or the textbook tells them, and that’s a very significant change in how education is conducted.
HK: Do you consider the technology as merely a tool?
HR: Technology is not just a tool, it’s intrinsic to who humans are. I think you can make a strong case that if you look at our hands and our thumbs and you look at the evolution of the human species, that our ability to use tools and to think about new tools to alter our environment is what distinguishes us from other species, and what is in fact in many cases threatening our future existence.
HK: I’m deeply impressed that for more than 20 years you have been traveling around the world and seeing technology and cultural issues in your eyes. I was wondering what is the biggest lesson you learned from the journey.
HR: The biggest lesson is that you need to actually be on the street, face to face with people, to really see what’s happening with the future of technology, and that although it’s a marvelous source of information you cannot just rely on online sources.
HK: Which country do you particularly consider as a rapid development of technology?
HR: I know that a lot is happening in Korea, and of course a lot is happening in Silicon Valley, but now we’re seeing the emergence, which will become increasingly significant, of technological innovation from countries like Brazil, India, and China, so I think that Silicon Valley will continue to be very important for a number of reasons, but the technological information is globalizing, so there are multiple sources of innovation that very quickly are adopted worldwide.
HK: Technology has enhanced the power of communication. Do you think that technology, let’s say the internet, do you think the internet has enough power to break the borders between the nations?
HR: No, I don’t want to attribute agency or power to the internet itself. It clearly does depend on how people use it, and I think that there’s tremendous potential for communication and understanding, but there’s also tremendous potential for misinformation and disinformation and for persuading people to believe very dangerous things.
HK: As my research is on the law of success I’m just wondering what is your definition of the term success.
HR: My definition of success is to be happy with your life, and I think that that is independent of circumstances. It’s a mental state. Of course in the U.S. and much of the world there’s a feeling among people that having things and acquiring things is important to happiness, but that’s not necessarily true. Being healthy, having people that you love, having a good relationship with your family, doing work that you enjoy, not being at war; those are all things that I think are very important but are left out quite often.
HK: Do you consider yourself as a successful person?
HR: Yes, because I’m happy.
HK: So for you, happiness and success are connected to each other?
HR: I think you have to have a sense of meaning. That is very much part of it. I chose to do a long time ago what I felt was meaningful, so that’s a very strong sense of success. What I’m doing to me feels meaningful.
HK: Do you think there are as many kinds of success as there are human beings, because you’ve seen many different cultures from the travel?
HR: I think many people are desperately unhappy because of circumstances beyond their control. There’s a lot of misery in the world, but I also think that there are many people who do not have a large amount of wealth who find meaning in their lives and who are happy, have a good relationship with their family, who feel that what they are doing is meaningful. I think we are in a time of turbulent change, and when there’s a lot of change then there’s a lot of conflict, and a lot of conflict makes a lot of people unhappy and unsuccessful.
HK: Could you give me your opinion on how we can solve that conflict, how we can make the world a better place?
HR: I couldn’t tell you exactly how, but I think that it has a lot to do with how children are educated, both by their parents and by their schools.
HK: So it starts from education?
HR: Are they taught to compete or are they taught to cooperate, taught to mistrust other people, or are they taught to trust other people? These are important questions.
HK: Can you give me your advice to achieve success in general life?
HR: I think it’s important to do what is meaningful to you, and sometimes in conflict with what other people would expect. But I think if you find an activity that you think that could be meaningful, all of the other lives are not as important in success and happiness.
Haegwan Kim is a writer who was born in Osaka, Japan in 1989 and grew up near Tokyo where went to a Korean school for 12 years.
