The Spiderman Philosophy

Today as a few of us were walking through downtown Stockholm, we paused because we noticed a familiar name, and we were greeted by a man standing nearby. He was very friendly and funny, so we stayed and had a conversation with him for a while. It turns out that he recently started his own business, which is becoming very successful. Though there were many interesting points in the discussion, one thing that really struck me was the way that he used technology to his advantage in getting the word out about his idea, because it tied in so well with our excursion into the land of technology this morning. He said that even though he had never had a facebook page or followed twitter before, he realized the benefits of using them as business tools; twitter got him the connections he needed, and facebook brought in the customers. I have definitely thought about facebook as a means to bring attention to events and gain contacts, but I had never considered that advertisements on facebook could be the foundation for an entire business, especially a successful, expanding business like his.

This morning at Ericsson, we learned about a number of different applications of new technologies and websites. I was really awed by everything we saw on our tour, especially the concepts of using devices for simplifying parts of healthcare and the section about bringing communication to less developed areas of the world and to disaster areas. From a consumer perspective, we might think about this technological revolution with our iPods and Blackberries as simply a way to make life easier or more entertaining all the time, but Ericsson shows that a company that is definitely based on profit can still make a positive difference in the world beyond just the convenience of having a fancy cell phone in day-to-day life. As was definitely said today, one technology can be used in good, bad, and neutral ways, and often in ways that were never imagined by the creator. I heard some people in the group expressing apprehension and mentioning things like technology taking over our lives when our excellent tour guide was introducing us to concepts such as being able to communicate with the electricity monitor or the washing machine in your home via facebook, What I find much more fascinating than a takeover by the machines, though, are the ethical issues that Elin brought up that Ericsson has the responsibility to consider, like the fact that their technology might be used in other countries as a means of surveillance of the population. She reiterated the famous Spiderman line, that “with great power comes great responsibility,” to express the fact that Ericsson not only has the responsibility to try to make a positive impact on the world, but also to consider the possibilities that they create through what they provide and how those can be both liberating and dangerous. Today was definitely a lesson for me in the power and impact of communication technology.