“Everything you can do, I can do better”: an historical perspective of human vulnerability, accounting and technology in early-modern England

Abstract

As accounting research, and wider society, strives to understand the impact of technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) upon society and accounting they are met with a significant obstacle: how do we analyse a relationship that has not yet happened? AI and humanity do not have a history of a working relationship. However, humanity and technology have coexisted for thousands of years in a relationship that reaches to the very beginnings of human history. Using the precedent of historical technology, this thesis addresses the research gap within accounting literature concerning the role of humans in the accounting-technology relationship. By analysing how, and why, humans throughout history have chosen to utilise technology this study asks if the role of the human is more than that of a victim to technological advancement and if, in contrast, the human can be both instigator and victim? Through historical analysis of Early Modern English Mercantile activity and maritime technology, this study thus proposes that technology and accounting do not exist within an isolated partnership, but instead form two parts of a Relational Triad, a tri-part relationship that places the role of humans and human society at the centre of accounting and technological development and adoption. This new analytical framework developed in this research, suggests that humanity, accounting, and technology exist in a co-dependent and symbiotic relationship, one that is powered by human psychology, particularly the human desire to attain enhancement and avoid vulnerability. By tracing technology to the source of its implementation (humans), and further tracing the source into human psychology the study will chiefly ask if technology is adopted solely to achieve organisational enhancement or, if it also allows (often more privileged) groups in social and organisational hierarchies to choose and implement technology for their own benefit i.e., technology is not the true ‘villain’ in the story. Simultaneously, the study also looks to the role of accounting in this relationship, wherein it will be found that accounting becomes the mechanism of decision-making and control for human emotion. Both acting as a justification for technology adoption and, a voice, framework, and record of the human-technology relationship.