Comment on I'm Tired of Pretending Tech is Making the World Better
hsdkfr734r@feddit.nl 1 year ago
I don’t agree. Technology in itself is not helpful nor harmful. It’s a tool like a hammer or a knife or a pen and a block of paper.
I agree if one says that technology makes it easier to do harm.:) People and their motives and actions are the same as always, since the stone age and ago.
Technology is not neutral, and philosophers have known this since the middle of the 20th century. See for example Heidegger, Ellul, Arendt.
Technology makes us relate to the world and others in a distorted way. Instead of speaking to you directly, and see your face and features, I relate to you through pure text… A whole lot of important factors disappear as I do. Compare this then to politics, earth, society, where technology have the same effect
Or like the death ray!
(Futurama reference)
I think a clear distinction to make might be:
“Tech” as used in this sense is the industrial complex around mobile and web technologies dominated by a few players who might just be evil.
“Technology” is, of course, everything you mentioned and more. A rock that fits nicely in your hand becomes technology when used to crack a coconut.
It’s a weird linguistic murkiness, isn’t it?
The field of language, the meaning of words in different contexts… Communication in general, they wrote books over books about it…
Yes. Murky. :)
the article is talking about both, or perhaps conflates the two. QR code menus.
The original use of what we now think of as a “spoon” originally had nothing to do with food.
1000 years ago they would chain slaves neck to neck. They’d use the spoon to carve out everybodies eyes except the first guy in the line. Slaves don’t need to see. They just need to carry heavy shit. The first slave can see. The rest just need to go where their neck drags them.
I say all this to agree with you. Technology isn’t the source of corruption and evil. It is just a tool. Just like a spoon. I use my spoon to eat cereal. Others use the spoon to carve out peoples eyes. The spoon is not evil. The spoon is a tool.
Never heard of this spoon invention story. I have doubts.:) I’m almost certain that eyes have been carved out by means of spoon. War, civil unrest and suppression of weaker minorities show that we have it in us.
This feels super duper made up
Go yell at the history channel, circa 1996.
So yeah. Super duper made up.
I think when most people say something like “technology is making the world worse” they mean the technology as it actually exists and as it is actually developing, not the abstract sense of possible futures that technology could feasibly deliver.
That is clearly what the author of the piece meant.
If the main focus of people who develop most technology is getting people more addicted to their devices so they are easier to exploit the. Technology sucks. If the main focus is to generate immoral levels of waste to scam venture capitalists and idiots on the internet then technology sucks. If the main focus is to use technology to monetize every aspect of someone’s existence, then I think it is fair to say that technology, at this point in history, sucks.
Saying “technology is neutral” is not super insightful if, in the present moment, the trend in technological development and its central applications are mostly evil.
Saying “technology is neutral” is worse than unhelpful if, in the present moment, the people who want to use technology to harm others are also using that cliche to justify their antisocial behavior.
When the discussion is about whether technology + an unregulated human society is likely to end badly, then there is not much to discuss.
There are real life test series. In the 80s many countries put rules into place which forced the industry to filter/ treat their emissions. Technology gooood.
Some countries restrict their people’s access to personal fire arms more than others. Statistics show that shootings are more likely, when everybody has a gun. Technology baaad.
In my opinion it is mostly about the common rules a society agrees on. Technology amplifies both ways and needs to be moderated when it is misused.
Fentanyl is a technology.
Atomic bombs are also tools with no moral compass of their own.
I didn’t find the article particularly insightful but I don’t like your way of thinking about tech. Technology and society make each other together. Obviously, technology choices like mass transit vs cars shape our lives in ways that the pens example doesn’t help us explain. Similarly, society shapes the way that we make technology. Technology is constrained by the rules of the physical world, but that is an underconstraint. The leftover space (i.e. the vast majority) is the process through which we embed social values into the technology. To return to the example of mass transit vs cars, these obviously have different embedded values within them, which then go on to shape the world that we make around them.
This way of thinking helps explain why computer technology specifically is so awful: Computers are shockingly general purpose in a way that has no parallel in physical products. This means that the underconstraining is more pronounced, so social values have an even more outsized say in how they get made. This is why every other software product is just the pure manifestation of capitalism in a way that a robotic arm could never be.
I like the way you argument but I’m not able to grasp what you try to say entirely. English isn’t my native language, this may play into it.
Technology is constrained by the rules of the physical world, but that is an underconstraint.
I. e this sentence.:) Would you rephrase it and give an additional example?
I kind of get the mass transit vs. cars example. Although I think both options have their advantages and disadvantages. It becomes very apparent to me when… Lets say, when you give everyone a car and send them all together into rush hour and transform our cities into something well suited for cars but not so much for people. But that doesn’t make the wheel or the engine evil in itself.
Also: The society and and it’s values affects technology which in turn affects the environment the society lives in. Yes, I get that when I think i.e. about the industrialisation in the 19th century.
I struggle with the idea that a tool (like a computer) is bad because is too general purpose. Society hence the people and their values define how the tool is used. Would you elaborate on that? I’d like to understand the idea.
No problem!
Technology is constrained by the rules of the physical world, but that is an underconstraint.
Example: Let’s say that there’s a factory, and the factory has a machine that makes whatever. The machine takes 2 people to operate. The thing needs to get made, so that limits the number of possible designs, but there are still many open questions like, for example, should the workers face each other or face away from each other? The boss might make them face away from each other, that way they don’t chat and get distracted. If the workers get to choose, they’d prefer to face each other to make the work more pleasant. In this way, the values of society are embedded in the design of the machine itself.
I struggle with the idea that a tool (like a computer) is bad because is too general purpose. Society hence the people and their values define how the tool is used. Would you elaborate on that? I’d like to understand the idea.
I love computers! It’s not that they’re bad, but that, because they’re so general purpose, more cultural values get embedded. Like in the example above, there are decisions that aren’t determined by the goals of what you’re trying to accomplish, but because computers are so much more open ended than physical robots, there are more decisions like that, and you have even more leeway in how they’re decided.
I agree with you that good/evil is not a productive way to think about it, just like I don’t think neutrality is right either. Instead, I think that our technology contains within it a reflection of who got to make those many design decisions, like which direction should the workers sit. These decisions accumulate. I personally think that capitalism sucks, so technology under capitalism, after a few hundred years, also sucks, since that technology contains within it hundreds of years of capitalist decision-making.
factory example
Thanks. I think I get it now. Besides physical constraints (availability of resources, natural laws and the knowledge of them), society’s inherent values and rules (like work safety, minimum wage, worth attributed to a group of people/ the environment / animals) affect the way things are done.
If work force is cheap and abundantly available and the workers’ health or wellbeing isn’t considered as too relevant the resulting solution to achieve something is very different from one with different preconditions.
computers … because they’re so general purpose, more cultural values get embedded. Like in the example above, there are decisions that aren’t determined by the goals of what you’re trying to accomplish, but because computers are so much more open ended than physical robots, there are more decisions like that, and you have even more leeway in how they’re decided.
The moral/ social/ economic decisions which are made are affected by the opportunities which a technology has to offer? OK, yes.
The versatility of computer technology makes it a tech which can be used in many harmful ways. The potential for harm is bigger than let’s say with the invention of the wheel or the plow but not as big as with nuclear fission.
Responsibility for the usage of a technology and finding common rules for its usage and enforcing them… hmm.
Technology and what we do with it can’t be viewed as independent aspects?
I think the real problem is the drive to monetize so much of the technology. For instance, product owners continually to increase engagement in their stupid apps and continually move things around and add new widgets that people don’t want, or use, all while continuing to degrade the experience of the features that they did use.
It goes both ways: look at how much Lemmy usage has grown, and Lemmy’s existence is due to technology. We can protest with our dollars and time by leaving such products behind. Greed is independent of tech itself.
Oh for sure…and I’m here after slashdot stopped listening to users, then digg, then Reddit …
Right, so the buck stops here with FOSS, finally!
… 🤞
I think I basically agree with you and the author here. People applying technology have a responsibility to apply it in ways that are constructive, not harmful. Technology is a force multiplier, in that it makes it easy to achieve goals, in a value neutral sense.
But way too many people are applying technology in evil ways, extracting value instead of creating it, making things worse rather than better. It’s an epidemic. Tech can make things better, and theoretically it should, but lately, it’s hard to say it has, on the net.
Tech speeds things up. If you want to do good, it’ll help you do it faster. If you want to do evil, it’ll help you do it faster.
A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention with the possible exceptions of handguns and Tequila.
—Mitch Ratcliffe
Which changes rules, but not the resulting balance or lack thereof.
Yep.
in my opinion, at this point of history, FAST is inherently detrimental. Only those with privilege and resources are able to adapt to rapid changes and reap their benefits, while the rest are left behind.
metaldream@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
Good God you people are deep in the sauce. Just straight up ignoring the fact that tech enabled propaganda to be spammed in people’s faces 24/7. It’s so obviously a net drag on society at this point.