Comment on Does technology actually add value to the world?
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 months ago
Most “technology” these days are hardly more than gimmicky baubles that don’t actually bring much value to, well, anything really.
Look at all the Alexa devices. Amazon literally cannot figure out how to make a profit on it and they’re quickly trying to make it a footnote.
All that hardware dedicated to Alexa will be soon a pile of garbage.
But here’s the rub…
Simple technology is still technology. A hammer is technology of an early human era. We’ve only been in the era of modern medicine, for example, for hardly 100 years. When you talk about “technology” you’re talking about way the fuck more than just computers and technobaubles.
When it comes to medical tech alone if you consider how many diseases we’ve wiped out, and the new advances we continue to make in medical science (RNA vaccines, recently an entirely new class of antibiotics), the idea that these don’t contribute to our quality of life is a joke.
Medical advances and advances in food technology and food cleanliness have 100% improved the lives of people all over the world. We went from terrible infant mortality rates 200 years ago where half your fucking kids will die before adulthood to people basically choosing how many kids they want because by and large, most of them will make it to adulthood and onward. It genuinely wasn’t that long ago that our average life expectancy was a lot shorter.
Now, the bigger question is a societal one: How to we ensure the new technology that really brings value to human life is distributed equitably? Because currently, it really fucking isn’t.
danhab99@programming.dev 10 months ago
I think you’re right.
TBH I can’t even see the real value in companies I see listing jobs on the job sites. I’ve been trying to talk any path, anything just so I can work. But what good is my work if it’s not actually working for the rest of the world. How can I secure my next hit (writing code presses my happy button, idk why I just accept it) if I’m working for someone who noone actually needs? I want to make a change for the world because I need to make a change for myself. I need to work because working feels good, it wakes me up in the morning, it gives me focus, it gives me a sense of success and I actually cherish it. Every little line of code I write is mine, that’s why I cryptosign my commits, so they’ll always be mine.
Maybe its actually not me, it’s the people I can work for.
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 months ago
I agree, it can be discouraging, but the reality is we all gotta pay bills and eat. We gotta have a paycheck to put food in our stomachs and to give ourselves the opportunity to make our own goals outside of this framework we’re given.
It’s okay to take a job that isn’t benefiting the world if it means it’s a path towards you benefiting the world, you just can’t let yourself get caught up in the grind and remember its your personal goals of self-fulfillment and fulfillment of others that matter more.
It doesn’t mean you can’t work a job or not excel at your job. You can absolutely do both but also be willing to keep that thought at the back of your mind “Everything I do here is in pursuit of doing more and better, on my own.” Hell, if you are successful enough, that’s often option to use your largess to create your own non-profit aimed at helping others, or creating a new business for a market you know is under-served.
We can’t escape the reality of needing to eat and pay bills. We can accept that a lot of the jobs we work won’t give us some of the human values we all generally need to feel fulfilled (autonomy, mastery, purpose), but that doesn’t mean we can’t find those avenues for fulfillment elsewhere, outside of the business and working world.