Comment by nonrandomstring

4 years ago

This. But I'd also suggest couching it in different psychological terms.

We have a "cognitive bias" (fear) against relinquishing control. Therefore our social structures ratchet towards more bureaucracy and rigidity until they snap. A skidding car, careening this way and that, needs the driver to stop over-steering. Alternately pulling the wheel the wrong way in a desperate frenzy to take control is the problem.

Many things just work out when you take your hands off the levers. But we also have a political and commercial class who are way too proud to do so. That would seem to invalidate their "scientific management" ideology [1]. The Wizard of Oz would be exposed as a fraud.

I think what's going on in the digital realm shows we've already entered that phase of overcompensation, because so many technologies simply go against common-sense survival instinct, and we seem stuck in cycles of solutionism, adding ever more layers of sticking plasters to fix the stuff we broke last week. We know we are building dangerously brittle and irresilient systems such as a "cashless society". It is this fetish for control that contains the seeds of breakdown.

[1] pretty much the thesis of Adam Curtis's "All Watched Over...", "The Trap" and "Hypernormalisation"