Comment by oliv__
1 year ago
It's pretty clear we've reached the point where technology has shifted to working against us, and not for us anymore.
I work in tech but as far as I am concerned, you can keep all your smart homes, cars and other gadgets and soul sucking (anti) "social" apps.
Somewhere along the way technology was hijacked to control us rather than empower us. And if you don't like it: shut up because "progress" is inevitable
> we've reached the point where technology has shifted to working against us
Everyone has always said this since the dawn of farming. It’s not a particularly useful insight: the question is in how and how it is to be banned or balanced.
So you think today's technology is comparable to farming?
> you think today's technology is comparable to farming?
That’s a not what “since” means.
If a technology causes social change, it will create winners and losers. Those winners tend to autocorrelate (inversely to the magnitude of the shift). As a result, small technological revolutions tend to result in a shift against the broader “us” while broader ones disempower an elite that tries to gain sympathy by aligning itself with that broader “us”. If it doesn’t do either of those, it is—almost by definition—not a technological shift that resulted in social change.
As a result, complaining about technology working against a nebulous “us” is basically saying we had technology that caused social change. Which isn’t a novel point.
Technology is amoral. The power shift happened because we are no longer in control. It's these corporations who are the masters of the computers now. They're just allowing us to use their computers. Of course those computers work against us, they are treacherous by definition.