Why stop there? I don’t think Native Americans lived in log cabins. Antibiotics and modern medicine should undoubtedly be cast to the trash heap as well. I can’t help but feel like simply limiting screen time is the solution here...
(2016) Technology destroys people and places. I’m rejecting it
11–20 of 74 posts
Re: (2016) Technology destroys people and places. I’m rejecting it
#12I wrote something like this last year https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2017/2/13/i-miss-th...
I miss the face to face interactions, I miss community, I miss boredom and a considerably simpler life. At the same time though I love that I have friends all over the world, many of which I've never met, but know just as well as local friends. I love that I can go on YouTube and see all sorts of amazing and interesting things. I love that I can share and discuss ideas with strangers on BBS/forums/sites like HN and Reddit. I love that an an adapter from Automatic tells my phone data from my car that then gets pushed to various places via IFTTT so that I can create a record of all of my driving and vehicle diagnostic alerts for potential use in the future.
As I said in my blog post I have my foot in both worlds, being born in the mid 80's I was there for the birth of the modern internet and still had several years of my life where I didn't even know the internet existed. Now the internet is effectively an augmentation to my own person.
Re: (2016) Technology destroys people and places. I’m rejecting it
#13> Technology destroys people. I'd disagree. Technology is a tool like any other; it may destroy you , but that's anecdotal. It is not a requirement that it destroy people or take them away from what they find important.
“The current regulatory framework in place in the majority of jurisdictions is allowing technology to become a net negative for both people and society as a whole”. I make a distinction between science and technology for the sake of this comment. Science brings us biomedical breakthroughs, space probes, and renewables; technology brings us Black Mirror dystopian futures. (“Technology destroys people” is a lazy argume…
It sounds like our variant of capitalism is the system that's destroying people, not technology.
Re: (2016) Technology destroys people and places. I’m rejecting it
#14I have a new hypothesis I'm terming "sublimation of criticism." This is likely not original since this isn't my field, but here goes. The campaign to exterminate any alternative political discourse in the West has been so successful that it's now very hard to even talk about any alternative to state corporatist capitalism. This system has many downsides and generates many negative externalities and these are clearly…
> Maybe state corporatist capitalism destroys people and places. Try that.
Hierarchies destroy people and places. The alternative is lack of a hierarchy, which is anarchy. Which are you more comfortable with, typing on your $1000 phone’s keyboard?
Re: (2016) Technology destroys people and places. I’m rejecting it
#15> Technology destroys people. I'd disagree. Technology is a tool like any other; it may destroy you , but that's anecdotal. It is not a requirement that it destroy people or take them away from what they find important.
“The current regulatory framework in place in the majority of jurisdictions is allowing technology to become a net negative for both people and society as a whole”. I make a distinction between science and technology for the sake of this comment. Science brings us biomedical breakthroughs, space probes, and renewables; technology brings us Black Mirror dystopian futures. (“Technology destroys people” is a lazy argume…
Hmm... isn't science itself a form of technology? :)
Re: (2016) Technology destroys people and places. I’m rejecting it
#16There should be a middle way between this and our current lifestyle. Eschewing all technology also means eschewing the positive things technology provides to us.
Re: (2016) Technology destroys people and places. I’m rejecting it
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
“The current regulatory framework in place in the majority of jurisdictions is allowing technology to become a net negative for both people and society as a whole”. I make a distinction between science and technology for the sake of this comment. Science brings us biomedical breakthroughs, space probes, and renewables; technology brings us Black Mirror dystopian futures. (“Technology destroys people” is a lazy argume…
It sounds like our variant of capitalism is the system that's destroying people, not technology.
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Re: (2016) Technology destroys people and places. I’m rejecting it
#18I have a new hypothesis I'm terming "sublimation of criticism." This is likely not original since this isn't my field, but here goes. The campaign to exterminate any alternative political discourse in the West has been so successful that it's now very hard to even talk about any alternative to state corporatist capitalism. This system has many downsides and generates many negative externalities and these are clearly…
> it's now very hard to even talk about any alternative to state corporatist capitalism
Have you suffered persecution from the state for discussing such alternatives? Have you been arrested, beaten, your documents confiscated - all for discussing the pros and cons of "state corporatist capitalism"? Have you spent years in camps for it?
Because that's what was common in the late USSR. Of course, it was much more civilized than early USSR, when you'd be executed for discussing much more minor things, so that's an improvement.
Re: (2016) Technology destroys people and places. I’m rejecting it
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
“The current regulatory framework in place in the majority of jurisdictions is allowing technology to become a net negative for both people and society as a whole”. I make a distinction between science and technology for the sake of this comment. Science brings us biomedical breakthroughs, space probes, and renewables; technology brings us Black Mirror dystopian futures. (“Technology destroys people” is a lazy argume…
Hmm... isn't science itself a form of technology? :)
I think you’re right and my post has the error.
Science->knowledge->technology
Re: (2016) Technology destroys people and places. I’m rejecting it
#20What if he gets sick? Will he refuse modern medicine too and turn to traditional ones? Because if he accepts modern medicine, then he does use modern technology, that is, its results, so he still relies on other people working on technology which modern science uses a lot.
So he enjoys the benefits without sharing the costs.