Algorithm and Blues: The Tyranny of the Coming Smart-Tech Utopia

I think you have been a little unfair the the argument cited. The author is not arguing for any of the modern annoyances you list. They are arguing for boredom, tedium, and for serendipity. Why are they arguing for some measure of these things? Let me quote your argumnet again:

>If I didn't have house chores or a commute, then I could spend a lot more time learning new pieces of Mathematics. Or work through the rest of the half-finished anatomy textbook on my bookshelf. Or finally get around to building a digital simulation of a human heart. Or start a garden. Or just hang out with a coffee at the hackerspace or coffee shop or church basement.

> There are a lot of opportunities for serendipity, many ways to build grit, and infinite opportunities to socialize.

Indeed, you would technically have more time to do these things. But you would not necessarily know you want to do them, nor find the time to sit and ponder. Not if every moment has been optimised to speed you through your day and onto the next productive task.

Perhaps, you argue, we would realise such moments are important and build them into the system, leaving patches of "hard reality". But we have already begun the process, and the activities you cite are so far faring badly. Putnam and Murray (Bowling Alone/Coming Apart) have both shown how the last half century has eroded actual participation in the activities we have been freed to do more of. They also show that it is hurting us, particularly anyone who is not bright or rich.

Ultimately, we need both the time to build grit, socialise and be serendipitous, as well as the moments of frustration and boredom which allow our minds to wander to such possibilities.

I think it goes even further than that. In my day to day use of my smartphone, even, an iPhone 7, I find the experience largely unpleasant. Even what is essentially just a touch screen computer connected to the internet seems to have all sorts of unpredictable and strange reactions to my inputs. Or it will do something strange without any input at all.

I would argue that the future we have created with technology is still mostly pretty janky - and we give the tech too much credit.

Your post and my post are both full of hypotheticals, so let's stick to the core empirical claim that could prove you're more correct:

> the activities you cite are so far faring badly. Putnam and Murray (Bowling Alone/Coming Apart)...

There are two problems with Bowling Alone.

1. Bowling is boring; I'd rather grab a cappucino.

Putnam and Murray suppose that the social institutions and conventions of 1910-1940 were a platonic ideal and therefore ignore the myriad of new ways that people socialize and engage in their communities.

To pick just one relevant example, hackerspaces only existed in a few major cities when I became interested in them 10-15 years ago. Now there's at least one in every major city as well as many in smaller communities. But hackerspaces are just an example; there are thousands of other examples of the same phenomenon: popular and thriving community forums that didn't even exist in 1910-1940.

This form of community engagement is the sort of thing that Putnam and Murray completely miss in their analysis because, for them, "community engagement" means regular contact with one of ten or so institutions they happened to have statistics for when they wrote their book.

I spend less time at church potlucks and bowling nights than my grandparents. But then, my grandparents never met friends at coffee shops or hung out at hackerspaces.

2. Far more damning, Putnam and Murray weren't even correct for the tiny subset of community engagement metrics they chose to form their best-selling "darn kids born after 1940" thesis. See e.g., Everett Lad's critique of Bowling Alone.

So not only did new forms of community engagement pop up in response to changing times and interests, but traditional forms of community engagement continued to thrive!

One of the truly sad aspects of this phenomenon is that smart speakers, in principle are totally fucking cool. That's literally Star Trek technology! You have a cheery computer you can boss around! Except now corporate greed had to shit all over it.

It would be one thing if the Alexa was free... but they actually charge for the thing, and they don't even develop their own apps/skills, that's on the community.

"There’s more that matters about being human than happiness"

I would go a step further and argue that happiness itself requires that friction, and can't be optimized or quantified. It's human nature to grow discontent and even depressed when given any kind of constancy for too long, no matter how "perfect". The idea that you can use social-engineering to perfect human happiness isn't just incomplete, it's fundamentally broken.