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Computers are an oppressive technology

devever.net

31–40 of 145 posts

Re: Computers are an oppressive technology

#31
The thing about computers is they tend to have very limited context. If you submit a document late by a second, how's it to know that your whole life depends on it?

A human doesn't have context boundaries at all (that's how humor often work) and that's how the guy at the desk allows you to hand in the docs late. He knows it makes no difference to the bureaucracy and a big difference to you.

What might happen is we develop AI that can bridge different contexts, but you quickly run into the same issues that people run into: what interest takes precedence?

Re: Computers are an oppressive technology

#32
I really like the article (less so the title), but it reads like the "For" side of a two-sided debate - a myopic (albeit valid) criticism of the worst aspects of computer cruelty. But I think this is one of those areas where there is another side to the discussion, and the truth probably lies somewhere between (or perhaps better said: it lies in both sides simultaneously, and we as a society, and especially as technologists and software developers, decide which truth to draw out).

So, here is my "Against" argument:

Computers are spaces of almost complete freedom. More than almost any other creative or expressive medium, there is the possibility to do anything without limit.

I can write, but unlike a book or a newspaper, where my words can at best be statically illustrated by photos or diagrams, I can show videos, annotate diagrams step-by-step, and allow my reader to interact with my words. My drawings need not be limited to a 2D plane, and my models need not be limited to the 3D world. When I create something, I don't just have one copy of it that I must never lose, but I have an infinite amount of it that I can share freely as I want. When I tell a story to someone, they don't have to be in the room to ask questions, or contribute back.

This is near-unbounded creativity. And it is creativity without sharp edges. Due to computers, animation has spread from being a locked-down, family-friendly art form available almost exclusively to the largest media companies, to a toy used to create dumb fights between famous media characters, or extensive porn collections, or touching and heart-wrenching dramas. Computers have democratised art in a way analogous to the printing press, or the television, and by doing so destroyed the power of censors and critics in deciding what gets shown, and what does not.

That escape from critique and censorship is a particularly important idea that's worth emphasising. Yes, we have a cinema industry that only wants to show the same handful of blockbusters every week, but services like Netflix and Amazon have created a space for niche films and television series to thrive, and even be reincarnated. Critique has become a more flexible space, where rather than rely on elite opinion-makers to lay their judgements down, I now have far more voices to listen to, but more flexibility in which ones I choose to accept. And yet, rather than narrowing my choices down into a private echo chamber, this variety of voices arguably provides more chances to hear new opinions and experience media that I wouldn't have thought of before.

Computers are not inherently oppressive. If anything, they are inherently freeing. With computers we are not just able to create more things, but more people can create things that ever before, opening up voices that simply wouldn't be heard in previous generations. Moreover, those people can share their creations with more people than ever before, bringing new ideas of freedom into true oppressive states.

Re: Computers are an oppressive technology

#33
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that's exactly true and I'm not sure on it's applicability to the article. The author's point isn't about that it disregards human feelings in my opinion, it's that we implicitly trust and idolize the machines without thinking about the biases and uses for a lot of the technology we rely on. I actually feel the examples used by the author are not great and a bit showy and repeating their initial anecdote…

> we implicitly trust and idolize the machines I think it's a strawman. Nobody I know idolizes machines. It's abundantly clear that software has its limitations and machines are only as good as they are programmed. The examples that you are giving are usually treated as bugs. Nobody in their right mind would say that a somebody is not a person because they haven't been detected by some image recognition software. Eve…

I will grant that it's a broad generalization, but I don't think it's a straw man. The implicit sales point of a lot of software is that it removes the overheard of research and quantitative looks and provides hard data. If data is not questioned and checked, then there is an implicit trust.

Yes, I would agree the above are bugs, but the point is more about:

1. How did the bug get there in the first place?

2. What is the time to resolve these bugs, if they ever are?

3. A program can be used for things it was never intended to that has harmful effects. This is the basis behind exploits where software doing exactly what it was designed to has an unintended effect. It's not about universal usefulness, it's about who the program actually helps.

Re: Computers are an oppressive technology

#36

The author eventually contemplates the "good" aspects of "machine ruthlessness" (e.g. "cryproanarchist technologies"), but ultimately warns against the "oppressive" potential inherent in all machines. The main problem with this argument IMO is that it equates oppression with the kind of unwavering ruthlessness that is the way of the machines: they will do as they are programmed - there are no exceptions (unless such…

Cryptoanarchism seems to be a deliberately designed red herring in this article (or socially agreed upon warning).

It doesn't escape the main thesis, that computers are physical devices that rely on rules.

It's refreshing. I'm smashing my head with the ongoing Monkey Pox Holmes Rahe Stress train wreck, and discord in US cities. And here's an essay that raises questions on Philosophy of Mind. What if you believe in a Physicalist or Machine Functionalism Theory of mind? Then are we just as ruthless as computers?

What if you have a Magical Random Banana? Does that let you escape the ruthlessness? What if you don't trust your magical banana?

Re: Computers are an oppressive technology

#37
Right conclusion, wrong rationale.

The oppressiveness of computers comes from the fact that they can only exist through mass production techniques. Much of the cost-efficiency of computing comes from operating fabs at ever increasing economies of scale. Our current set of devices couldn’t exist without hundreds of millions of people coming together to work on the common purpose of producing those devices and their supply chains.

When you become dependent on mass industry, your own wants and needs become subservient to the needs of the masses. The reason why you can’t buy a premium phone with a headphone jack is because the masses (markets, customers and corporations together) collectively decided not to make one, and you can’t afford $10bn to build your own parallel manufacturing line.

Today, advancement in computer technology means building ever bigger, ever more complex manufacturing capability, far beyond the human-scale.

When you use a computer, you are signing up to be part of that mass scale industrial complex - the machine that builds the machines. (And by the way, this is the machine you were supposed to be raging against, not your phone).

It doesn’t necessarily have to be this way. We could develop local manufacturing techniques that could be controlled and operated by individual people. But it’s hard to see how we climb down to that level from where we are.

Re: Computers are an oppressive technology

#38
post #22

A deeply and clearly thought out argument for why immutable blockchains and code as law are terrible ideas, yet the conclusion is that crypto-anarchist technologies are a net good. No explanation or exploration of why that might be the case, given the preceding damning indictment of the principles such technologies are based on. Very odd. As to the broader issue, I agree with those here pointing out that indifference…

Right, I found the ending of the article to be baffling non sequiturs about the greatness of bitcoin.

> Our systems of values, and traits such as love and empathy are evolved behaviours. They were selected for by those same implacable laws of nature and survival of the fittest.

I think this is undoubtedly true, but it is also true of psychopathy.

I think that the ability to construct a false self, as a defensive mechanism, which is incapable of feeling empathy and which is able to prosecute objectives regardless of the cost to others, even to the point of suicidality is an inherent part of our nature and must have been strongly conserved considering how obviously deleterious it's effects can be to the self, the tribe, and the species.

If that is so, then how is the indifferent mechanism of evolution to deal with a trait which both provides an important situational advantage but when left unchecked, can spiral out of control to the level of species extinction?

But for that, I find flights in to abstraction to be pretty pointless, since we can just watch the answer to this question unfold at global scale, before our eyes.

Re: Computers are an oppressive technology

#39
Various appeals to emotion and analogies that ultimately provide little to nothing of value. Maybe it is a good article about why we build human-operated escape hatches and failsafes in software and hardware. When was the last time you saw train doors ruthlessly separate children from their parents? Have you seen anyone lose a limb to that ruthless guillotine? No.

Machines do what they are programmed or built to do. They are only oppressive if created to be, whether that be out of malice or incompetence. Either way, any "ruthlessness" is human in origin.

The same goes for blockchain, by the way, which the author attempts to tar with this same brush of oppression. Bitcoin can't be stopped? It has already been, when it proved necessary, and one day it likely will again. The "inviolable and absolute integrity" the author associates with blockchain is the same failure to acknowledge escape hatches as above. Cryptographic guarantees are not the foundation of a blockchain. Neither are the economic guarantees. The social layer is the foundation. In other words, the human element.

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