> technological implementation of a sort of "bad faith" ethos
Indeed, that's what the parent commenter said.
What I do is look at all those historical "slippery slopes of bad
faith" that didn't survive, and ask "Why not?". What changed in
society and stopped that?
Child labour was set to explode in the industrial revolution. Kids as
young as 7 or 8 worked in factories. At the time it would have been
reasonable to extrapolate that in a few decades all children would need
to be employed in mills and mines. And we can talk about slavery, and
disenfranchisement of women, and many more things in the same way.
To take a counter-example, the proliferation of cars on the roads is
something we have not been able to stem through reason alone. I think
this sets up a sense of "technological exceptionalism" in which
theories of determinism currently dominate. In my opinion this is a
very immature (Level 1 civilisation) view of things.
But when we look at all the malevolent trajectories that were
corrected, it always begins when we name it. Naming a problem
(acknowledging it as undesirable) sets in motion the progress towards
overcoming it.
I think we are living through precisely that age with digital
technology. We are in a process of naming, qualifying and
understanding new harms. We are starting to apply the same progressive
models we have for race, gender and public health, to technology. The
course is set. It might seem time is not be on our side, but the
industrialists of today are no more powerful than those of yesterday
against the tides of society.