I'm Tired of Pretending Tech is Making the World Better
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That is what naked apes they said about clothes
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I understand the complaint, but the big picture of tech has a ton of upside.
Tech itself is not the issue. How it's applied is the issue.
Once tech takes hold, there is massive pressure to monetize the asset.
That's where this complaint lives. Amazing advance becomes ubiquitous, then two things inevitably occur. Companies are formed that apply the technology on unnecessary and unpopular ways (parking app is a perfect example) or the pressure to make more more MORE MONEY triggers the enshittification spiral, where "wow, you can print wirelessly now!?" becomes "my printer won't take any cartridges but brand name, and I have to watch an unskippable 30-second ad every time I print now??!!!"
It follows that as tech saturates our lives, the inevitability of enshittification will also saturate our lives.
The year is 2044, you don't feel old but the ticker is starting to skip several beats a day. Your doctor is forced to use the product at his disposal to help you, which is the PaceXMaker produced by the Tesla-Cola conglomerate. The device is a true miracle of modern science. The size of a fingernail, it pulses electricity into your heart in carefully measured bursts to support proper function of all valves, and ensures that any plaque is dissolved harmlessly away. Your iEye tracks the device status, and alerts you when it starts to run low on fuel, a proprietary enzyme designed by Tesla-Cola. When the iEye app notifies you that the enzyme is running low, simply crack open an ice cold, refreshing can of Tesla Cola Zero to refuel your device for another two hours. Need to sleep? We got you. Hook up the Tesla Cola Zero-Venous BeautyRest to your ArmDock (patent pending) for up to five hours of relaxing enzyme replenishment. You can remove the arm dock after you confirm six ad-watch minute credits on your iEye.
Tesla-Cola: We Got You
Tech itself is not the issue. How it’s applied is the issue.
At this point, I would argue that technology is the issue. Or, at least, the current iteration of it.
Internal Combustion Engines, always-on internet connections, and digital financial systems are generating real physical hazards that stretch beyond their benefits. This isn't just an issue of use. There is no "proper" method of employing - for instance - cryptocurrency or single-use plastics or a statewide surveillance network that doesn't result in a degradation of quality of life for the population at large. To take a more dramatic angle, there's no safe application of a nuclear bomb.
When the iEye app notifies you that the enzyme is running low, simply crack open an ice cold, refreshing can of Tesla Cola Zero to refuel your device for another two hours. Need to sleep? We got you.
Except this isn't a technological innovation, its a Science Fantasy. iEye isn't a real thing. Tesla Cola Zero isn't a real thing. Not needing sleep isn't a real thing. You're not a cyborg and you will never be a cyborg.
But the science fantasy is still having its own cost. People are making real material nationally-transformative (or de-transformative) decisions based on the fantastic promises we've been sold about Tomorrow. We're underdeveloping our mass transit infrastructure and relying entirely too much on unregulated air travel to speed up travel. At the same time, we're clinging to old bunker-fuel laden container ships and decimating the aquatic ecology, because we refuse to adapt proven nuclear powered shipping that's over 60 years old at this point. We're investing more and more and more money in digital surveillance and personal tracking. We're off-loading our ability to collect and process information to unreliable digital tools (LLMs being only the latest in overhyped AI as a replacement for professionalized human labor). And then we're trying to justify the bad decisions we make as a result by claiming secret wisdom inherent in machines.
We're eating our seed corn after being told technologists will eliminate our need to eat ever again.
This is a direct result of technological developments we have made (or promised to make and failed to deliver) over the last twenty years. Revolutions in racial profiling, viral marketing, planned obsolescence, military expansionism, and genocide have not improved our quality of life in any material sense.
The cow has not benefited from industrial agriculture. And the prole has not benefited from de-skilling of labor.
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factory example
Thanks. I think I get it now. Besides physical constraints (availability of resources, natural laws and the knowledge of them), society's inherent values and rules (like work safety, minimum wage, worth attributed to a group of people/ the environment / animals) affect the way things are done.
If work force is cheap and abundantly available and the workers' health or wellbeing isn't considered as too relevant the resulting solution to achieve something is very different from one with different preconditions.
computers ... because they're so general purpose, more cultural values get embedded. Like in the example above, there are decisions that aren't determined by the goals of what you're trying to accomplish, but because computers are so much more open ended than physical robots, there are more decisions like that, and you have even more leeway in how they're decided.
The moral/ social/ economic decisions which are made are affected by the opportunities which a technology has to offer? OK, yes.
The versatility of computer technology makes it a tech which can be used in many harmful ways. The potential for harm is bigger than let's say with the invention of the wheel or the plow but not as big as with nuclear fission.Responsibility for the usage of a technology and finding common rules for its usage and enforcing them... hmm.
Technology and what we do with it can't be viewed as independent aspects?
I'd say that's mostly right, but it's less about opportunities, and more about design. To return to the example of the factory: Let's say that there was a communist revolution and the workers now own the factory. The machines still have them facing away from each other. If they want to face each other, they'll have to rebuild the machine. The values of the old system are literally physically present in the machine.
So it's not that you can do different things with a technology based on your values, but that different values produce technology differently. This actually limits future possibilities. Those workers physically cannot face each other on that machine, even if they want to use it that way. The past's values are frozen in that machine.
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Instead of speaking to you directly, and see your face and features, I relate to you through pure text... A whole lot of important factors disappear as I do.
Yes. That's an aspect to keep in mind.
I think distorted is a bit negative. Communication with filters, yes. I see advantages and disadvantages. It really depends on the case. It's technology-bound but not exclusive to the digital age - Letters existed before.
Advantages: asynchronity, time to think and reply. Use of different media. Less stressful because less information to process - there is a reason why video telephony isn't mainstream. Less bias, for all you know I could be Gregor Samsa - you don't see my gender, age, skin, clothing style. just my text. Disadvantages: misunderstandings can become more likely, since you dont know me. It's more time consuming to talk through an issue... and so on.
See for example Heidegger, Ellul, Arendt.
Would you recommend one specific article or book?
For recommendations you can't go wrong with Martin Heidegger's The Question Concerning Technology. It's a difficult read without previous knowledge of Heidegger's philosophy (or phenomenology), but the essay is so influential that there is plenty of secondary literature on it, from videos to podcasts to texts.
His argument, in essence, is that technology is a way of being that makes everything appear as resources for technology to use. As we become a technological society we see people as "human resources", nature as a depot to be emptied: wind as power, rivers as kinetic energy, the ground as a chest of minerals.
The same phenomenon can also be seen in everything that digital technology does to the persons and society. For example Cambridge Analytica, they are an expression of technology as a way of being, and what they see is untapped resources to be harvested for political gain.
The argument is so influential that Arendt appropriated it to argue that technological/scientific politics will always become self-deluding without actual human intervention. Ellul argued that the technological society becomes self-referential, so that technology creates new issues that we can only solve with technology, which creates new issues (and so on). In the end we become able to do anything... but unable to either stop the cycle or understand what is going on.
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I kinda agree with the article, I genuinely think humanity peaked with the computer of the PS2 era. Or maybe it had something to do with the patriot act. Just feels like after that things had gotten worse substantially
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The dissatisfaction is in regards to the imperative that you use all forms of tech in all aspects of your life. It is with the fact that all tech is designed around making money, not improving life. If your video games were designed around bringing joy and entertainment, then you would probably like them even more, and get more benefit from them. Instead there are loot boxes and gambling in nearly all large games.
I have never played loot box / gambling / gacha games. I will admit that I have given in and I do play games with DRMs, which are most games these days.
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Consumers don't buy stock, and deifnieltely not enough to influence trillion dollar company valuation, let's begin with that.
I never said they go for "the cheapest option, period". They are willing to spend extra if they get perceived, or real, value, like aestelhetics (your example) , social status (cars for instance) or functionality (iPhone).
I'm very far from libertarian, so let's abstain about speculating about each other's beliefs and let's talk about ideas.
Majaority of people in the world do NOT live in smaller communities, first, and tech only increases choices, second, so even if the first was true it's still an argument in favor of tech. I can get the new York times (or the helsingin sanomat) in the smallest village of Germany, again thanks to technology.
So you’re just gonna make stuff up as you feel it’s true?
“Consumers do not buy stock” lol yes they do
“iPhone can be the cheapest option” (as long as you don’t care how much you spend and it has perceived value”
“Tech only increases choices” (biggest laugh I had in a while)
“Most people in the world do not live in smaller communities”Fucking lol my dude. Sounds like you’re really projecting your life into facts of the world which is a common disease among programmers.
You know that places outside of US exist right? You know that the tech created in US cities disproportionately adversely affects 3rd world countries. If you ignore all that and go full bootlick mode on tech oligarchs then yes all you say is true, but back in the real world you couldn’t be further off base
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I understand the complaint, but the big picture of tech has a ton of upside.
Tech itself is not the issue. How it's applied is the issue.
Once tech takes hold, there is massive pressure to monetize the asset.
That's where this complaint lives. Amazing advance becomes ubiquitous, then two things inevitably occur. Companies are formed that apply the technology on unnecessary and unpopular ways (parking app is a perfect example) or the pressure to make more more MORE MONEY triggers the enshittification spiral, where "wow, you can print wirelessly now!?" becomes "my printer won't take any cartridges but brand name, and I have to watch an unskippable 30-second ad every time I print now??!!!"
It follows that as tech saturates our lives, the inevitability of enshittification will also saturate our lives.
The year is 2044, you don't feel old but the ticker is starting to skip several beats a day. Your doctor is forced to use the product at his disposal to help you, which is the PaceXMaker produced by the Tesla-Cola conglomerate. The device is a true miracle of modern science. The size of a fingernail, it pulses electricity into your heart in carefully measured bursts to support proper function of all valves, and ensures that any plaque is dissolved harmlessly away. Your iEye tracks the device status, and alerts you when it starts to run low on fuel, a proprietary enzyme designed by Tesla-Cola. When the iEye app notifies you that the enzyme is running low, simply crack open an ice cold, refreshing can of Tesla Cola Zero to refuel your device for another two hours. Need to sleep? We got you. Hook up the Tesla Cola Zero-Venous BeautyRest to your ArmDock (patent pending) for up to five hours of relaxing enzyme replenishment. You can remove the arm dock after you confirm six ad-watch minute credits on your iEye.
Tesla-Cola: We Got You
Transmetropolitan had in-dream advertising. I think you got it from breathing in some sort of gas when walking around in public.
The most unrealistic thing about the Transmetropolitan series was the fact that Spider was able to make a living as a journalist.
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More specifically, it's capitalism that is the problem, not tech.
Tech enables capitalism to take the exploitation to new lows.
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You attack capitalism in an article about tech, so let's ask how is that your takeaway, then I'll answer.
First of all, follow the thread brother, I'm not the same person you originally replied to.
Second of all, this article is just as much about capitalism as it is about "tech". If you actually read the article and just thought "this is just about tech" and not "this is about tech and how it has leaked unnecessarily into nearly every transaction", then IDK what to tell you
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First world problems: the article.
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Anytime I have to replace a device I find it incredibly frustrating. It certainly seems like technology is regressing. I've had the same phone since 2016 because nothing I've looked at has enough of it has to replace it and doesn't offer anything better to make up for those deficiencies. My mouse recently developed an issue that had me looking at potential replacements and again almost nothing currently available matches it or was even close. I found two that were potentially not a downgrade and one of those had awful reviews. Instead I'm just buying the part to fix it and hopefully I'll be able to keep limping it along for the foreseeable future. Same goes for my car. Nothing new that I've seen appeals to me. They're all loaded down with infotainment bullshit that's just a pain in the ass to deal with. Those were just 3 off the top of my head. At least with software you can usually find something open source that does what you want, but if it has to be manufactured by someone else you can forget about it.
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I hear you, but the writer isn't concerned with "can": If you replaced "can have the answer to any question in seconds from my a tiny device in my pocket" with "must" then you can see their dissatisfaction.
if I went to a restaurant and was told that I had to install and use their app to order their food, I would fucking leave. If it was the only restaurant left in town then I'd have much less choice in the matter. The insidious nature of technology is that it changes "can" with "must".
...but just like you chided the person you replied to, none of that is true or real. The restaurant that forces you to use their app doesn't exist, and it's not the only restaurant in town. None of that is even because of technology, it's because of capitalism.
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I disagree about such a generalization.
There are very few instances where people decide to be dumb and use technology for it but in general my life is much better thanks to technology.
My job exists due to technology, the Internet allows me to work from home, a washing machine washes my clothes, I can order food in the middle of a meeting and have it delivered on my lunch pause, I can speak to my family half a world away everyday, with video, for free, I can have the answer to any question in seconds from my a tiny device in my pocket, my car brakes automatically if I'm distracted (and heats up before I sit down in the morning)... you get the deal.
lunch pause
car brakes automatically if I'm distracted
These two lines paint a very sad picture.
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I hear you, but the writer isn't concerned with "can": If you replaced "can have the answer to any question in seconds from my a tiny device in my pocket" with "must" then you can see their dissatisfaction.
if I went to a restaurant and was told that I had to install and use their app to order their food, I would fucking leave. If it was the only restaurant left in town then I'd have much less choice in the matter. The insidious nature of technology is that it changes "can" with "must".
if I went to a restaurant and was told that I had to install and use their app to order their food, I would fucking leave. If it was the only restaurant left in town then I’d have much less choice in the matter. The insidious nature of technology is that it changes “can” with “must”.
That's not really the fault of technology though, that's the fault of how companies are implementing technology through their policies and procedures.
Companies can have stupid, arbitrary rules and requirements and policies and do stupid or harmful actions regardless of technology or not.
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In fantasy land you can open a competing restaurant. Back here on earth not only is that not an option for 99% of the population, most people are stuck with the couple choices they have in town and when tech comes in and forces the enshitificstion of services in order to pump stock price you’re stuck just eating this shit forever. That’s the problem. You seem to believe in “the invisible hand of the free market” when that simply doesn’t exist. Consumers aren’t rational. Investors aren’t rational. And the market is anything but free. Big tech is working really hard to make sure they have a stranglehold on every industry to make it worse and trap people into using their platforms.
most people are stuck with the couple choices they have in town and when tech comes in and forces the enshitificstion of services in order to pump stock price you’re stuck just eating this shit forever.
Is that the fault of the technology, though, or is that the fault of the companies?
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Anytime I have to replace a device I find it incredibly frustrating. It certainly seems like technology is regressing. I've had the same phone since 2016 because nothing I've looked at has enough of it has to replace it and doesn't offer anything better to make up for those deficiencies. My mouse recently developed an issue that had me looking at potential replacements and again almost nothing currently available matches it or was even close. I found two that were potentially not a downgrade and one of those had awful reviews. Instead I'm just buying the part to fix it and hopefully I'll be able to keep limping it along for the foreseeable future. Same goes for my car. Nothing new that I've seen appeals to me. They're all loaded down with infotainment bullshit that's just a pain in the ass to deal with. Those were just 3 off the top of my head. At least with software you can usually find something open source that does what you want, but if it has to be manufactured by someone else you can forget about it.
My mouse recently developed an issue that had me looking at potential replacements and again almost nothing currently available matches it or was even close.
I used the exact same Logitech MX518 mouse from ~2009 until ~2020. Then I went through one every 9 months or so until they succumbed to same problems with the scrollwheel failing until I finally had to stop buying their crap.
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I prefer the saying "technology is a tool and a tool can be used for good or evil" or something like that
You can use a hammer to hammer nails or to injure someone
Technology can make the world better if its in the right hands for example open source hardware & software
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My mouse recently developed an issue that had me looking at potential replacements and again almost nothing currently available matches it or was even close.
I used the exact same Logitech MX518 mouse from ~2009 until ~2020. Then I went through one every 9 months or so until they succumbed to same problems with the scrollwheel failing until I finally had to stop buying their crap.
Yea, this one is actually a Logitch 602 I've had for years, and it's my 3rd one after two warranty replacements so the build quality has always been questionable but I love the button layout on this mouse and the software is usually pretty good at doing what I want so I'm dreading having to replace it. There was apparently another similar one that came out a couple years ago but they don't make them anymore and from what I was reading the quality was garbage too. I still have the one from the second time I replaced it through the warranty so I'm going to replace the problematic switches on it and see how that goes.
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lunch pause
car brakes automatically if I'm distracted
These two lines paint a very sad picture.
What's sad about a lunch pause? Do I need to keep working 8 hours straight?
Or about a car braking automatically? I has saved me twice in four years, I was looking to see if someone was coming from one direction while the guy in front of me braked suddenly. Car stopped before I rear ended the other guy.
I must be missing something...
