I'm Tired of Pretending Tech is Making the World Better
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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?
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The field of language, the meaning of words in different contexts... Communication in general, they wrote books over books about it...
Yes. Murky.
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Technology is not neutral, and philosophers have known this since the middle of the 20th century. See for example Heidegger, Ellul, Arendt.
Technology makes us relate to the world and others in a distorted way. 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. Compare this then to politics, earth, society, where technology have the same effect
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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".
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Yep, I also been growing older and I have nostalgia for old times. But I'm well aware that grass is only greener on my memory, as it has always been.
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Times change. I see nothing wrong with it. Same as you used to be able to park without paying, then you started to pay, and now it's moving from those machines to phone apps.
It's just nostalgia working. Things change. You were more capable of dealing with change at a younger age and that's why you see the older the people get the more they complain about everything.
But is just a change, like many other that came before that.
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You can just answer "fine" and I'll be satisfied though, it's really easy to sus out who wants to chat up their barista and who just wants to go in, order, get out. I'm not seeking to force anyone into a conversation they don't want, I just want a faint acknowledgment of my humanity, you know?
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I agree. Tech is like fire, handle it responsibly.
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Prime video I don't know so well, but YouTube was free without ads in the beginning, for something that is incredibly expensive to run. They had to introduce any monetization or shut down the service. They went with ads because 99% of users prefer that to payment. Later they gave the option to pay to remove the ads, only as an extra, because very few people are ready to do that.
There are some ad-free video platforms out there but they have a tiny fraction of the user base of YouTube. Most people couldn't even name one, let alone considering using it, when YouTube is "free".
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Not everyone wants to socially interact. That's something to respect.
I tend to prioritize not-human services, as social interaction exhaust me.
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I agree, and good for you for leaving the restaurant. You could open a competing restaurant that doesn't use apps and let people vote with their wallets. It's not the nature of technology, its the decision of some people who are bad at knowing their customers. I don't "have to" wash my clothes in the washing machine, but you bet I won't even think about doing it manually. Forcing the use of an app is like only offering a vegan selection. If your customer didn't ask for it you are going to have a bad time. If you are the only place in town is a monopoly problem, and a different discussion.
Having to use an app to order food might be slightly annoying, but it beats working 12h a day in the field to feed my familiy. It's the firstest of first world problems.
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Good God you people are deep in the sauce. Just straight up ignoring the fact that tech enabled propaganda to be spammed in people's faces 24/7. It's so obviously a net drag on society at this point. But don't dare take away my dopamine rush.
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The problem isn't the tech, it's the people who are controlling the tech.
The tech is literally made by those by people. The tech itself is in fact the problem. You will never have a version of something like social media that's actually healthy. One way or the other someone with power will get their hands on it and abuse it.
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I feel like that's the entire point of the article. These technological "solutions" are being forced on us more and more and they are often I'll conceived. Like QR ordering only systems.
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I had to give up using the lockers at the post office when they started requiring an app that my phone at the time was too old for. (I don’t really care about phones; I use other people’s hand-me-downs.) Too much of all this cleverness is just making the world more complicated, complex, and expensive. Meh. I can use my tablet now but still resent these swipey-wipey ad delivery devices.
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This is the problem with capitalism. What a sick world view.
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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.
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tech is not the problem, corporations are.
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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.
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