More on the signs of the reversal of technological progress: it’s interesting that Goia frames it as a reversal of progress. The signs he discusses are evidence that high technology is worsening as a tool. If high tech was actually being dismantled, I’d be happy. But it’s just increasingly bad.
Denny Henke It seems like the root problem is capitalism, no? That's too simplistic of course because there's the interplay between capitalism, tech, culture and so much more. So many fascinating questions to something like this. Our making of tools seems so fundamental to our nature. It's what we do.
That said, some tools seem more problematic than others because they allow us to leverage in ways that magnify long-term harm without understanding what it is we are doing. I think I should stop there before this becomes a comment that goes on forever. 🤣 Just know that you've sent me down a rabbit hole of thought. 🤓
jabel @Denny Oh, for sure. The imperative of growth. No one asks if we should make the next advance. There’s no community check on “progress”, as with the Amish. They evaluate their tool usage based on the common good of the community. Of course, those systems have problems of their own but I think we’re seeing that unregulated advancement may be worse.
Donny C @Denny I was flipping through a book at the store today (don’t recall the title) that had as an epigraph that famous Oppenheimer quote: “When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success.” A fitting epigraph, perhaps, for the entire 20th and now 21st centuries