Heading for the cliff

Not to sound gloomy or depressing, but I’m afraid that, realistically, the chances of this ¹ ending well are slim. Technology, I feel, used to be more closely connected to serving human progress: enabling, facilitating, empowering. That has not always been a naive notion, I suppose. There are things that humans built, such as simple to complex tools, institutions and infrastructure that have had a net positive effect. Reducing arduous and difficult labor, reducing suffering, delivering better medical care, broader access to education and knowledge, increased mobility, communication,… that kind of thing.

But the point of convergenece tech, capitalism, politics, the market(s), the entirety of it all are heading to now is, frankly, bleak. I can see why some people despair over it.

As much as technology has advanced up to now, it seems to be combined all too well with a set of incentives that are drawing the part of the world that I am the most familiar with, ”Western”, into the gutter. Strange attractors.

Technological determinism as moral absolution. The future is fixed. Our only choice is whether to build it first. Therefore, nothing we do along the way requires justification, because the destination was never in our hands. They’re making the same argument as the Marxists who sent dissidents to the gulag.

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My concern is how insufficiently educated – although this is not about any formal education but more about experience, which is even harder to come by – the general public and those who could be doing something in terms of regulation are. The hype train and the narrative which have been pushed relentlessly, in combination with the rate and speed at which things are happening, or have been happening, makes it unlikely that anyone’s got a chance to catch up. I mean, keeping up is hard enough as it is.

These loomimng IPOs this year feel like a season finale. I want to know how it ends. And I am afraid.

via Owen McGrann

Footnotes

1. All of it, really. ↩