Brad, for your point #6, why do you believe that the “technology-domination-society-technology loop is likely to be stronger and more durable the slower is overall technological progress”? As you’ve shown in "Slouching…", technology is increasing MUCH faster than in the past, and look where we are, with our present polarization and existential threat of climate change. Which brings me to your points #4 and #5, if we aren’t getting the solutions to present-day problems with our present-day “anthology intelligence,” why do you expect it will be any better in the future? I think you’re reading into A&J what you want to read, based on your biases, which seem to be similar to Noah’s. My biases tend to be along the same lines as Farrell’s and I read that A&J want exactly what you stated in your point #10: “The key task is to keep the locus of innovation outside of organizations that have a strong incentive to eliminate workers, and deskill those workers they do not eliminate. The key task is not to smash the machines.”
WIth slow technological progress oligarchies have time to see what is coming and hammer out internal compromises as to how to handle it. By contrast, when all that is solid melts into air humanity comes face to face with reality rather than having its vision clouded by oligarchial lies.
Brad, please read my whole comment above. I think you missed my point in that we now have fast tech progress, as you pointed out in “Slouching...,” yet from that we've grown Trump and climate change, which seem to negate your point about oligarchies. Look what our “anthology intelligence” has so far given us. We now have inverted totalitarianism (rule by corporations). How is that better?
Kevin kelly in his book "What Technology Wants" comes down on teh side of technology is a net positive, although he does devote some time to support the Amish careful consideration of new technologies. But his overarching theme is that technology is almost an agency in itself, working through the human hosts. Brian Arthur's "The Nature of Technology" emphasizes the combinatorial explosion of technologies as each new technology multiplies teh technological possibilities.
What these books imply is that while costly new technologies can be created by the wealthy and connected, how those technologies can be used is not in the creators' control. In the IT world, the creation of cheap computers and free software languages and code libraries has led to an explosion of software. Much is crap (like most smartphone apps), but some are important and liberating - as writing once was - and is now leveraged by social and publishing platforms. [Musk thinks he can control Xitter, but it really controls him.)
Noah states that there is no way to know in advance how technology will impact society. That is true. It is also an argument against technocrats in control of new technologies, e.g. nuclear power. Software is both beneficial, but also problematic when used to create malware like ransonware. Torrents may drive the controlers of content livid due to their belief that "copying is theft" but to most people, creating music tapes, watching tv on ones own schedule with DVRs, and yes, piracy too, all evade the control of the gatekeepers and benefit the public at large. If/when 3D printers become as ubiquitous as paper printers, this could change the dynamics of the pricing of replacement parts, as well as creation of new parts unforeseen by the manufacturer.
That I do not have to live a short life hunting game with a sharp stick or stone, or even worse, toil at subsistence farming, is surely a boon of technology. Isn't one argument in "Slouching towards Utopia" that technology was the key to escaping the Malthusian Trap (at least for now) allowing us to lead more comfortable lives, despite the predations of political authoritarians and exploitative industrialists and now techbros?
"By contrast, nonprofit bureaucracies—and crazed individuals who want to change the world rather than just make lots of money—are much much more likely to want to try to develop, in Steve Jobs’s phrase, "bicycles for the mind"."
Really? I'd say that the primary goal of any bureaucracy is to maintain itself. For any governmental bureaucracy, failure "proves" that additional appropriations are needed. Public housing programs in the U.S. don't provide housing for the poor; they provide jobs for middle-class bureaucrats, lawyers, consultants, et al. That is their job, and they do it well. This is equally true of other government agencies. The Afghan War is a stunning monument to the unwillingness of the "military intellectual complex" in the U.S. to admit that they don't know what they're doing. So what if it cost $2 trillion and thousands and thousands of lives! At least we had our careers!
#7 (like everything) reminds me of tax reform. [Key joke about the psychiatric patient for whom all the Rorschach blobs remind him of sex.]
Tax reform to
a) untax wage labor, delinking health insurance from employment and financing stage f life transfers of consumption with a VAT
b) tax away some of the wealth created by the new technology to create demand for the technologically displaced labor in new products and services.
c) reduce deficits so as to increase investment (including R&D) and the creation of future income.
Brad, for your point #6, why do you believe that the “technology-domination-society-technology loop is likely to be stronger and more durable the slower is overall technological progress”? As you’ve shown in "Slouching…", technology is increasing MUCH faster than in the past, and look where we are, with our present polarization and existential threat of climate change. Which brings me to your points #4 and #5, if we aren’t getting the solutions to present-day problems with our present-day “anthology intelligence,” why do you expect it will be any better in the future? I think you’re reading into A&J what you want to read, based on your biases, which seem to be similar to Noah’s. My biases tend to be along the same lines as Farrell’s and I read that A&J want exactly what you stated in your point #10: “The key task is to keep the locus of innovation outside of organizations that have a strong incentive to eliminate workers, and deskill those workers they do not eliminate. The key task is not to smash the machines.”
WIth slow technological progress oligarchies have time to see what is coming and hammer out internal compromises as to how to handle it. By contrast, when all that is solid melts into air humanity comes face to face with reality rather than having its vision clouded by oligarchial lies.
Brad, please read my whole comment above. I think you missed my point in that we now have fast tech progress, as you pointed out in “Slouching...,” yet from that we've grown Trump and climate change, which seem to negate your point about oligarchies. Look what our “anthology intelligence” has so far given us. We now have inverted totalitarianism (rule by corporations). How is that better?
Kevin kelly in his book "What Technology Wants" comes down on teh side of technology is a net positive, although he does devote some time to support the Amish careful consideration of new technologies. But his overarching theme is that technology is almost an agency in itself, working through the human hosts. Brian Arthur's "The Nature of Technology" emphasizes the combinatorial explosion of technologies as each new technology multiplies teh technological possibilities.
What these books imply is that while costly new technologies can be created by the wealthy and connected, how those technologies can be used is not in the creators' control. In the IT world, the creation of cheap computers and free software languages and code libraries has led to an explosion of software. Much is crap (like most smartphone apps), but some are important and liberating - as writing once was - and is now leveraged by social and publishing platforms. [Musk thinks he can control Xitter, but it really controls him.)
Noah states that there is no way to know in advance how technology will impact society. That is true. It is also an argument against technocrats in control of new technologies, e.g. nuclear power. Software is both beneficial, but also problematic when used to create malware like ransonware. Torrents may drive the controlers of content livid due to their belief that "copying is theft" but to most people, creating music tapes, watching tv on ones own schedule with DVRs, and yes, piracy too, all evade the control of the gatekeepers and benefit the public at large. If/when 3D printers become as ubiquitous as paper printers, this could change the dynamics of the pricing of replacement parts, as well as creation of new parts unforeseen by the manufacturer.
That I do not have to live a short life hunting game with a sharp stick or stone, or even worse, toil at subsistence farming, is surely a boon of technology. Isn't one argument in "Slouching towards Utopia" that technology was the key to escaping the Malthusian Trap (at least for now) allowing us to lead more comfortable lives, despite the predations of political authoritarians and exploitative industrialists and now techbros?
"By contrast, nonprofit bureaucracies—and crazed individuals who want to change the world rather than just make lots of money—are much much more likely to want to try to develop, in Steve Jobs’s phrase, "bicycles for the mind"."
Really? I'd say that the primary goal of any bureaucracy is to maintain itself. For any governmental bureaucracy, failure "proves" that additional appropriations are needed. Public housing programs in the U.S. don't provide housing for the poor; they provide jobs for middle-class bureaucrats, lawyers, consultants, et al. That is their job, and they do it well. This is equally true of other government agencies. The Afghan War is a stunning monument to the unwillingness of the "military intellectual complex" in the U.S. to admit that they don't know what they're doing. So what if it cost $2 trillion and thousands and thousands of lives! At least we had our careers!