It Was All Downhill After the Cuecat
Cory Doctorow offers some great observations in his Pluralistic newsletter about how modern technology turned from positive tool for change into dystopian bleakness.
https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/20/benevolent-dictators/#felony-contempt-of-business-model
The whole piece is chock full of insights. One part stuck with me in particular:
Last August, philosopher and Centre for Technomoral Futures director Shannon Vallor tweeted, “The saddest thing for me about modern tech’s long spiral into user manipulation and surveillance is how it has just slowly killed off the joy that people like me used to feel about new tech. Every product Meta or Amazon announces makes the future seem bleaker and grayer.”
https://twitter.com/ShannonVallor/status/1559659655097376768
This is me. I used to be fascinated by new technology, to imagine the ways it could make life better for everyone. Today, I’m worried about how to limit its destructiveness. There’s no joy in it any more. There’s also way too much of it and it’s clogging up our capacity to reason and act clearly.
I know it’s not the technology itself but how we use it. In practical terms it doesn’t make a difference though.