Author is one step away from the realization that Capitalism is the culprit, and technology is just the vector.
Technology has never been the problem: there’s nothing wrong with genetic engineering, AI, etc. They can (and have) been used for good.
The problem has always been the “greed is good” sociopaths using it for evil.
So many are…
Tech isn’t the problem. It’s the people in charge of it. It’s the capitalism/neo-feudalism controlling the politics.
Exactly. I would extend that and the article’s premise to say, tech isn’t innately good or bad, it is just a tool that can be applied in good or bad ways. For example at his cafe, a QR code ordering system could have been optional for those who prefer it, and could be easily implemented without collecting any personal data. And that could actually be a positive thing for those who want to reorder without getting up or who have social anxiety. But by forcing all customers into this confusing and privacy invading system, the tech becomes a bad thing.
The villain of that story is not tech. The villains are the online ordering company that decided to make a data grab, and the cafe owner who decided to buy tech so he wouldn’t have to pay servers.
The problem is the tech is no longer addressing and solving existing problems. It is only being inserted into working systems to collect data and fees, breaking the processes.
Open-source technology absolutely is making the world better.
People forget that technology is agnostic to morals and ideals. Which is a big part of why I support FOSS. It is tech with goals that do aim for accessibility and making the world better. I am not a huge donator as I don’t make much money, nor can I code well, but I donate and contribute where I can.
Open source analytics tools are still pushing for ad-driven business models that make the world (and the content) worse. Open source LLMs still waste computational power and pollute. And the list continues. Some open source technologies serve a good goal, some contribute to make the world as bad as some non-OSS.
tech is not the problem, corporations are.
More specifically, it’s capitalism that is the problem, not tech.
Tech enables capitalism to take the exploitation to new lows.
We don’t blame the whip, we blame the slaver
yes, that is the core of the problem. But its also too abstract to target at the moment. Those who understand dont need pointing out that it needs to go and those who dont might be able to at least see the “boils” if they cant see the disease.
focusing on the boils is meaningless; you take out one, another popus up.
the root problem needs to be addressed. i understand that people might have a difficult time understanding that, but capitalism is ultimately targeted towards making progress, and if there’s no more healthy progress to be made, it starts making unhealthy progress instead. Similar to a toe nail that won’t stop growing until you end up with an in-grown toe nail. And you know how painful that is.
but how to get people to understand that it even is a problem? So many seem to be content to constantly go against even their own interests. Its like most have been brainwashed so they attack you if you dare even suggest there is something wrong with all this. Or if they dont they will just be apathetic and throw canned “it is what it is” at you.
Agree. It’s not the tech it’s how it’s used and how business owners drive the product development and timelines.
I prefer the saying “technology is a tool and a tool can be used for good or evil” or something like that
You can use a hammer to hammer nails or to injure someone
Technology can make the world better if its in the right hands for example open source hardware & software
“La science sans conscience n’est que ruine de l’âme”
Agreed, but things act differently at scale and it’s not like there’s 10 billion+ hammers being used at the same time, almost all of the time, for years on end
You could say the same thing about splitting atoms.
That’s also technology. Used for good and evil.
Technology absolutely helps advance science and helps the disabled, It’s greedy fucks that destroyed good tech
Yeah I think blanket statements either way are misguided. Some tech does help the disabled, other tech makes their lives much more difficult. It’s like any other tool, when it’s used at scale by something aiming for optimizing profit it will have terrible side effects
sure, some tech makes life more difficult, but it’d be weird to require it’s use, so you’re either going to go through a bad government structure (different problem) or choose to use bad products for some reason.
I guess the secret third answer is working somewhere that requires you to use shitty tech, but like, same problem as no 1.
I find the bigger problem to be implementation and support, shit like QR codes and phone based payment taking over things like paper, and card based payment, that’s objectively worse. Though both QR codes and phone based payment are in isolation, explicitly good and beneficial things.
I understand the complaint, but the big picture of tech has a ton of upside.
Tech itself is not the issue. How it’s applied is the issue.
Once tech takes hold, there is massive pressure to monetize the asset.
That’s where this complaint lives. Amazing advance becomes ubiquitous, then two things inevitably occur. Companies are formed that apply the technology on unnecessary and unpopular ways (parking app is a perfect example) or the pressure to make more more MORE MONEY triggers the enshittification spiral, where “wow, you can print wirelessly now!?” becomes “my printer won’t take any cartridges but brand name, and I have to watch an unskippable 30-second ad every time I print now??!!!”
It follows that as tech saturates our lives, the inevitability of enshittification will also saturate our lives.
The year is 2044, you don’t feel old but the ticker is starting to skip several beats a day. Your doctor is forced to use the product at his disposal to help you, which is the PaceXMaker produced by the Tesla-Cola conglomerate. The device is a true miracle of modern science. The size of a fingernail, it pulses electricity into your heart in carefully measured bursts to support proper function of all valves, and ensures that any plaque is dissolved harmlessly away. Your iEye tracks the device status, and alerts you when it starts to run low on fuel, a proprietary enzyme designed by Tesla-Cola. When the iEye app notifies you that the enzyme is running low, simply crack open an ice cold, refreshing can of Tesla Cola Zero to refuel your device for another two hours. Need to sleep? We got you. Hook up the Tesla Cola Zero-Venous BeautyRest to your ArmDock (patent pending) for up to five hours of relaxing enzyme replenishment. You can remove the arm dock after you confirm six ad-watch minute credits on your iEye.
Tesla-Cola: We Got You
I would say Tech with a capital T includes not just physical or cloud tech, but the whole process, down to shitty Product Owners and business teams, delivery crap features to customers.
Transmetropolitan had in-dream advertising. I think you got it from breathing in some sort of gas when walking around in public.
The most unrealistic thing about the Transmetropolitan series was the fact that Spider was able to make a living as a journalist.
Tech itself is not the issue. How it’s applied is the issue.
At this point, I would argue that technology is the issue. Or, at least, the current iteration of it.
Internal Combustion Engines, always-on internet connections, and digital financial systems are generating real physical hazards that stretch beyond their benefits. This isn’t just an issue of use. There is no “proper” method of employing - for instance - cryptocurrency or single-use plastics or a statewide surveillance network that doesn’t result in a degradation of quality of life for the population at large. To take a more dramatic angle, there’s no safe application of a nuclear bomb.
When the iEye app notifies you that the enzyme is running low, simply crack open an ice cold, refreshing can of Tesla Cola Zero to refuel your device for another two hours. Need to sleep? We got you.
Except this isn’t a technological innovation, its a Science Fantasy. iEye isn’t a real thing. Tesla Cola Zero isn’t a real thing. Not needing sleep isn’t a real thing. You’re not a cyborg and you will never be a cyborg.
But the science fantasy is still having its own cost. People are making real material nationally-transformative (or de-transformative) decisions based on the fantastic promises we’ve been sold about Tomorrow. We’re underdeveloping our mass transit infrastructure and relying entirely too much on unregulated air travel to speed up travel. At the same time, we’re clinging to old bunker-fuel laden container ships and decimating the aquatic ecology, because we refuse to adapt proven nuclear powered shipping that’s over 60 years old at this point. We’re investing more and more and more money in digital surveillance and personal tracking. We’re off-loading our ability to collect and process information to unreliable digital tools (LLMs being only the latest in overhyped AI as a replacement for professionalized human labor). And then we’re trying to justify the bad decisions we make as a result by claiming secret wisdom inherent in machines.
We’re eating our seed corn after being told technologists will eliminate our need to eat ever again.
This is a direct result of technological developments we have made (or promised to make and failed to deliver) over the last twenty years. Revolutions in racial profiling, viral marketing, planned obsolescence, military expansionism, and genocide have not improved our quality of life in any material sense.
The cow has not benefited from industrial agriculture. And the prole has not benefited from de-skilling of labor.
…always with the verification cans.
My phone struggled to load the site to order a single cold brew, pop-ups to install the custom App kept obscuring the options, and I had to register with my phone number, email address, and first and last name to buy a $5 cup of coffee.
Then walk out. Don’t reward the bullshit with your money. The coffee shop ain’t gonna give a shit if you keep buying coffee just to go home and complain on your blog.
Came here to say this. I will never be compelled to install an app on my phone by an eatery the first time I go there. That is severely hostile design. Don’t willingly inconvenience yourself just to freely provide them your tracking info to sell.
Or… ask the staff for a menu, order with them, respectfully let them know how you feel about the qr/app thing (unlikely it was their decision to implement but they can pass on the complaint), and if they’re unwilling to take your order (which is hopefully unlikely at this point) feel free to make a little stink (if you feel inclined) and walk out. Still ok to complain on your blog about being spammed with the app but I’d rather try the obvious options first rather than expect the owners to heuristically discover via non-returning customers that we really don’t want the app.
That is, if the coffee/food/service is good, otherwise yea fuck em
Boy do I have a story for you.
I tried to order a quesadilla from chipotle. An online exclusive. Turns out online ordering for the location nearest me was broken so I went in and explained that I was unable to order it, and I asked if I can just get one anyway. They flat out said no.
They refused to sell me a cheese quesadilla simply because it wasn’t ordered through their app/site which was broken. I just left and got food somewhere else.
I’ve been boycotting chipotle ever since.
Lemmy really needs a community for good fast food copycat recipes so we can make it ourselves instead of having to rely on fastfood establishments
Mate, it’s a cheese quesadilla. It’s two tortillas, cheese, and heat…
Joking aside, there are a few out there. A lot of people are surprisingly into figuring out copycatting popular fast food.
That’s assuming the employees give enough of a shit to pass the feedback on to the owners, and that the owners give enough of a shit to listen.
Yeah, it’s better if you make it known why you’re not giving them your business, but if it doesn’t appreciably impact their revenue then most owners won’t care either way.
Maybe they did? You’re kinda missing the point though, which is that this stuff is becoming more and more common and will be nigh-unavoidable in the future.
It’s clear they did not walk out.
By the time I placed my order - paying a 1% fee to the app makers in the process - I would have happily paid double for the experience of simply flipping through a menu and talking to another human being.
(Emphasis mine.) This is from the very next paragraph after what I quoted.
You also clearly missed the point of my comment, which is that unless consumers start refusing to take this bullshit lying down, this stuff will be unavoidable in the future because there will be no other choices left.
You also clearly missed the point of my comment
I understood your point completely. Yet mine somehow still zipped over your head. This is not a choice any particular individual can make. Other people make that choice for you.
“Science” and technology under capitalism are regressive forces for violent control.
I don’t agree. Technology in itself is not helpful nor harmful. It’s a tool like a hammer or a knife or a pen and a block of paper.
I agree if one says that technology makes it easier to do harm.:) People and their motives and actions are the same as always, since the stone age and ago.
Tech speeds things up. If you want to do good, it’ll help you do it faster. If you want to do evil, it’ll help you do it faster.
A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention with the possible exceptions of handguns and Tequila.
—Mitch Ratcliffe
in my opinion, at this point of history, FAST is inherently detrimental. Only those with privilege and resources are able to adapt to rapid changes and reap their benefits, while the rest are left behind.
Which changes rules, but not the resulting balance or lack thereof.
Yep.
I think the real problem is the drive to monetize so much of the technology. For instance, product owners continually try to increase engagement in their stupid apps and continually move things around and add new widgets that people don’t want, or use, all while continuing to degrade the experience of the features that they do use.
It goes both ways: look at how much Lemmy usage has grown, and Lemmy’s existence is due to technology. We can protest with our dollars and time by leaving such products behind. Greed is independent of tech itself.
Oh for sure…and I’m here after slashdot stopped listening to users, then digg, then Reddit …
Right, so the buck stops here with FOSS, finally!
… 🤞
That would be nice! I did get 16 years out of Reddit at least before giving up…
I think when most people say something like “technology is making the world worse” they mean the technology as it actually exists and as it is actually developing, not the abstract sense of possible futures that technology could feasibly deliver.
That is clearly what the author of the piece meant.
If the main focus of people who develop most technology is getting people more addicted to their devices so they are easier to exploit then technology sucks. If the main focus is to generate immoral levels of waste to scam venture capitalists and idiots on the internet then technology sucks. If the main focus is to use technology to monetize every aspect of someone’s existence, then I think it is fair to say that technology, at this point in history, sucks.
Saying “technology is neutral” is not super insightful if, in the present moment, the trend in technological development and its central applications are mostly evil.
Saying “technology is neutral” is worse than unhelpful if, in the present moment, the people who want to use technology to harm others are also using that cliche to justify their antisocial behavior.
When the discussion is about whether technology + an unregulated human society is likely to end badly, then there is not much to discuss.
There are real life test series. In the 80s many countries put rules into place which forced the industry to filter/ treat their emissions. Technology gooood.
Some countries restrict their people’s access to personal fire arms more than others. Statistics show that shootings are more likely, when everybody has a gun. Technology baaad.
In my opinion it is mostly about the common rules a society agrees on. Technology amplifies both ways and needs to be moderated when it is misused.
Fentanyl is a technology.
I didn’t find the article particularly insightful but I don’t like your way of thinking about tech. Technology and society make each other together. Obviously, technology choices like mass transit vs cars shape our lives in ways that the pens example doesn’t help us explain. Similarly, society shapes the way that we make technology. Technology is constrained by the rules of the physical world, but that is an underconstraint. The leftover space (i.e. the vast majority) is the process through which we embed social values into the technology. To return to the example of mass transit vs cars, these obviously have different embedded values within them, which then go on to shape the world that we make around them.
This way of thinking helps explain why computer technology specifically is so awful: Computers are shockingly general purpose in a way that has no parallel in physical products. This means that the underconstraining is more pronounced, so social values have an even more outsized say in how they get made. This is why every other software product is just the pure manifestation of capitalism in a way that a robotic arm could never be.
edit to add that this argument is adapted from Andrew Feenberg’s “Transforming Technology”
I like the way you argument but I’m not able to grasp what you try to say entirely. English isn’t my native language, this may play into it.
Technology is constrained by the rules of the physical world, but that is an underconstraint.
I. e this sentence.:) Would you rephrase it and give an additional example?
I kind of get the mass transit vs. cars example. Although I think both options have their advantages and disadvantages. It becomes very apparent to me when… Lets say, when you give everyone a car and send them all together into rush hour and transform our cities into something well suited for cars but not so much for people. But that doesn’t make the wheel or the engine evil in itself.
Also: The society and and it’s values affects technology which in turn affects the environment the society lives in. Yes, I get that when I think i.e. about the industrialisation in the 19th century.
I struggle with the idea that a tool (like a computer) is bad because is too general purpose. Society hence the people and their values define how the tool is used. Would you elaborate on that? I’d like to understand the idea.
No problem!
Technology is constrained by the rules of the physical world, but that is an underconstraint.
Example: Let’s say that there’s a factory, and the factory has a machine that makes whatever. The machine takes 2 people to operate. The thing needs to get made, so that limits the number of possible designs, but there are still many open questions like, for example, should the workers face each other or face away from each other? The boss might make them face away from each other, that way they don’t chat and get distracted. If the workers get to choose, they’d prefer to face each other to make the work more pleasant. In this way, the values of society are embedded in the design of the machine itself.
I struggle with the idea that a tool (like a computer) is bad because is too general purpose. Society hence the people and their values define how the tool is used. Would you elaborate on that? I’d like to understand the idea.
I love computers! It’s not that they’re bad, but that, 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.
I agree with you that good/evil is not a productive way to think about it, just like I don’t think neutrality is right either. Instead, I think that our technology contains within it a reflection of who got to make those many design decisions, like which direction should the workers sit. These decisions accumulate. I personally think that capitalism sucks, so technology under capitalism, after a few hundred years, also sucks, since that technology contains within it hundreds of years of capitalist decision-making.
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?
I’d say that’s mostly right, but it’s less about opportunities, and more about design. To return to the example of the factory: Let’s say that there was a communist revolution and the workers now own the factory. The machines still have them facing away from each other. If they want to face each other, they’ll have to rebuild the machine. The values of the old system are literally physically present in the machine.
So it’s not that you can do different things with a technology based on your values, but that different values produce technology differently. This actually limits future possibilities. Those workers physically cannot face each other on that machine, even if they want to use it that way. The past’s values are frozen in that machine.
OK. That makes sense. It is more expensive (time, money) to reinvent a present technology, so it takes less effort to base further development on the currently available design.
I think I basically agree with you and the author here. People applying technology have a responsibility to apply it in ways that are constructive, not harmful. Technology is a force multiplier, in that it makes it easy to achieve goals, in a value neutral sense.
But way too many people are applying technology in evil ways, extracting value instead of creating it, making things worse rather than better. It’s an epidemic. Tech can make things better, and theoretically it should, but lately, it’s hard to say it has, on the net.
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
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.
Yes. That’s an aspect to keep in mind.
I think distorted is a bit negative. Communication with filters, yes. I see advantages and disadvantages. It really depends on the case. It’s technology-bound but not exclusive to the digital age - Letters existed before.
Advantages: asynchronity, time to think and reply. Use of different media. Less stressful because less information to process - there is a reason why video telephony isn’t mainstream. Less bias, for all you know I could be Gregor Samsa - you don’t see my gender, age, skin, clothing style. just my text. Disadvantages: misunderstandings can become more likely, since you dont know me. It’s more time consuming to talk through an issue… and so on.
See for example Heidegger, Ellul, Arendt.
Would you recommend one specific article or book?
For recommendations you can’t go wrong with Martin Heidegger’s The Question Concerning Technology. It’s a difficult read without previous knowledge of Heidegger’s philosophy (or phenomenology), but the essay is so influential that there is plenty of secondary literature on it, from videos to podcasts to texts.
His argument, in essence, is that technology is a way of being that makes everything appear as resources for technology to use. As we become a technological society we see people as “human resources”, nature as a depot to be emptied: wind as power, rivers as kinetic energy, the ground as a chest of minerals.
The same phenomenon can also be seen in everything that digital technology does to the persons and society. For example Cambridge Analytica, they are an expression of technology as a way of being, and what they see is untapped resources to be harvested for political gain.
The argument is so influential that Arendt appropriated it to argue that technological/scientific politics will always become self-deluding without actual human intervention. Ellul argued that the technological society becomes self-referential, so that technology creates new issues that we can only solve with technology, which creates new issues (and so on). In the end we become able to do anything… but unable to either stop the cycle or understand what is going on.
Thanks. From your answer I get that there is some philosophical basic knowledge which I’m missing.
If nothing else, now I have heard the name Heidegger in this context.:)
I think a clear distinction to make might be:
“Tech” as used in this sense is the industrial complex around mobile and web technologies dominated by a few players who might just be evil.
“Technology” is, of course, everything you mentioned and more. A rock that fits nicely in your hand becomes technology when used to crack a coconut.
It’s a weird linguistic murkiness, isn’t it?
The field of language, the meaning of words in different contexts… Communication in general, they wrote books over books about it…
Yes. Murky. :)
the article is talking about both, or perhaps conflates the two. QR code menus.
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.
Or like the death ray!
(Futurama reference)
The original use of what we now think of as a “spoon” originally had nothing to do with food.
1000 years ago they would chain slaves neck to neck. They’d use the spoon to carve out everybodies eyes except the first guy in the line. Slaves don’t need to see. They just need to carry heavy shit. The first slave can see. The rest just need to go where their neck drags them.
I say all this to agree with you. Technology isn’t the source of corruption and evil. It is just a tool. Just like a spoon. I use my spoon to eat cereal. Others use the spoon to carve out peoples eyes. The spoon is not evil. The spoon is a tool.
This feels super duper made up
Go yell at the history channel, circa 1996.
So yeah. Super duper made up.
Never heard of this spoon invention story. I have doubts.:) I’m almost certain that eyes have been carved out by means of spoon. War, civil unrest and suppression of weaker minorities show that we have it in us.
Atomic bombs are also tools with no moral compass of their own.
I disagree about such a generalization.
There are very few instances where people decide to be dumb and use technology for it but in general my life is much better thanks to technology.
My job exists due to technology, the Internet allows me to work from home, a washing machine washes my clothes, I can order food in the middle of a meeting and have it delivered on my lunch pause, I can speak to my family half a world away everyday, with video, for free, I can have the answer to any question in seconds from my a tiny device in my pocket, my car brakes automatically if I’m distracted (and heats up before I sit down in the morning)… you get the deal.
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”.
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”.
That’s not really the fault of technology though, that’s the fault of how companies are implementing technology through their policies and procedures.
Companies can have stupid, arbitrary rules and requirements and policies and do stupid or harmful actions regardless of technology or not.
I don’t think it’s fair to blame tech for company policies.
…but just like you chided the person you replied to, none of that is true or real. The restaurant that forces you to use their app doesn’t exist, and it’s not the only restaurant in town. None of that is even because of technology, it’s because of capitalism.
The restaurant that forces you to use their app doesn’t exist
Here is one such restaurant (have to use their website via QR code, but same idea) near where I live: https://maps.app.goo.gl/6LhBMo5duVzSB9HE9
That said, it’s clearly not the only restaurant in town, and nobody is forcing a gun to your head to eat there.
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.
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.
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.
Is that the fault of the technology, though, or is that the fault of the companies?
Companies can have stupid, arbitrary rules and requirements and policies and do stupid or harmful actions regardless of technology or not.
I don’t think it’s fair to blame tech for company policies.
I keep hearing about it’s just “fault of companies” as if companies weren’t lead by the tech bros. By that logic all the pollution BP and other oil companies cause is just company decisions ! It’s not the fault of oil that greedy oil barons exist… yet it’s the burning oil causing the pollution (admittedly not best example but sort of holds)
Often times the tech companies try to “disrupt” a particular industry by providing a tech based approach and then lobbying the legacy business out of existence thus limiting your choices. This is why the tech enshitification works, because there is no real competition. The uber wealthy simply force feed you what they want. Uber, Netflix, and Amazon all operated at a loss specifically to be able to starve out legitimate businesses and limit your choice to only what they provide. Now we don’t have much of independent book stores, taxis outside of big metro hubs, and god only knows what’s going on with streaming service prices.
The ultimate fuck you from modern tech is the “if you don’t like it, don’t use it” while at the same time they work tirelessly for their tech “solution” to be the only choice.
So yea a ton of tech sucks and exists only to extract value out of its users and not solve any concrete issue
Again, tech doesn’t FORCE anything, people choose to fuck customers (and workers) and sometimes happen to use tech as an excuse. You don’t need any tech to raise prices or lower wages, and those are some of the biggest problem we have. Whether I use an app or coins to pay for my parking is not the issue.
In a world with lobbyists, monopolies, big corporations donating billions to politicians, a QR code is nowhere near the top of the problem list.
And consumers are quite rational, the go consistently for the cheapest option that fulfills their need. You see it in online services, electronics, flights, etc.
Surely you can have your cake and eat it too, right?
I don’t understand the question…
If consumers were rational Tesla stock wouldn’t be where it is, meme coins wouldn’t exist, nft craze wouldn’t have happened (btw all examples of tech spending money to trick dumb people). Consumers routinely DO NOT go for the cheapest possible option but frequently get tricked by stupid gimmicks and smoke and mirrors. For example - Colgate started wrapping their toothpaste boxes in a clear plastic that sparkles under grocery store lights. Despite raising prices, introducing wasteful plastic, and increased packaging costs they increased market share and profits - that’s not rational. You seem to have been sold on libertarian delusions.
I never mentioned salaries and I very distinctly did mention that majority of the people in the world live in smaller communities with limited choices. If a tech overlord buys out their businesses (e.g buying all local newspaper and replacing them with mostly ai slop and agenda articles) there are not many alternatives. Insisting that because you have some choice in some matters it means everyone does is naive … and also another example of an irrational consumer lol
Consumers don’t buy stock, and deifnieltely not enough to influence trillion dollar company valuation, let’s begin with that.
I never said they go for “the cheapest option, period”. They are willing to spend extra if they get perceived, or real, value, like aestelhetics (your example) , social status (cars for instance) or functionality (iPhone).
I’m very far from libertarian, so let’s abstain about speculating about each other’s beliefs and let’s talk about ideas.
Majaority of people in the world do NOT live in smaller communities, first, and tech only increases choices, second, so even if the first was true it’s still an argument in favor of tech. I can get the new York times (or the helsingin sanomat) in the smallest village of Germany, again thanks to technology.
So you’re just gonna make stuff up as you feel it’s true?
“Consumers do not buy stock” lol yes they do “iPhone can be the cheapest option” (as long as you don’t care how much you spend and it has perceived value” “Tech only increases choices” (biggest laugh I had in a while) “Most people in the world do not live in smaller communities”
Fucking lol my dude. Sounds like you’re really projecting your life into facts of the world which is a common disease among programmers.
You know that places outside of US exist right? You know that the tech created in US cities disproportionately adversely affects 3rd world countries. If you ignore all that and go full bootlick mode on tech oligarchs then yes all you say is true, but back in the real world you couldn’t be further off base
but it beats working 12h a day in the field to feed my familiy.
btw, people didn’t work 12 h a day in the field
the long work days are a result of capitalism. yes, progress has increased average work hours, instead of decreasing them.
People back then didn’t have Healthcare, cars or iPhones. I like all of those.
Communist countries work even longer hours, look for instance 996 in China.
This is the problem with capitalism. What a sick world view.
The solution is… more monopolies? Please enlighten me.
How was that your takeaway from this thread
You attack capitalism in an article about tech, so let’s ask how is that your takeaway, then I’ll answer.
First of all, follow the thread brother, I’m not the same person you originally replied to.
Second of all, this article is just as much about capitalism as it is about “tech”. If you actually read the article and just thought “this is just about tech” and not “this is about tech and how it has leaked unnecessarily into nearly every transaction”, then IDK what to tell you
I agree. Tech is like fire, handle it responsibly.
lunch pause
car brakes automatically if I’m distracted
These two lines paint a very sad picture.
What’s sad about a lunch pause? Do I need to keep working 8 hours straight?
Or about a car braking automatically? I has saved me twice in four years, I was looking to see if someone was coming from one direction while the guy in front of me braked suddenly. Car stopped before I rear ended the other guy.
I must be missing something…
Yeah, idk what the other guy was talking about. But, I’ve ridden with someone that apparently got dependent on that automatic braking feature. He “used” something like 5 times during a 1.5 hour trip.
That sounds super uncomfortable, the emergency braking is quite brutal…
The sad part as I read it is that you actually have to work 8 hours at all. Productivity has increased more than thrice in the last few decades, yet, the early industrialization 8+ hours are still the norm while it has been proven to be unproductive for most jobs and defiantly unhealthy. Or at least that is what I interpret into it. There are different models of work breaks, I think the french have a somewhat long lunch break because they celebrate it more while other work cultures are more on the nutrition acquisition road
I don’t have to, I could go half-day and have a decent living, maybe downsizing the house a bit, but I like the big house and the fast car, and the sushi for lunch.
I think you hit the head on the nail.
I had an Amazon bot lie to me. I told it some item didn’t show up and I wanted a replacement. It said it would send one and it would show up in my orders. It never did. So I requested a refund later. So tedious.
You see, it actually did still save you time from finding a local shop that sells it and interacting with your neighbor
Yeah my neighbors suck
If you use and consequently support scummy Amazon you fully deserve it.
Oh I’m so sorry someone asked for an enamel pin from Amazon. Maybe next time someone asks me for a gift from somewhere I’ll subject them to a purity test.
apology not accepted
Tech =/= megacorps
That’s like saying food doesn’t make the world better where you mean food industry megacorps producing hunger & poverty.
Consumer technology I can see being very toxic and also toxic for the environment because people don’t know how to recycle or purchase correctly. Commercial tech like IoT is going to help save the planet and support the majority with them knowing.
