It’s not about justice. It’s about homeostasis. The guy and possibly his kids will be fine in their luxury climate bunkers as the world grows more bleak and they bark orders remotely until there’s no one left alive or dumb enough to keep listening.
The thing is though, what we’ve done and are doing right now will take millions of years to heal. Nothing to Earth’s 3.8 billion year old story of life, but effectively eternity to our monkey brains. I just don’t see our species putting down our shovel and living within our ecological means when that would mean necessary decline in our quality of life and intentional population control over time. We were warned for a century. We are feeling the effects. Scientists are noting new runaway effects conservative estimates didn’t account for. We need to stop 30 years ago, and we won’t even stop today.
I don’t consider it justice, I consider it wholesale refusal as a species to live within our ecological means. We just keep digging, and the consequences, the physics, don’t care why.
imagine if we’d spent the last 1+¼ century collectively working towards the utopia this kind of project hinted at - instead of developing new machines to destroy?
typically they say utopian dreams scatter in the face of increased technological awareness. have to say my experience has been the opposite.
the more i learn about technology, the more i realise we could probably be very close to a near-utopia by now. for some suspicious reason we took a very different road, and here we are.
Yeah I don’t know. Just see how the modern world is shaping society to the negative. Generation Instagram/TikTok all want to be influencers, there’s growing mental illnesses. Fertility rapidly declining (and it isn’t unfortunately all because of education). Capitalism is almost perfected abusing the dopamine system in an unhealthy way. I don’t want to be a doomer. I just don’t see where we are close to utopia. Which for me would be more sociali(sm) more community, less narcissism/egoism and more solarpunk. But right now we are on a different path. I’m happy to be proven wrong though…
Yeah I don’t know. Just see how the modern world is shaping society to the negative
I just don’t see where we are close to utopia
But right now we are on a different path
That was essentially a big part of my point. We could be close to a utopia by now (from the perspective of technological possibilities).
Instead, as I said
for some suspicious reason we took a very different road, and here we are
That said I don’t currently believe technology itself is inherently bad.
Like all tools, it depends what you do with it.
Is a general purpose tool like hammer good or bad? It has the capacity for both. And therefore it’s up to the user which is which.
And that’s the issue really, what are we doing with our wonderous technology?
This might be a bit of a radical take. But in that ~125 year window i was refering to, alot of machines we’ve invented are actually weapons.
Weapons to destroy eachother physically (conflict/threats of violence etc).
Weapons to destroy nature (deforestation and probably most mining).
Weapons to destroy the mind (social media etc, actually most media now).
What if we’d had 1+¼ century of building a collective utopia instead of all these weapons?
afaict from the technical perspective it’s not really unfeasible, its the non-technical problem: the user and what they use the tools for.
Another clue for us is probably the term appropriate technology, which is a vibe i think eg. solar punk is helping to cultivate.
Anyway we’ve done ALOT of misuse.
That’s why i don’t blame technology itself.
I still think it’s more about what we’ve done with it.
It’s not about justice. It’s about homeostasis. The guy and possibly his kids will be fine in their luxury climate bunkers as the world grows more bleak and they bark orders remotely until there’s no one left alive or dumb enough to keep listening.
The thing is though, what we’ve done and are doing right now will take millions of years to heal. Nothing to Earth’s 3.8 billion year old story of life, but effectively eternity to our monkey brains. I just don’t see our species putting down our shovel and living within our ecological means when that would mean necessary decline in our quality of life and intentional population control over time. We were warned for a century. We are feeling the effects. Scientists are noting new runaway effects conservative estimates didn’t account for. We need to stop 30 years ago, and we won’t even stop today.
I don’t consider it justice, I consider it wholesale refusal as a species to live within our ecological means. We just keep digging, and the consequences, the physics, don’t care why.
i’m not refuting your core premise.
but on the note of this issue, not sure i can agree.
have a look at this public infrastructure technology from 122 years ago:
Youtube/Invidious
imagine if we’d spent the last 1+¼ century collectively working towards the utopia this kind of project hinted at - instead of developing new machines to destroy?
typically they say utopian dreams scatter in the face of increased technological awareness. have to say my experience has been the opposite.
the more i learn about technology, the more i realise we could probably be very close to a near-utopia by now. for some suspicious reason we took a very different road, and here we are.
Yeah I don’t know. Just see how the modern world is shaping society to the negative. Generation Instagram/TikTok all want to be influencers, there’s growing mental illnesses. Fertility rapidly declining (and it isn’t unfortunately all because of education). Capitalism is almost perfected abusing the dopamine system in an unhealthy way. I don’t want to be a doomer. I just don’t see where we are close to utopia. Which for me would be more sociali(sm) more community, less narcissism/egoism and more solarpunk. But right now we are on a different path. I’m happy to be proven wrong though…
That was essentially a big part of my point. We could be close to a utopia by now (from the perspective of technological possibilities).
Instead, as I said
That said I don’t currently believe technology itself is inherently bad.
Like all tools, it depends what you do with it.
Is a general purpose tool like hammer good or bad? It has the capacity for both. And therefore it’s up to the user which is which.
And that’s the issue really, what are we doing with our wonderous technology?
This might be a bit of a radical take. But in that ~125 year window i was refering to, alot of machines we’ve invented are actually weapons.
Weapons to destroy eachother physically (conflict/threats of violence etc).
Weapons to destroy nature (deforestation and probably most mining).
Weapons to destroy the mind (social media etc, actually most media now).
What if we’d had 1+¼ century of building a collective utopia instead of all these weapons?
afaict from the technical perspective it’s not really unfeasible, its the non-technical problem: the user and what they use the tools for.
Another clue for us is probably the term appropriate technology, which is a vibe i think eg. solar punk is helping to cultivate.
Anyway we’ve done ALOT of misuse. That’s why i don’t blame technology itself.
I still think it’s more about what we’ve done with it.