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by cjs_ac18 hours ago |
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upvoteby cwmoore16 hours ago|
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Hmm... technology sure seems to create, or at least to expose, a lot of societal problems, and does solve a lot of problems in exchange for a lot of money. Not sure the true rule is as stated.
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upvoteby Muromec7 hours ago|
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Well, technology anyway is a way to trade one set of problems for another set of problems.
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upvoteby raffael_de15 hours ago|
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care to provide examples?
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upvoteby bradly3 minutes ago|
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Jean Baudrillard wrote some really great pieces on what the proliferation of technology with things like the clocks and mirrors did to humans. I highly recommend his book The System of Objects (https://archive.org/details/systemofobjects0000baud/mode/2up).
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upvoteby 9x3914 hours ago|
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Social media exposes weakpoints in human nature - mob mentalities, comparisons of global norms over local ones. People died and many more are likely disturbed and divided.

India comes to mind as some of the earliest worst-case examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_WhatsApp_lynchings

I buy into teen mental health tanking correlating with the rise of mobile social media in 2012: https://archive.is/frHnA

I think there's probably far more powerful but hard to describe and prove effects out there in play by connecting to a global async awareness network, but I'll leave it there.

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upvoteby cwmoore15 hours ago|
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No, not really. I’m just questioning the axiomatic statement.
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upvoteby bad_haircut7211 hours ago|
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If tech can cause social problems (there are multiple books on this) then it can solve them too - the only modern tech industry we've ever known has been dominated by players attempting forms of lockin to capture rents and amass enormous fortunes, of course the technology of this society isnt generally helpful to the society at large.
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upvoteby internet_points5 hours ago|
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> If tech can cause social problems (there are multiple books on this) then it can solve them too

You haven't actually argued why it can solve them too. When you're about to make a general argument about tech, try to exchange "tech" with "cocaine" to see if the argument still holds (If cocaine can cause social problems, then it can solve them too)

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upvoteby Arodex1 hours ago|
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Cocaine does solve a societal problem: the cult of performance pushing people to their limits. Without cocaine, there would be more burnouts and depressions (right now; I am not talking about long-term).

See also the role of "soma" in the novel Brave New World.

People take cocaine voluntarily. It solves a problem for them, at one point at last (addiction is as much a psychological problem as a physiological one). It is the same as doping in sports. Maybe you think of junkies in the streets when you think of cocaine and see only the problems it causes, but there is as much if not more cocaine users who are right now successful executives and colleagues right by your side, who can still hide well their use, and have enough money to buy good grades of drug, and a stay in a rehabilitation clinic when things get out of hand.

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upvoteby alansaber9 hours ago|
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I would argue the individual aspirations of the companies is somewhat irrelevant- even if we weren't profit oriented we'd have the same types/groups of apps (social media, etc..
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upvoteby viccis9 hours ago|
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Yep. The event in Egypt that this article opened with is an example of a state of exception, and it has been used effectively by rulers for a long time. Not just autocrats, but, even more importantly, by elected members of a government with checks and balances, as a way to bypass those checks and balances. The phrase was coined by a Nazi philosopher who proceeded to lay out the groundwork for the subversion of a constitutional parliament, which then worked effectively. It has been picked up by others like Agamben to analyze similar things throughout history (the Patriot Act for one).

It's fundamentally not a matter of technology.

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