Tech murders civilization

[Millman]

Shoot someone in the foot like yourself. Die of gangrene or a break on a car gone wrong. What about the net? Someone hack into your account? Copy credit cards, paper money, the works?

You think technology can solve our problems. They can also make things worse.

 

[peter grimes]

Contrary to the thread title, I'll argue that an absence of technology renders civilization impossible.

Would we consider the first tribes of Hunter gatherers as a seed of a civilization? If so, they can only get by because of their tools for coping in a challenging world. Those tools are their technology (stone working, shaft making, hide preparation, fire, etc)

They would exist without their tech.

And neither would we.

Hell, 30% of us would not even be alive owing to infant mortality and lower crop yields without the Haber cycle.

In fact, read up on the Haber cycle. I think it's a good illustration of the ambivalence of a technology.

 

[Grisu]

Shoot someone in the foot like yourself. Die of gangrene or a break on a car gone wrong. What about the net? Someone hack into your account? Copy credit cards, paper money, the works?

You think technology can solve our problems. They can also make things worse.

so basically technologiy is a tool that can do both good and harm? Not exactly a revolutionary view, no?

 

[Millman]

And remember, folks. If you make it too smart it'll own you.

 

[warpus]

so basically technologiy is a tool that can do both good and harm? Not exactly a revolutionary view, no?

I've never heard of it before. My mind has been blown.

 

[Perfection]

OH NOES!



WUT DO??



WUT DO??











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[Millman]

Do we have the luxury to ask why it happened in the first place?

 

[Perfection]

Do we have the luxury to ask why it happened in the first place?

I tried to answer with a long paragraph, but my browser froze and I had to reset, the machines are turning against us.

STOCKPILE AMMO, CIGS, AND FLASHDRIVES, THE APOCALYPSE IS NIGH!





​

 

[NovaKart]

Another Millman thread. They always remind me of that old Saturday Night Live skit, Deep Thoughts.

 

[Narz]

You should join peakoil.com, there are lots of luddites there.

 

[gay_Aleks]

I tried to answer with a long paragraph, but my browser froze and I had to reset, the machines are turning against us.

STOCKPILE AMMO, CIGS, AND FLASHDRIVES, THE APOCALYPSE IS NIGH!





​

Have you tried cleaning your cache? That worked for me.

 

[Tahuti]

Contrary to the thread title, I'll argue that an absence of technology renders civilization impossible.

I don't think Millman means that technology does only bad, just that some people are too blind to the potential negative effects of technology. The history of technological invention isn't a linear path from a to b to increases with some slight bumps: Some technologies that had been around thousands of years ago have nowadays all but dissappeared. We also have several bad technologies that weren't around earlier on.

In Hindi, the words for tomorrow and yesterday are the same. Think about it for a moment how this could apply to technology.

so basically technologiy is a tool that can do both good and harm? Not exactly a revolutionary view, no?

Nuclear weapons pretty much can only destroy things. Overall, some scepticism to technologies is healthy, particularly when we lack technology to counteract the negative effects of using other technology. It may have been more prudent to not use nuclear energy until we possess the technology to completely clean up radioactivity, for instance.

I think using computers for processing big data is a potentially dangerous thing since we run the risk of becoming a data addicted society with less accountability to individuals of flesh and blood.

 

[peter grimes]

But nuclear weapons are just a specific engineering application of two underlying technologies, not a technology in and of themselves. It takes the knowledge of nuclear engineering (which can also give us somewhat fossil fuel free energy) and rocketry, which gives us satellites and geosensing.

I'm not arguing there's no such thing as a purely negative technology, only that nuclear weapons may not be a very good example.

 

[Perfection]

Have you tried cleaning your cache? That worked for me.

I clean my cache every day. I like my guns to shine.

 

[Bootstoots]

For a more lucid discussion of the problems of technology, I would suggest Industrial Society And Its Future, which was published in a number of prominent newspapers. It's written by a brilliant mathematician who eventually determined something similar, and it's a pretty interesting if unusual read. I'll caution that the methods he used to get it published were rather...shall we say...unorthodox, and I do not endorse them.

 

[CavLancer]

Alvin Toffler?

 

[Bootstoots]

No, a guy with a somewhat less favorable view of technology.

 

[gay_Aleks]

The Unabomber?

 

[timtofly]

Contrary to the thread title, I'll argue that an absence of technology renders civilization impossible.

Would we consider the first tribes of Hunter gatherers as a seed of a civilization? If so, they can only get by because of their tools for coping in a challenging world. Those tools are their technology (stone working, shaft making, hide preparation, fire, etc)

They would exist without their tech.

And neither would we.

Hell, 30% of us would not even be alive owing to infant mortality and lower crop yields without the Haber cycle.

In fact, read up on the Haber cycle. I think it's a good illustration of the ambivalence of a technology.

Are you saying that civilization would collapse if we stopped 24/7 activity?

 

[Bootstoots]

Good ol' Teddy K! I read a copy of his collected works (not just the manifesto but a variety of other and generally better writings). He does a decent job of explaining his primitivist worldview. What he doesn't explain very well is why mailing bombs to people from your Montana shack is a very good strategy to bring down industrial society.