Technology is always advancing too quickly
electricitylikesme
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Old people, idle philosophers and everywhere in-between when asked the question in the right way will always insist that the pace of technological change in our civilization is too fast and that we need to, in an ill-defined way "slow down" and consider the implications of what we're doing.
What does slowing down mean? What does going too fast mean? How do you tell people to suspend their life's work because "society just isn't ready"?
I think the pace of technological change will always be faster then people are comfortable with, because until we have the technological means to test our philosophy no one is ever under any burden of evidence to change their position on what they think. Threads on consciousness downloads and the nature of the mind will always be a circle-jerk until we have the technology to practically apply their ideas, and only then will people ever be forced to make some decisions and accept the implications.
I think that even if it were somehow possible to "slow down" the pace of technological change, all we'd do is slow down our development and evolution as a society and a species - because when you can suspend the ramifications of our technology to "work out" the philosophical and social implications, we simply would be indebting ourselves to never-ending debate with no imminent burden of proof.
What does slowing down mean? What does going too fast mean? How do you tell people to suspend their life's work because "society just isn't ready"?
I think the pace of technological change will always be faster then people are comfortable with, because until we have the technological means to test our philosophy no one is ever under any burden of evidence to change their position on what they think. Threads on consciousness downloads and the nature of the mind will always be a circle-jerk until we have the technology to practically apply their ideas, and only then will people ever be forced to make some decisions and accept the implications.
I think that even if it were somehow possible to "slow down" the pace of technological change, all we'd do is slow down our development and evolution as a society and a species - because when you can suspend the ramifications of our technology to "work out" the philosophical and social implications, we simply would be indebting ourselves to never-ending debate with no imminent burden of proof.
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However, due to the lack of continuing education in most human lives, this necessarily means that technology has to ebb for them to remain on top of things and more knowledgeable than the children surrounding them.
This is only a piece of the issue, but it is part of it.
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People who consider education to be a good in and of itself are less inclined to be afraid of new technology because they bother to learn about it and understand it.
Here's a con.
Pollution.
Another is that technology is just a tool, like everything else. To properly apply it to a person, you need to know how that person might react. It's also hard to tell how technology will affect society overall, and since we are primarily social creatures wth a number of very strong social instincts (such as group think) this is not an issue that can be realistically "brushed under the carpet".
Also, remember, the population is rapidly aging, and an aging population means less people capable of easily learning and adapting to constant change. I think they have a legitimate claim to be concerned.
I broadly agree with you though, just not wholeheartedly.
This, though the anti-intellectuals would likely be riled to be defined in such a way, as I'm sure they'd prefer some other more misleading misnomer, like "traditionalist" or "valuing common sense." Common sense (and it's stupid twin, Conventional Wisdom) is really just shorthand for "collective societal assumption" which is neither intelligent or stupid, just the act of an otherwise-uninformed person using prior experience and outcome as determining factors, i.e., "Common sense says that there's no such thing as global climate change because we had the same temperatures here last Summer." But it's a faulty foundation for rhetorical argument, as it champions a limited scope of experience and a lack of scientific investigation because more people can relate to things that way.
Human nature, I'm afraid, dictates that people would generally rather think they're correct than work to find that they are not, and therein lies the roots of anti-intellectualism. It's not so much a cogent movement as it is a defense mechanism. It's self-esteem deciding it's more important to belong in a community of simpletons than it is to be a knowledgeable outcast.
But this is not a new phenomena. The Greeks of old even wrote of men falsely longing for the more precious days of their youth. It is the game you play, however, and in everyone's life they have to choose to keep up or fall out, though choosing the latter option isn't a open request to lament your decision.
I know I'm probably going to be that guy who when older, I'll be totally out of the loop as far as popular music and whatnot, but I don't see myself being the guy that has no understanding of even the most benign of modern technology, unlike my grandfather, who once asked me how to rewind his DVDs after watching them. I'd like to think the aversion we find today to technology is just the friction between the analog age and the digital one, but I guess time will tell.
It's old people liking what they were used to. My parents were much the same way until they realised that
a) The emails, they can be set to show up when they click on the envelope button.
b) They can talk to their brothers and sisters in Poland every day and see their faces and stuff for free.
Some old people don't require either, so they bitch.
Also consider these people have to lock down their PCs so their kids don't get a hold of incest rape bestiality porn. It's not really a wonder some of them turn to the government to do the job for them, because it basically involves staying ahead of a creative little kids hacking skills. Their only hope lies in what they see on OfficeWorks shelves - shit made by Norton and McAfee (and I mean "shit" in the descriptive, not the colloquial) that costs an arm and a leg per year.
The real concern is over whether we are abandoning old technology too quickly, without sufficiently analyzing it's merits. Newer and more complex technology isn't always better, even if it's more impressive. Yet it seems people don't bother trying out old ways of doing things anymore. Digital photos for instance are still not better than traditional Film in many applications. Modern razor blades and electric razors are a piece of shit compared to old school single blades. Sending a handwritten letter is still a much more personal way to reach someone than through an email. EBooks are still shit compared to having a full textbook. iPhone touchscreens are better than plastic keyboards.
Etc, etc.
Or maybe sometimes we give a little too much thought about the preservation of cultures. There's nothing really gained by leaving a horribly unadvanced culture unfettered. We talk of all the wondrous Amazonian tribes, untouched by the modern world, and how wonderful it all is, when actually it's just people living outdoors and dying at thirty from disease and filth.
I say fuck the Prime Directive. Science isn't all that difficult to explain.
To be a little more specific In what I think was the point here, the industrial revolution was great, and many many great things came out of it, but it happened before we could fully recognize the consequences. In America we've created an infrastructure for energy built on petroleum products, which it turns out may lead to very undesirable weather conditions and so on. Maybe the pros outweigh the cons, and even if we had known we would have done it anyway, but there is an interesting delimma there. Look at the world reaction to China's industrial revolution (probably its not called that but whatever). Knowing what we know now, most environmentally conscious governments are trying to convince china not to follow suit with what other countries did, and be more environmentally friendly.
Just as another quick example, I've read in totally forgotten and probably unreliable sources, that human evolution as been essentially halted because of the advancement of medical science. Essentially the argument is because we have countered natural selection, it's harder for us as a species to evolve. That may or may not be true, but what is definitely true is that we are running into overpopulation problems because of modern medicine. Like I said before, probably we would have done it all anyway, but it's something to think about.
The overpopulation will be mitigated with technologies to fertilise barren lands, and eventually the ability to colonise other planets so that we can spread across the galaxy like a filthy diseased bacteria.
But watching America yell at China for polluting while simultaneously trying to prevent the Chinese from outpacing them in technology and the economy should be fun.
Look you stupid motherfuckers, we're at least 50 years away from any of the "major" advances you read about in breathless terms in PopSci. 15 years ago a team of researchers grew an artificial "blood vessel", that had the proper layers. It wasn't really a blood vessel though, and couldn't be implanted. It was a fancy tech demo. We're still nowhere near having a viable blood vessel. That's 15 years of small increments in research.
I mean look, with all out fancy chemistry skills a chemist in a lab still can't compete with an old wise scotsman with some peat, some malt, and spring water on the highlands for tasty scotch.
There are literally thousands of things we're still just scratching at. We don't know how memories work. The best theory is sort of a dark matter-esque "invisible neuron" theory. Fusion has moved forward in very slow steps since the 50s. Quantum Computing remains a curiosity.
I'm so tired about hearing how computers are evil abloo abloo abloo.
Pollution is a misnomer for technology moving too quickly, because it's not a problem related to technological development. Pre-industrial humans weren't environmentally friendly, there just on the whole wasn't necessarily enough of us to systematically inflict the type of damage we did. We did manage to clear most forests in Europe and the US pre-industrial revolution for example.
Pollution is a problem of population - our advancing techology gave us the ability to successfully run huge civilizations where we don't die early and we can all have computers, houses and cars. Importantly though, it also gave us the very means to determine and better control our environmental damage.
I mean take CFC's for example. They're an example of something fantastic that bit us in the ass. But it wasn't an example of technology moving too quickly. There was simply no reason to think they'd be problematic: it's airborne teflon. The problem only arises when they're used en masse such that we have enough in the upper atmosphere being transformed by UVC to degrade ozone. Pre-CFC, we simply had no idea that atmospheric dynamics could lead to this sort of accumulation. Amazingly, we then stamped out there use. Before they were used en masse though, whether or not there could be long term damage to the upper atmosphere environment was simply a subject for speculation. In many ways, this is the current problem we face with climate change: no one wants to move forward and even try and change our technological paradigms because they're just not sure they really want to.
I mean child labor isn't necessary for economic development, and ruining all your major waterways is one of those things its best not to do if you can have the foreknowledge to avoid it.
This is all very clear in hindsight.
It's massively arrogant to assume we are aware of every future variable and can prevent such a thing in the future. We are not gods, just a smarter type of monkey.
Come back down to earth mate, we will make such mistakes again, as we have in the past. We don't learn very well, you see, as a species. Individually, yes, collectively, hell no.
I'm not advocating not using tech nor not researching it.
I'm saying before wholesale applying it, some thought should be given to longer ranging consequences. This takes a certain amount of time, and a message of "lets go full tech gung ho to the muscle no thinkay wahay" which is what I gathered from your op gave me the impression this hasn't been taken into account.
Like I said, I'm not against technology.
Hey I'm hoping we can help China skip past those hurdles, but that's not how its going to go down. Cos the money goes there, you see. And our rich people can't have that.
Specifically old people human culture.
"Useful" is a moral judgement, btw.
IIRC some old cat named Socrates said that the youth of the day were corrupt, lazy, slovenly, and were going to be the downfall of society or something like that.
(I am interested in your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter, I just happen to be the sort of person who would write critical letters to the editor. So I went back and reread your op more carefully. Sorry if it was a throwaway comment.)
I'm not sure that argument totally follows. Because I see the underlying theme here as being that humanity often uses new tools that it discovers to do things before thinking about what might happen down the road. In the case of the tree cutting, we gained the technological knowhow to cut down trees, and then plowed ahead without thinking about what would happen if we cut all the trees down.
I do believe pollution is a technological issue, in two ways. I agree that pollution is do in large part to the much larger population, but it is technology that allowed the population to become so large. Also, if by some miracle the population would have reached these levels without industrial type advances in technology, there are many types of pollution that would not be a factor. Therefore those types of pollution are directly related to the aforementioned technological advances.
Just to be clear I am a fan of technology. I absolutely believe in the forging ahead while doing the best you can to mitigate future disasters. All I'm saying is that I can see where someone would be coming from if the said "technology is advancing to fast, society needs to slow down and consider future implications". Although having read that last sentence I realize that perhaps what I'm saying is I can understand someone who says "Implementation of new technology occurs to soon, society should slow down and consider future implications before implementing every new discovery".
Is this conceptually separate from evolution to you? I think it's basically the same thing.
Think meta with me.
You going "heyo techno."
Me going "Waito mateo."
Is this not competition for survival of our respective ideas?
Example: In the lab, you get a new piece of equipment that is the fandangled bee's knees for whatever thing you bought it to do. Unfortunately, maybe one person is proficient enough to use it, and if it breaks, well, you need some specialized dude to come in and fix it.
Also, as our measuring devices get more complicated (but also more accurate in discerning scientific truth), we face the problem of how to interpret our results directly.
Maybe I'm hinting at the death of Reductionism, but I think that is laudable, because rarely can systems be reduced to such a thing without cutting out parts of the truth.
I think it's a case of people misunderstanding the causal relationship here.
Societal and moral positions change and develop because of technology, in a way that almost completely outshines any other factors. Even geography is less of an influence due to how static it is. It is technology that changes societies. Would the Greek philosophers have arisen without agriculture? Would feudalism have ended without the printing press? Would slavery have ended without the industrial revolution? Every time our society changes or progresses it is the result of some technological advancement.
Would science have arisen without...
wait...
...what caused the incredible expansion of technology in the last few hundred years?
A philosophical idea.
This is chicken before the egg stuff here.
"Peer review" is a social, cultural and moral idea.
It was a damn good idea dude.
You guys have a distressing lack of awareness of the methodology that is driving the huge leaps in technology you are currently discussing.