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This is a pretty sanctimonious article, again attempting to push the agenda that all new technology is good technology, and all resistors are luddites. Be caut

This is a pretty sanctimonious article, again attempting to push the agenda that all new technology is good technology, and all resistors are luddites. Be cautious of this standpoint, technology suffers from a confirmation bias, we tend not to remember the technology that fails, the technology that lowers quality of life, or the technology that kills people. Here are some counter-cases for you all: 1. 1920's era radiation craze. Water energizers, xray shoe fitting etc. 2. Communism 3. Airships There's nothing wrong with scrutiny, and nothing wrong with taking your time exploring an idea, dealing with it's repercussions at a manageable rate. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to sell you something. For example, we're only just now starting to see countries start to bring the hammer down on companies that push their employees to be contactable 24/7 without paying them to be on call. Mobile phones have been around for how long? The legislative system has inertia, and sometimes it's worth giving it time to catch up.

ska 10y ago
The Luddites were entirely correct in their analysis - automation did destroy them economically. Globally a technology shift may be the best option for a society, but there are often casualties.
- xorcist 10y ago
  Last time Luddites mentioned here someone posted a link to read more about them. I can't find it right now but do yourself a favor and look it up. Luddites were a sorts of early workers movement, but we tend to hear mostly the prevailing side's caricature of them. In reality they didn't rebel against mechanization, they were skilled in it.
  - FooHentai 10y ago
    Possibly: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-the-luddites-really-fought-against-264412/?no-ist http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-the-luddites-real...
  - ska 10y ago
    I suspect you are making the same point I alluded to. They read the situation correctly, further mechanization of textile production was going to destroy their livelihoods and families economic positions, by removing the leverage of the necessity of skilled labor. What use to them that it also generated economic growth they would not take part in, nor would their children?
antisthenes 10y ago
> Here are some counter-cases for you all: 1. 1920's era radiation craze. Water energizers, xray shoe fitting etc. 2. Communism 3. Airships Not sure what communism has in common with the other 2, considering it is: 1. Not a technology. 2. Has never actually been implemented with success due to flaws in human nature. 3. Failed precisely because of lack of technology to support it (a command economy could be viable, given a high enough technological level and sophisticated models to predict the necessary outputs in real-time) If there ever was something that failed because it threatened the established way of doing things, communism was it.
- adventured 10y ago
  > Has never actually been implemented with success due to flaws in human nature The flaw is in Communism, not human nature. The very system you claim could theoretically work - given enough technological development - is fully incapable of ever producing that technology to begin with. That's just another excuse in over a century of endless excuses for why command economies fail and fail so dramatically. That specific excuse regarding technology has existed at least since the 1960s. Fortunately, human nature will always thwart command economies.
  - cortesoft 10y ago
    My perpetual motion machine works great, except for this flaw in the laws of physics that is keeping it from working.
  - ZenoArrow 10y ago
    > "The flaw is in Communism, not human nature. The very system you claim could theoretically work - given enough technological development - is fully incapable of ever producing that technology to begin with." If you look at how new technology develops, you'll see a lot of what goes into it is fundamental research carried out without an immediate profit motive. Science progresses through the open sharing of knowledge, take that away and the technologies we'd be left with would be far less advanced. > "Fortunately, human nature will always thwart command economies." It is a commonly held misconception that communist societies are dictatorships. A dictatorship is as far from a communist society as you can get. What about those countries under dictators that claim to be communist? I'll give you a hint, they're not. If you want to know what a communist society looks like... http://classroom.synonym.com/true-communism-8904.html http://classroom.synonym.com/true-communism-8904.html True communism has a lot more in common with anarchism than the societies that got given the communist label in the 20th century. There are different schools of anarchism, but if you'd like to read more about it, I'd recommend starting with Proudhon... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Joseph_Proudhon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Joseph_Proudhon
dragonwriter 10y ago
> Here are some counter-cases for you all: 1. 1920's era radiation craze. Water energizers, xray shoe fitting etc. 2. Communism 3. Airships #2 depends very much on what you mean by "Communism". If you mean "Marx's prediction of what would naturally evolve to replace capitalism [0], and what flaws in capitalism would produce the discontents that would provoke that change", then so far it hasn't been particularly wrong, though the developed world has only, so far, progressed in that direction so far as a system which implements a limited form of socialism over a property-rights system which follows that of capitalism in broad outlines, with key exceptions with major effects. If you mean the program that Marx and various others advocated as the best means to facilitate and realize that transition, making it immediately real (or at least, transitioning fully to its socialist phase) in his time, well, while people advocated for that, the program was never adopted in any of the states where it was advocated, so it can hardly be called a "technology" (to the extent that it was a kind of social technology) that failed, so much as one that no one ever bothered to give a trial to. If, instead of either of those, you mean the radical rejection of many of the key principles (including both in preconditions and mechanisms) of Marx's Communism represented by Leninist vanguardism and its various derivatives (Stalinism, Maoism, etc.), yeah, that failed rather spectacularly. [0] the "capitalism" for which the term was coined, the economic system of much of the developed world in the 19th Century, which is very different from the system which exists now that sometimes is called "capitalism".
- clock_tower 10y ago
  Imagine a world where you could say "Communism is bad" with the same impunity as you can say "Naziism is bad"...
  - andrepd 10y ago
    Communism is an economic system with flaws and virtues you can discuss and argue about. Nazism is about race supremacy and totalitarianism. So yes, thankfully you can't say "Communism is bad" with the same impunity as you can say "Nazism is bad".
    - 10y ago
studentrob 10y ago
> This is a pretty sanctimonious article, again attempting to push the agenda that all new technology is good technology, and all resistors are luddites. Agreed. This is not the best way to argue for acceptance of new tech. I believe it would have the opposite effect. Innovators should consider themselves teachers. The more unexpected the tech, the more the public will need to be taught. And, open discussion is part of teaching. Teachers can learn too. >> Uber offers a prime case study. The ride-sharing service exploded in popularity and rapidly expanded to cities around the world, sparking an outcry from taxicab commissions the world over. In most cases, the government’s response was slow and reactionary. “That’s because they think about [innovation] in a slow and linear way. That’s how it’s been in the past; that’s not the case anymore,” I disagree the government response was reactionary. Constituents are losing their livelihoods. They went to the government and complained. It is understandable that the government would react on their behalf and that the unrolling of some tech would be more gradual. It is the job of the government to represent the people. If they don't do that they are voted out.
marmshallow 10y ago
Another example from current times: E-cigarettes. Nobody knows if they are harmful in the long term.
femto 10y ago
To use the example in the article: fridges used to kill people when the refrigerant leaked out. There were fifteen deaths in Chicago in 1929[1,2], so it adds up over multiple years in multiple cities. The article is (smugly) passing judgement on yesterday's acceptance of technology, forgetting that we are looking though the lens of 80 years of development and safety improvements. [1] https://books.google.com.au/books?id=XuMuCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA76#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.com.au/books?id=XuMuCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA76#v=... [2] http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/53488057 http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/53488057
aaron695 10y ago
> xray shoe fitting xrays have saved many many millions of lives. I'm not sure xray shoe fitting even killed anyone. Because an amazing technology was misused a little while changing the world it scares you?
- pkroll 10y ago
  An amazing technology with a negative effect that wouldn't be seen till years later when the people buying (or selling) shoes show signs of cancer? Yeah, that scares me. The idea that "It's OK until shown that it's not" leads to hideous down-the-road effects that can't be undone.
  - aaron695 10y ago
    I know. You'd delay xrays for many years and have killed many people because of fear. The precautionary principle is a killer.
    - pkroll 10y ago
      The question aaron695 proposed was "Because an amazing technology was misused a little while changing the world it scares you?" My answer is yes. That doesn't mean I'd have delayed x-rays used by medical professionals, or any of the myriad technologies that did harm when they first came out. I would, however, be worried about them myself, and would want to make it painfully clear to anyone looking into it that the tech's long term effects are unknown. We've been bitten on this repeatedly, and almost every time it's been a trivial use of an eventually useful tech.

ska 10y ago

The Luddites were entirely correct in their analysis - automation did destroy them economically. Globally a technology shift may be the best option for a society, but there are often casualties.

xorcist 10y ago
Last time Luddites mentioned here someone posted a link to read more about them. I can't find it right now but do yourself a favor and look it up. Luddites were a sorts of early workers movement, but we tend to hear mostly the prevailing side's caricature of them. In reality they didn't rebel against mechanization, they were skilled in it.
- FooHentai 10y ago
  Possibly: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-the-luddites-really-fought-against-264412/?no-ist http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-the-luddites-real...
- ska 10y ago
  I suspect you are making the same point I alluded to. They read the situation correctly, further mechanization of textile production was going to destroy their livelihoods and families economic positions, by removing the leverage of the necessity of skilled labor. What use to them that it also generated economic growth they would not take part in, nor would their children?

antisthenes 10y ago

> Here are some counter-cases for you all: 1. 1920's era radiation craze. Water energizers, xray shoe fitting etc. 2. Communism 3. Airships Not sure what communism has in common with the other 2, considering it is: 1. Not a technology. 2. Has never actually been implemented with success due to flaws in human nature. 3. Failed precisely because of lack of technology to support it (a command economy could be viable, given a high enough technological level and sophisticated models to predict the necessary outputs in real-time) If there ever was something that failed because it threatened the established way of doing things, communism was it.

adventured 10y ago
> Has never actually been implemented with success due to flaws in human nature The flaw is in Communism, not human nature. The very system you claim could theoretically work - given enough technological development - is fully incapable of ever producing that technology to begin with. That's just another excuse in over a century of endless excuses for why command economies fail and fail so dramatically. That specific excuse regarding technology has existed at least since the 1960s. Fortunately, human nature will always thwart command economies.
- cortesoft 10y ago
  My perpetual motion machine works great, except for this flaw in the laws of physics that is keeping it from working.
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  > "The flaw is in Communism, not human nature. The very system you claim could theoretically work - given enough technological development - is fully incapable of ever producing that technology to begin with." If you look at how new technology develops, you'll see a lot of what goes into it is fundamental research carried out without an immediate profit motive. Science progresses through the open sharing of knowledge, take that away and the technologies we'd be left with would be far less advanced. > "Fortunately, human nature will always thwart command economies." It is a commonly held misconception that communist societies are dictatorships. A dictatorship is as far from a communist society as you can get. What about those countries under dictators that claim to be communist? I'll give you a hint, they're not. If you want to know what a communist society looks like... http://classroom.synonym.com/true-communism-8904.html http://classroom.synonym.com/true-communism-8904.html True communism has a lot more in common with anarchism than the societies that got given the communist label in the 20th century. There are different schools of anarchism, but if you'd like to read more about it, I'd recommend starting with Proudhon... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Joseph_Proudhon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Joseph_Proudhon

dragonwriter 10y ago

> Here are some counter-cases for you all: 1. 1920's era radiation craze. Water energizers, xray shoe fitting etc. 2. Communism 3. Airships #2 depends very much on what you mean by "Communism". If you mean "Marx's prediction of what would naturally evolve to replace capitalism [0], and what flaws in capitalism would produce the discontents that would provoke that change", then so far it hasn't been particularly wrong, though the developed world has only, so far, progressed in that direction so far as a system which implements a limited form of socialism over a property-rights system which follows that of capitalism in broad outlines, with key exceptions with major effects. If you mean the program that Marx and various others advocated as the best means to facilitate and realize that transition, making it immediately real (or at least, transitioning fully to its socialist phase) in his time, well, while people advocated for that, the program was never adopted in any of the states where it was advocated, so it can hardly be called a "technology" (to the extent that it was a kind of social technology) that failed, so much as one that no one ever bothered to give a trial to. If, instead of either of those, you mean the radical rejection of many of the key principles (including both in preconditions and mechanisms) of Marx's Communism represented by Leninist vanguardism and its various derivatives (Stalinism, Maoism, etc.), yeah, that failed rather spectacularly. [0] the "capitalism" for which the term was coined, the economic system of much of the developed world in the 19th Century, which is very different from the system which exists now that sometimes is called "capitalism".

clock_tower 10y ago
Imagine a world where you could say "Communism is bad" with the same impunity as you can say "Naziism is bad"...
- andrepd 10y ago
  Communism is an economic system with flaws and virtues you can discuss and argue about. Nazism is about race supremacy and totalitarianism. So yes, thankfully you can't say "Communism is bad" with the same impunity as you can say "Nazism is bad".
  - 10y ago

studentrob 10y ago

> This is a pretty sanctimonious article, again attempting to push the agenda that all new technology is good technology, and all resistors are luddites. Agreed. This is not the best way to argue for acceptance of new tech. I believe it would have the opposite effect. Innovators should consider themselves teachers. The more unexpected the tech, the more the public will need to be taught. And, open discussion is part of teaching. Teachers can learn too. >> Uber offers a prime case study. The ride-sharing service exploded in popularity and rapidly expanded to cities around the world, sparking an outcry from taxicab commissions the world over. In most cases, the government’s response was slow and reactionary. “That’s because they think about [innovation] in a slow and linear way. That’s how it’s been in the past; that’s not the case anymore,” I disagree the government response was reactionary. Constituents are losing their livelihoods. They went to the government and complained. It is understandable that the government would react on their behalf and that the unrolling of some tech would be more gradual. It is the job of the government to represent the people. If they don't do that they are voted out.

marmshallow 10y ago

Another example from current times: E-cigarettes. Nobody knows if they are harmful in the long term.

femto 10y ago

To use the example in the article: fridges used to kill people when the refrigerant leaked out. There were fifteen deaths in Chicago in 1929[1,2], so it adds up over multiple years in multiple cities. The article is (smugly) passing judgement on yesterday's acceptance of technology, forgetting that we are looking though the lens of 80 years of development and safety improvements. [1] https://books.google.com.au/books?id=XuMuCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA76#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.com.au/books?id=XuMuCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA76#v=... [2] http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/53488057 http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/53488057

aaron695 10y ago

> xray shoe fitting xrays have saved many many millions of lives. I'm not sure xray shoe fitting even killed anyone. Because an amazing technology was misused a little while changing the world it scares you?

pkroll 10y ago
An amazing technology with a negative effect that wouldn't be seen till years later when the people buying (or selling) shoes show signs of cancer? Yeah, that scares me. The idea that "It's OK until shown that it's not" leads to hideous down-the-road effects that can't be undone.
- aaron695 10y ago
  I know. You'd delay xrays for many years and have killed many people because of fear. The precautionary principle is a killer.
  - pkroll 10y ago
    The question aaron695 proposed was "Because an amazing technology was misused a little while changing the world it scares you?" My answer is yes. That doesn't mean I'd have delayed x-rays used by medical professionals, or any of the myriad technologies that did harm when they first came out. I would, however, be worried about them myself, and would want to make it painfully clear to anyone looking into it that the tech's long term effects are unknown. We've been bitten on this repeatedly, and almost every time it's been a trivial use of an eventually useful tech.