6 ms·

Technology is making the world more unequal; only technology can fix this

78 points by a_w 9y ago

aaron-lebo 9y ago
Some thoughts cause I'm bored: * There are a lot of parallels to Acemoglu and Robinson and their Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, which puts a strong emphasis on inequality. This seems like a decent review: http://neweconomist.blogs.com/new_economist/2006/01/book_review_eco.html http://neweconomist.blogs.com/new_economist/2006/01/book_rev... * "Forming and coordinating groups is the hard problem of the human condition; the reason we have religions and corporations and criminal undergrounds and political parties." Weirdly contradictory, if forming groups is hard, why are there so many religions, corporations, etc? Forming groups seems to be exceedingly easy and it is perhaps human to want to be part of something larger even if its nonsensical or bad for us. * "Of course, the power of crypto to organise surveillance-resistant communications lines protects everyone from the coercive power of states: not just nice activist groups that want a fairer society, but also whacked-out white supremacists and Islamophobic conspiracy theorists." Kind of feels weird to take a shot at "Islamophobic conspiracy theorists" when Islamic terrorist groups are the very "insurgent groups" he's talking about and probably as effective as any other group at using this tech. Finally, just kind of disagree with the premise. If tech made the Saudis rich, if it is empowering the Zuckerbergs and the Erdogans of the world, then there's nothing inherently good about it. Technology only gets applied within a larger social context, which is why it's not the tech that matters but the civic institutions and social morality which discourages invasions of personal rights and greed which are what really matter. Robert Putnam has some really interesting stuff on this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_capital https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_capital
- clock_tower 9y ago
  I also like the part where: 1. Fundamentalist Islam is a "delusional superstition". 2. "Modern insurgent groups" -- the most famous of which all follow the said "delusional superstition" -- are the good guys. 3. Even though fundamentalist Islam is a "delusional superstition," "Islamophobic conspiracy theorists" are still "whacked out". And Doctorow probably sees himself as religiously tolerant, despite all this. This is why you want to check on your beliefs from time to time, to make sure they're not contradictory. (And I forgot to mention the part where Saudi Arabia's wealth comes from technology; Doctorow's using "technology" to mean Internet technology, high-bandwidth transmission, and the like, not oil wells and internal-combustion engines.)
  - logfromblammo 9y ago
    Personally, I see all religions as indulging in delusional superstitions. But I still see myself as religiously tolerant, because I don't do anything to interfere with any of it. People are free to believe whatever foolish thing they like. The Christians can still have their symbolic cannibalism ritual, and the Jews can pretend that they aren't playing up a minor holiday just so their kids don't feel bad around the solstice, and the Scientologists can train themselves to cheat lie detectors to zap the invisible parasitic spirits that make them crazy, and the Mormons can believe that Utah liquor laws are reasonable. I can believe crazy ideas, too. Religions don't automatically deserve respect just because they're old. They deserve respect because their zealots will kill you (or worse) for showing them disrespect. Anyway, the technology umbrella that protects states from stupid rebels simultaneously lulls them into a false sense of security and ensures that only smart rebels can become successful enough to supplant the old state with a new one of their own devising. One would hope that smarter rebels would be able to come up with better forms of governance. The danger is when there are so few smart people in existence that they cannot overcome the inertia from the horde of technologically-supported dummies. Then you end up with a machine-enforced idiocracy.
    - eli_gottlieb 9y ago
      >the Jews can pretend that they aren't playing up a minor holiday just so their kids don't feel bad around the solstice Who's pretending? We know that's what we're doing. The real thing going on is that in the Diaspora we play up Hanukah because we're playing down the High Holy Days, Sukkot, Passover, and Shavuot -- which are actually the religiously important holidays. If you visit Israel, society basically shuts down for varying lengths of time around all of those, depending on how long the religiously prescribed holiday actually is, what restrictions it entails on observant lifestyles, and how quickly it's followed by another holiday. If we tried this in the Diaspora, we'd all be fired for taking too much time off.
      - logfromblammo 9y ago
        Okay, I was going for something immediately recognizable to non-Jews. The Jews can still pretend that running a wire loop around an area of town changes the rules inside it?
dahdum 9y ago
Am I the only one reading this article as needlessly anti-Islam? I'm not Muslim, but I certainly wouldn't attack their faith as "delusional superstitions".
- blacksmith_tb 9y ago
  Or at least single it out for that treatment... I think the more difficult problem with Doctorow's criticism specifically is the degree to which many Saudi women support the system. Are there also critics? Yes, of course, and I personally hope they make the kind of social changes the article champions. But it's not really something that can be forced on them from the outside.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- dcre 9y ago
  I don't think he's talking about Islam in general, he's talking about Wahhabism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabism
- hyperdunc 9y ago
  Delusion and superstition is a large part of most religions. It's legitimate to criticize Islam for this, especially considering that morally questionable applications of Islam - such as Sharia - directly reference superstition. If we accept that more accurate representations of reality generally lead to better outcomes, then criticism effectively becomes a moral imperative.
ThomPete 9y ago
In other words, it's the technology stupid. I wouldn't claim it's making it more unequal though but rather it pushes the "highlander principle" on any industry or nation that becomes "technologized". Contrary to locally based businesses or nations like restaurants or several states in ex. Africa where technology doesn't have access, in a technology driven groupings there mostly can be one and a few runner ups far far down. But yeah the way out of the problems of technology is trough technology. I wonder if not jumping onto the technology bandwagon will render som nations obsolete in a few years.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
perfmode 9y ago
One cannot omit policy as a driving force.
arjie 9y ago
Guys. He's saying that while technology made it easy for elites to protect themselves, it's also begun making it easy for groups undermining those elites. An example of the former is how easy dragnet surveillance is today. An example of the latter is how easy cryptographically secure communication is today. That's the entire essay. There's some rubbish going on in this comment section about fundamentalist Islam but it's not an important part of the article. Spare yourself the discussion.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- ThomPete 9y ago
  Wikileaks is based on this insight. Here is a very interesting perspective on Assange thinking. "... according to his essay, Julian Assange is trying to do something else. Because we all basically know that the US state — like all states — is basically doing a lot of basically shady things basically all the time, simply revealing the specific ways they are doing these shady things will not be, in and of itself, a necessarily good thing. In some cases, it may be a bad thing, and in many cases, the provisional good it may do will be limited in scope. The question for an ethical human being — and Assange always emphasizes his ethics — has to be the question of what exposing secrets will actually accomplish, what good it will do, what better state of affairs it will bring about. And whether you buy his argument or not, Assange has a clearly articulated vision for how Wikileaks’ activities will “carry us through the mire of politically distorted language, and into a position of clarity,” a strategy for how exposing secrets will ultimately impede the production of future secrets. The point of Wikileaks — as Assange argues — is simply to make Wikileaks unnecessary. ..." Another interesting tidbit: "...This is however, not where Assange’s reasoning leads him. He decides, instead, that the most effective way to attack this kind of organization would be to make “leaks” a fundamental part of the conspiracy’s information environment. Which is why the point is not that particular leaks are specifically effective. Wikileaks does not leak something like the “Collateral Murder” video as a way of putting an end to that particular military tactic; that would be to target a specific leg of the hydra even as it grows two more. Instead, the idea is that increasing the porousness of the conspiracy’s information system will impede its functioning, that the conspiracy will turn against itself in self-defense, clamping down on its own information flows in ways that will then impede its own cognitive function. You destroy the conspiracy, in other words, by making it so paranoid of itself that it can no longer conspire:..." https://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2010/11/29/julian-assange-and-the-computer-conspiracy-%E2%80%9Cto-destroy-this-invisible-government%E2%80%9D/ https://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2010/11/29/julian-assange-a...
khana 9y ago
You can say that again.
saosebastiao 9y ago
Technology improvement: Ranked Choice voting Political impediment: Dismantles the two party system and its vested interests. Technology improvement: Algorithmic redistricting Political impediment: Eliminates a strategic job security system for already-elected politicians. Technology improvement: Cryptography Political impediment: Eliminates a surveillance and control mechanism of politicians. This is why we need some form of limited direct democracy. Politicians will never vote for something that directly or indirectly contradicts their own personal self interest. They won't vote for shorter term limits, bans on insider trading, stronger 4th amendment protections, ranked choice voting, objectively neutral redistricting, etc. Technology can only help us to the extent that policy and politics allow it.
- pbadg3r 9y ago
  These are all great points. In some cases, ballot initiatives offer some hope. Check out Represent.US - they're using ballot initiatives to push for things voters support but elected leaders often don't.
  - groby_b 9y ago
    Check out California to see the sheer lunacy of the ballot system in action. Voter apathy combined with an incredibly uninformed voting population, and on top of that the inability to make any political modifications to a prop once it's passed? Yeah. Brilliant plan for populism, but otherwise not so good. It gave us prop 8, written deliberately confusing to sway the vote. It gave us prop 47, which was a truckload of measures, many good, some horrible. Resulting in a huge increase in property crimes, which was a side effect that you'd only realize if you actually read the damn thing instead of the summary. Voters don't have that attention span. It gave us prop 69, essentially a state-run DNA database - into which you're entered on arrest instead of conviction. Because "but the children" always sells.
    - ahartman00 9y ago
      Or Brexit where people voted as a sign of protest, not because they wanted it. People who voted for it were surprised it passed. "The notion that many people who voted "Leave" in the EU referendum now regret their vote because they didn't think "Leave" would win or they didn't realise the consequences of leaving the Single Market would be so bad." [1] I think many of the problems of representative democracy stem from the fact that people don't read the bills, and they dont check their representatives voting history. Direct democracy seems much worse in that regard. 1. http://www.businessinsider.com/brexit-vote-regret-leave-margin-victory-2016-10 http://www.businessinsider.com/brexit-vote-regret-leave-marg... Edit: added additional thought
libeclipse 9y ago
> While Saudi hydrocarbonism denies humanity to women, American hydrocarbonism denies credibility to climate scientists. Heh, nice word.
existentialenso 9y ago
Interesting read. I expected something more focused on post-scarcity societies and automation.
adventured 9y ago
The core premise is false. The world is becoming less unequal, not more. Technology is assisting that. That trend has been - aggressively - ongoing for decades. The world is the most equal it has been in recorded history, almost entirely thanks to the rapid spread of technology that began in the developed world and was quickly adopted down the chain economically. The Gates Foundation expends a fair bit of effort every year trying to correct this line of ignorance, it appears to not be making a dent in the problem.

78 points by a_w 9y ago

Some thoughts cause I'm bored: * There are a lot of parallels to Acemoglu and Robinson and their Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, which puts a strong emphasis on inequality. This seems like a decent review: http://neweconomist.blogs.com/new_economist/2006/01/book_review_eco.html http://neweconomist.blogs.com/new_economist/2006/01/book_rev... * "Forming and coordinating groups is the hard problem of the human condition; the reason we have religions and corporations and criminal undergrounds and political parties." Weirdly contradictory, if forming groups is hard, why are there so many religions, corporations, etc? Forming groups seems to be exceedingly easy and it is perhaps human to want to be part of something larger even if its nonsensical or bad for us. * "Of course, the power of crypto to organise surveillance-resistant communications lines protects everyone from the coercive power of states: not just nice activist groups that want a fairer society, but also whacked-out white supremacists and Islamophobic conspiracy theorists." Kind of feels weird to take a shot at "Islamophobic conspiracy theorists" when Islamic terrorist groups are the very "insurgent groups" he's talking about and probably as effective as any other group at using this tech. Finally, just kind of disagree with the premise. If tech made the Saudis rich, if it is empowering the Zuckerbergs and the Erdogans of the world, then there's nothing inherently good about it. Technology only gets applied within a larger social context, which is why it's not the tech that matters but the civic institutions and social morality which discourages invasions of personal rights and greed which are what really matter. Robert Putnam has some really interesting stuff on this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_capital https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_capital

clock_tower 9y ago
I also like the part where: 1. Fundamentalist Islam is a "delusional superstition". 2. "Modern insurgent groups" -- the most famous of which all follow the said "delusional superstition" -- are the good guys. 3. Even though fundamentalist Islam is a "delusional superstition," "Islamophobic conspiracy theorists" are still "whacked out". And Doctorow probably sees himself as religiously tolerant, despite all this. This is why you want to check on your beliefs from time to time, to make sure they're not contradictory. (And I forgot to mention the part where Saudi Arabia's wealth comes from technology; Doctorow's using "technology" to mean Internet technology, high-bandwidth transmission, and the like, not oil wells and internal-combustion engines.)
- logfromblammo 9y ago
  Personally, I see all religions as indulging in delusional superstitions. But I still see myself as religiously tolerant, because I don't do anything to interfere with any of it. People are free to believe whatever foolish thing they like. The Christians can still have their symbolic cannibalism ritual, and the Jews can pretend that they aren't playing up a minor holiday just so their kids don't feel bad around the solstice, and the Scientologists can train themselves to cheat lie detectors to zap the invisible parasitic spirits that make them crazy, and the Mormons can believe that Utah liquor laws are reasonable. I can believe crazy ideas, too. Religions don't automatically deserve respect just because they're old. They deserve respect because their zealots will kill you (or worse) for showing them disrespect. Anyway, the technology umbrella that protects states from stupid rebels simultaneously lulls them into a false sense of security and ensures that only smart rebels can become successful enough to supplant the old state with a new one of their own devising. One would hope that smarter rebels would be able to come up with better forms of governance. The danger is when there are so few smart people in existence that they cannot overcome the inertia from the horde of technologically-supported dummies. Then you end up with a machine-enforced idiocracy.
  - eli_gottlieb 9y ago
    >the Jews can pretend that they aren't playing up a minor holiday just so their kids don't feel bad around the solstice Who's pretending? We know that's what we're doing. The real thing going on is that in the Diaspora we play up Hanukah because we're playing down the High Holy Days, Sukkot, Passover, and Shavuot -- which are actually the religiously important holidays. If you visit Israel, society basically shuts down for varying lengths of time around all of those, depending on how long the religiously prescribed holiday actually is, what restrictions it entails on observant lifestyles, and how quickly it's followed by another holiday. If we tried this in the Diaspora, we'd all be fired for taking too much time off.
    - logfromblammo 9y ago
      Okay, I was going for something immediately recognizable to non-Jews. The Jews can still pretend that running a wire loop around an area of town changes the rules inside it?

dahdum 9y ago

Am I the only one reading this article as needlessly anti-Islam? I'm not Muslim, but I certainly wouldn't attack their faith as "delusional superstitions".

blacksmith_tb 9y ago
Or at least single it out for that treatment... I think the more difficult problem with Doctorow's criticism specifically is the degree to which many Saudi women support the system. Are there also critics? Yes, of course, and I personally hope they make the kind of social changes the article champions. But it's not really something that can be forced on them from the outside.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
dcre 9y ago
I don't think he's talking about Islam in general, he's talking about Wahhabism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabism
hyperdunc 9y ago
Delusion and superstition is a large part of most religions. It's legitimate to criticize Islam for this, especially considering that morally questionable applications of Islam - such as Sharia - directly reference superstition. If we accept that more accurate representations of reality generally lead to better outcomes, then criticism effectively becomes a moral imperative.

ThomPete 9y ago

In other words, it's the technology stupid. I wouldn't claim it's making it more unequal though but rather it pushes the "highlander principle" on any industry or nation that becomes "technologized". Contrary to locally based businesses or nations like restaurants or several states in ex. Africa where technology doesn't have access, in a technology driven groupings there mostly can be one and a few runner ups far far down. But yeah the way out of the problems of technology is trough technology. I wonder if not jumping onto the technology bandwagon will render som nations obsolete in a few years.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

perfmode 9y ago

One cannot omit policy as a driving force.

arjie 9y ago

Guys. He's saying that while technology made it easy for elites to protect themselves, it's also begun making it easy for groups undermining those elites. An example of the former is how easy dragnet surveillance is today. An example of the latter is how easy cryptographically secure communication is today. That's the entire essay. There's some rubbish going on in this comment section about fundamentalist Islam but it's not an important part of the article. Spare yourself the discussion.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
ThomPete 9y ago
Wikileaks is based on this insight. Here is a very interesting perspective on Assange thinking. "... according to his essay, Julian Assange is trying to do something else. Because we all basically know that the US state — like all states — is basically doing a lot of basically shady things basically all the time, simply revealing the specific ways they are doing these shady things will not be, in and of itself, a necessarily good thing. In some cases, it may be a bad thing, and in many cases, the provisional good it may do will be limited in scope. The question for an ethical human being — and Assange always emphasizes his ethics — has to be the question of what exposing secrets will actually accomplish, what good it will do, what better state of affairs it will bring about. And whether you buy his argument or not, Assange has a clearly articulated vision for how Wikileaks’ activities will “carry us through the mire of politically distorted language, and into a position of clarity,” a strategy for how exposing secrets will ultimately impede the production of future secrets. The point of Wikileaks — as Assange argues — is simply to make Wikileaks unnecessary. ..." Another interesting tidbit: "...This is however, not where Assange’s reasoning leads him. He decides, instead, that the most effective way to attack this kind of organization would be to make “leaks” a fundamental part of the conspiracy’s information environment. Which is why the point is not that particular leaks are specifically effective. Wikileaks does not leak something like the “Collateral Murder” video as a way of putting an end to that particular military tactic; that would be to target a specific leg of the hydra even as it grows two more. Instead, the idea is that increasing the porousness of the conspiracy’s information system will impede its functioning, that the conspiracy will turn against itself in self-defense, clamping down on its own information flows in ways that will then impede its own cognitive function. You destroy the conspiracy, in other words, by making it so paranoid of itself that it can no longer conspire:..." https://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2010/11/29/julian-assange-and-the-computer-conspiracy-%E2%80%9Cto-destroy-this-invisible-government%E2%80%9D/ https://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2010/11/29/julian-assange-a...

khana 9y ago

You can say that again.

saosebastiao 9y ago

Technology improvement: Ranked Choice voting Political impediment: Dismantles the two party system and its vested interests. Technology improvement: Algorithmic redistricting Political impediment: Eliminates a strategic job security system for already-elected politicians. Technology improvement: Cryptography Political impediment: Eliminates a surveillance and control mechanism of politicians. This is why we need some form of limited direct democracy. Politicians will never vote for something that directly or indirectly contradicts their own personal self interest. They won't vote for shorter term limits, bans on insider trading, stronger 4th amendment protections, ranked choice voting, objectively neutral redistricting, etc. Technology can only help us to the extent that policy and politics allow it.

pbadg3r 9y ago
These are all great points. In some cases, ballot initiatives offer some hope. Check out Represent.US - they're using ballot initiatives to push for things voters support but elected leaders often don't.
- groby_b 9y ago
  Check out California to see the sheer lunacy of the ballot system in action. Voter apathy combined with an incredibly uninformed voting population, and on top of that the inability to make any political modifications to a prop once it's passed? Yeah. Brilliant plan for populism, but otherwise not so good. It gave us prop 8, written deliberately confusing to sway the vote. It gave us prop 47, which was a truckload of measures, many good, some horrible. Resulting in a huge increase in property crimes, which was a side effect that you'd only realize if you actually read the damn thing instead of the summary. Voters don't have that attention span. It gave us prop 69, essentially a state-run DNA database - into which you're entered on arrest instead of conviction. Because "but the children" always sells.
  - ahartman00 9y ago
    Or Brexit where people voted as a sign of protest, not because they wanted it. People who voted for it were surprised it passed. "The notion that many people who voted "Leave" in the EU referendum now regret their vote because they didn't think "Leave" would win or they didn't realise the consequences of leaving the Single Market would be so bad." [1] I think many of the problems of representative democracy stem from the fact that people don't read the bills, and they dont check their representatives voting history. Direct democracy seems much worse in that regard. 1. http://www.businessinsider.com/brexit-vote-regret-leave-margin-victory-2016-10 http://www.businessinsider.com/brexit-vote-regret-leave-marg... Edit: added additional thought

libeclipse 9y ago

> While Saudi hydrocarbonism denies humanity to women, American hydrocarbonism denies credibility to climate scientists. Heh, nice word.

existentialenso 9y ago

Interesting read. I expected something more focused on post-scarcity societies and automation.

adventured 9y ago

The core premise is false. The world is becoming less unequal, not more. Technology is assisting that. That trend has been - aggressively - ongoing for decades. The world is the most equal it has been in recorded history, almost entirely thanks to the rapid spread of technology that began in the developed world and was quickly adopted down the chain economically. The Gates Foundation expends a fair bit of effort every year trying to correct this line of ignorance, it appears to not be making a dent in the problem.