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I grew up in a fairly out of the way area in a red state, but we had this cool elective in high school called simply enough "Technology". We had AutoCAD, comput

I grew up in a fairly out of the way area in a red state, but we had this cool elective in high school called simply enough "Technology". We had AutoCAD, computers, little bridge building things, etc. One of the few lessons that really stuck with me was when the teacher was discussing technology one day and one of the students grappled with this very philosophical point. Basically the posed it as something like "we should just ban technology X because people do bad things with it". This was 1998 (dating myself) so it isn't like computers were the force they are now in everyone's mind. What unfolded is this basic discussion: people are the ones doing the bad things. Technology is just a force or thought multiplier. He explained it so well. It sort of clicked into my brain then and that discussion still sits pretty firm in my mind. I don't think all technology can find inherently bad uses, but most of it can. Computers are at the heart of every military technology now other than explosives. Physics are at the heart of nuclear weapons. etc. etc. I think Ted would have still did what he did. He was a narcissist at heart. He felt his view on it was somehow that much more special than the same view we arrived at in 1998 in my high school class in many ways. That said, ill just leave this here and say I think this guy saw further into the future than most people ever have, but I see sentiments like this all over HN these days: 50. The conservatives are fools: They whine about the decay of traditional values, yet they enthusiastically support technological progress and economic growth. Apparently it never occurs to them that you can't make rapid, drastic changes in the technology and the economy of a society without causing rapid changes in all other aspects of the society as well, and that such rapid changes inevitably break down traditional values. 51. The breakdown of traditional values to some extent implies the breakdown of the bonds that hold together traditional small-scale social groups. The disintegration of small-scale social groups is also promoted by the fact that modern conditions often require or tempt individuals to move to new locations, separating themselves from their communities. Beyond that, a technological society HAS TO weaken family ties and local communities if it is to function efficiently. In modern society an individual's loyalty must be first to the system and only secondarily to a small-scale community, because if the internal loyalties of small-scale communities were stronger than loyalty to the system, such communities would pursue their own advantage at the expense of the system.

tpeo 9y ago
I think that Kaczynski's concerns over technology are different from those raised by your teacher. The issue isn't so much that technology can be put to bad uses, but that it changes how people engage with the world. Analogical example: people might lie over the internet, but whether the internet has made relationships shallower is a different issue.
- wybiral 9y ago
  The world isn't static though. Evolution and environmental changes over time will cause people to change how they engage with the changing world. This has happened long before human technology.
  - tpeo 9y ago
    So? His issue was with technologically induced behavioral change, not evolutionarily or environmentally induced behavioral change.
  - sooheon 9y ago
    Scale and velocity can create entirely different qualities. Change has always been with us, just not quite like this.
jonahx 9y ago
> people are the ones doing the bad things. Technology is just a force or thought multiplier. He explained it so well. It sort of clicked into my brain Except, this isn't empirically true. It's the same argument made by the NRA ("guns don't kill people, people kill people"). To be clear, I'm not weighing in on the gun debate here, only pointing out that if people have easy access to guns, you will have more deaths by guns. There's something comforting about the view that "it's really just people doing these things," because it suggests we aren't responsible for our inventions and their consequences. It sidesteps the actual unfathomable complexity, which at high level is this: people are living an environment which can be changed with new technology, which will in turn cause them to behave differently in unpredictable ways. Make no mistake: the technology causes the change.

tpeo 9y ago

I think that Kaczynski's concerns over technology are different from those raised by your teacher. The issue isn't so much that technology can be put to bad uses, but that it changes how people engage with the world. Analogical example: people might lie over the internet, but whether the internet has made relationships shallower is a different issue.

wybiral 9y ago
The world isn't static though. Evolution and environmental changes over time will cause people to change how they engage with the changing world. This has happened long before human technology.
- tpeo 9y ago
  So? His issue was with technologically induced behavioral change, not evolutionarily or environmentally induced behavioral change.
- sooheon 9y ago
  Scale and velocity can create entirely different qualities. Change has always been with us, just not quite like this.

jonahx 9y ago

> people are the ones doing the bad things. Technology is just a force or thought multiplier. He explained it so well. It sort of clicked into my brain Except, this isn't empirically true. It's the same argument made by the NRA ("guns don't kill people, people kill people"). To be clear, I'm not weighing in on the gun debate here, only pointing out that if people have easy access to guns, you will have more deaths by guns. There's something comforting about the view that "it's really just people doing these things," because it suggests we aren't responsible for our inventions and their consequences. It sidesteps the actual unfathomable complexity, which at high level is this: people are living an environment which can be changed with new technology, which will in turn cause them to behave differently in unpredictable ways. Make no mistake: the technology causes the change.