This article is a paywalled interview with Ben Tarnoff, but the preface links this non-paywalled opinion piece from him which is interesting: https://www.thegua

This article is a paywalled interview with Ben Tarnoff, but the preface links this non-paywalled opinion piece from him which is interesting: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/17/tech-climate-change-luddites-data https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/17/tech-clim... I agree that "Luddite" is a label we shouldn't be afraid of - at the very least, it should be within the Overton window of acceptable, debatable ideas. It is not an impractical and kneejerk opposition to technology; it is a principled belief that some particular technology, while it might make other people rich, hurts me and others like me, and we have the right to defend ourselves. It is certainly not a mere fear of unfamiliar technology. One thing I'm noticing from the world around me is the extent to which political campaigning is a zero-sum game. We've poured billions of dollars into the US presidential campaigns, funding everything from microtargeted advertising to (probably) machine learning to figure out who to microtarget, and the effect is that each candidate spends tons of money on it, fighting each other. It's not clear that overall outcomes have improved (e.g., "does the elected president more accurately represent what the people actually want, because they're better informed about positions and issues"), and it certainly seems like if you could magically prevent everyone from spending piles of money, we wouldn't be any worse for it - but it's very hard to do that in any meaningful sense (there's enough ways to spend money on influence, on get-out-the-vote campaigns targeting specific neighborhoods, etc.), so it's irrational for anyone to voluntarily back down. And a huge chunk of this money, in turn, is spent on computers (and electricity and emissions) and not on human jobs. > Decomputerization doesn’t mean no computers. It means that not all spheres of life should be rendered into data and computed upon. Ubiquitous “smartness” largely serves to enrich and empower the few at the expense of the many, while inflicting ecological harm that will threaten the survival and flourishing of billions of people.