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Software is neutral, neither good or evil. It only increases our effectiveness of what we were doing before. It has its faults, but I really loved Adam Curtis’
by Sean-Der 7y ago
Software is neutral, neither good or evil. It only increases our effectiveness of what we were doing before.
It has its faults, but I really loved Adam Curtis’s documentary ‘ All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace’. Full of anecdotes, but it is a fun watch!
- samatman 7y agoI would modify this: Software increases our effectiveness at what it's applied to. Sometimes, that's what we were doing before. Sometimes it isn't.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y agoSometimes it changes what we're doing enough that the old way becomes untenable, even if the new way is worse. Like if you take a crappy, mostly okay, sometimes terrible system and make it enough cheaper than the old system that always worked, most of the market may switch to the new shitty cheap thing.
- samatman 7y agoYes. I occasionally miss the quality of landline phone calls, for one example.
- prophesi 7y agoI wouldn't say software is entirely neutral. As you say, they have their faults, and some are designed in a way that lends itself to evil purposes. Openness is the key, as the Steve Jobs quote in a parent comment is saying. Users need to know what's going on, and our clickwrap culture hasn't been cutting it these past two decades.