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He makes the point that “the idea of having fun and doing good at the same time is incredibly seductive.” He’s right, of course, but I think the real problem i
by haram_masala 6y ago
He makes the point that “the idea of having fun and doing good at the same time is incredibly seductive.” He’s right, of course, but I think the real problem is that (for most people) your work can be at most two of the following: fun, socially beneficial, and lucrative. In fact you’re lucky if it’s just one of those.
That may seem like a pithy observation, but I think it actually says a lot about whether technology is a force for good, because it seems like technology also follows that same two-out-of-three rule.
- eat_veggies 6y agoThe obvious solution to this is to make "lucrative" a non-goal for anything, including computing, so that we pick "fun & socially beneficial" every time. This will require some major societal restructuring. Are we up for it?
- sandoooo 6y agolast few times we tried this lots of people starved to death. Let us know if you figure out how to do it properly without that happening.
- eat_veggies 6y agoEven if I figured it out, I trust that CIA would suicide me if my ideas ever gained traction. America benefits too much from the world's subjugation. I'll stick to building web apps for SaaS companies.
- sandoooo 6y agoPart of figuring it out is figuring out how to implement it starting with the limited resources you have. Nobody gets an unlimited budget.
- antepodius 6y agoDon't worry, we're heading that way. In 20 years, we'll all be serf-wards of the amazon-google-industrial complex, living of off bezo's benevolence, eating our insects in our shipping container boxes. Nobody has or wants for money- we order allowed goods using cryptographically verified credits distributed by the federal reserve indirectly via stimulus checks to amazon. The government is indistinguishable from the 10 biggest corporations, as it should be; and all the people need to live and distract themselves to death is provided by heavily automated labour and transport. A few people actually dollarCoins, but you've never seen one. Cash and unregulated cryptocurrencies are illegal, of course, as they aided and abetted terrorists, criminals, pedophiles, the alt-right, and possible alternatives to the powers that be. Entering your shared containerpartment, you blink away the afterimages from your google glasses as you move to sit down in front of your itechscreen ('smart' was deemed an iq-slur last year, prompting some rebranding.) Your roommate doesn't ask you how the anti-trans-racism protest went; you've never talked to him. The time between removing your glass and hooking in to the facetube feed is an unpleasant opportunity for your mind to reflect, as you gaze out at the decaying brickwork in the distance before closing the hatch to your cell. You are free.
- Nevermark 6y agoI don't think a target like "fun, socially beneficial, and lucrative" becomes harmful or worth discarding simply because not everyone achieves it. For starters, doing something not-fun, but socially beneficial and lucrative seems like a good thing, if that is someone's choice. Also fun, not socially beneficial, and lucrative (assuming the job is not socially harmful), such as esports doesn't seem like a problem to me.