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There's that cynicism again. Tech has its bad apples, but overall, it's been a huge boost, not only to productivity, but quality of life for everyone. Just be

by dntrkv 5y ago

There's that cynicism again. Tech has its bad apples, but overall, it's been a huge boost, not only to productivity, but quality of life for everyone. Just because people are idiots and get off on raging on social media has nothing to do with the tech. "But the algorithms!" Nonsense. People were raging on message boards well before the algorithms, we're just seeing what happens when the internet is expanded to the general public and it's not just nerds arguing over tabs vs spaces or which semiconductor company makes the best processors. UX has continued to improve year after year, just because your favorite app went to shit says nothing about the industry at large. I can't think of a single example of software that was better in the past vs now. But go ahead, disconnect from tech, and see what the world was like before it. Stop using the technological wonder that is Google Maps. Stop using Netflix with its stupendous ability to stream great quality video and audio on a connection that has no business handling it. Don't take advantage of Amazon's same day delivery on an obscure item that you would never find locally. Don't consume the billions of hours of educational videos on YouTube covering any topic you can think of. Give up the ability to connect and stay in touch with any person anywhere via the multitude of social media apps. Give up the ability to know what's happening on the other side of the world, as it's happening. Give up the ability to search for anything you can think of, and find multiple sources of information. I mean, the improvements in every single industry have been massive due to tech. Anything from ordering food to launching rockets into space has been greatly improved by tech. Tech has introduced new problems that we must address, but to complain that it hasn't brought forward some utopia you have in your mind, is just unfair.

advael 5y ago
The quality of the service for every one of the positive examples you mention has degraded since the largest firms involved have become effective monopolies that could get away with exploiting either their customers or their labor, or both, while also engaging in anti-competitive practices to destroy real and even potential competitors, destructively capturing large swaths of the free market in the process. The centrality and engagement-driving nature of social platforms, including youtube, have eroded the social fabric and aided the spread of conspiracy theories and political extremism, driven advances in mass-surveillance, or both. All user-generated content platforms have centralized and then adopted abusable automated moderation systems that exacerbate these problems. Big tech has created some undeniable conveniences, and it provides an endless stream of content that entertains you as it distracts you, as you describe, but if you think that's worth the major problems the consolidation of its power has caused, you're a fool. If you haven't encountered any of the myriad ways in which this, like any consolidation of unaccountable power, is harming people, then you live in a very lucky and ever-shrinking bubble. But perhaps you have, and simply decided that this was the tradeoff for the shiny toys listed. Maybe humanity will always live in a cycle of worshiping new unaccountable power bases for the scraps they feed them, until the dystopia they create becomes too horrible to bear, and some awful upheaval has to happen to upset it. Maybe this time the combination of surveillance technology and near-total capture of both retail and information sources, is too powerful and this can't be reversed. Maybe the planet will be uninhabitable by the time it can happen.

by dntrkv 5y ago

advael 5y ago

The quality of the service for every one of the positive examples you mention has degraded since the largest firms involved have become effective monopolies that could get away with exploiting either their customers or their labor, or both, while also engaging in anti-competitive practices to destroy real and even potential competitors, destructively capturing large swaths of the free market in the process. The centrality and engagement-driving nature of social platforms, including youtube, have eroded the social fabric and aided the spread of conspiracy theories and political extremism, driven advances in mass-surveillance, or both. All user-generated content platforms have centralized and then adopted abusable automated moderation systems that exacerbate these problems. Big tech has created some undeniable conveniences, and it provides an endless stream of content that entertains you as it distracts you, as you describe, but if you think that's worth the major problems the consolidation of its power has caused, you're a fool. If you haven't encountered any of the myriad ways in which this, like any consolidation of unaccountable power, is harming people, then you live in a very lucky and ever-shrinking bubble. But perhaps you have, and simply decided that this was the tradeoff for the shiny toys listed. Maybe humanity will always live in a cycle of worshiping new unaccountable power bases for the scraps they feed them, until the dystopia they create becomes too horrible to bear, and some awful upheaval has to happen to upset it. Maybe this time the combination of surveillance technology and near-total capture of both retail and information sources, is too powerful and this can't be reversed. Maybe the planet will be uninhabitable by the time it can happen.