I think the topline, that Facebook would rather be seen as competently evil than incompetent, is dead on. But I think that, in his larger arc, Vinsel's epistem

I think the topline, that Facebook would rather be seen as competently evil than incompetent, is dead on. But I think that, in his larger arc, Vinsel's epistemology isn't correct. Early optimistic predictions about emerging technology are just that - early and optimistic. There are always extreme early ideas about new tech. Just go google up peoples' predictions (and fears) from 2015 about how VR would transform things. The thing that makes them dangerous is when they show potential for being correct society warps around them. We start spending billions of dollars on self driving cars in 2015 with valuations based on them being delivered in 2020. But what is the alternative? Vinsel wants us to have "sound information" - but making predictions that end up being wrong is part of checking that something is sound! The future is uncertain. It's true that nothing is ever as big as people think - sometimes it's bigger - but mostly it's much smaller. That guy who wrote the report for McKinsey (a group one should never trust in general) was really hyped to get headlines or really hyped on AI and because he's good at his job you can't tell which it is. The article is clearly nonsense, but it has credibility because it exists on the far side of a sea of uncertainty about something. It's fantasy to imagine we can "know" what something will be and this process seems unfortunately human and unavoidable. I also think there are a lot of people doing good work in STS on these issues. John Cheney-Lippold, Natasha Dow Schüll, Virginia Eubanks, and Adrian Mackenzie are some of my favorites. I'm excited to read Your Computer Is on Fire but I haven't gotten to it yet. Heck, I think 90% of the bad tech hype is covered the old classic Leviathan and the Air-Pump.