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It certainly has the potential to result in a dystopia, but it could also become a utopia. Today, in the USA, corporations are incredibly powerful, surveillanc
by LeifCarrotson 5y ago
It certainly has the potential to result in a dystopia, but it could also become a utopia.
Today, in the USA, corporations are incredibly powerful, surveillance technology is growing faster than legal frameworks or consumers can keep up with, and there's little expectation of or coordinated resistance from uninformed, irrational, impotent consumers or effective regulation from our partisan and captive governmental agencies. That hasn't always been true - at other times, colonial governments, monarchies, feudal leaders, tribal leaders, or religious leaders have held power. It probably won't be true in perpetuity.
The trick is to make sure that we only open Pandora's Box of brain-computer interfaces (or better and also more frighteningly, full-brain upload and emulation) technology when society is ready...
Edit: I'm reminded of qntm's excellent short story "Lena" at https://qntm.org/mmacevedo https://qntm.org/mmacevedo - about "the earliest executable image of a human brain". I won't spoil it, other than to say that it's something of a horror story, depending on your worldview and the depth of your imagination.
- bhaha 5y ago>dystopia >utopia why the lack of nuance?
- LeifCarrotson 5y agoIt could, of course, become anything in between - slightly better, slightly worse, no change, anywhere on the spectrum. But I, like a great many people both on this website and worldwide, spend most of my working life entering data into a computer (and reading it out of a monitor), and derive a great deal of utility from data entered into a computer, so it's reasonable to assume that it will result in significant changes.
- bhaha 5y agoyou're right, and the link you shared was moving.. personally I think things will move much faster than we think, and much sooner than in the mmacevedo story
- edgyquant 5y agoExactly. There is no such thing as dystopia or utopia every government has shades of both.
- robbedpeter 5y agoStalin's trains ran on time. It was still an authoritarian dystopia. The thing about dystopian qualities is that they tend to nullify the meaning of any potentially otherwise good things.
- edgyquant 5y agoIt was not a dystopia. It had dystopian qualities but millions of peoples lives were better under Stalin then they had been under the Imperators. That’s the thing, even the worst nations we know of are not dystopias as dystopia is the opposite of utopia neither of which are attainable in the real world.
- _carbyau_ 5y agoThank you for the link to Lena.
- selfhoster11 5y ago"Lena" is existentially terrifying. Certainly interesting. > The trick is to make sure that we only open Pandora's Box of brain-computer interfaces (or better and also more frighteningly, full-brain upload and emulation) technology when society is ready... I don't think this will be the case. We unleashed social media on portable devices immediately. That's a strong suggestion that there will be no pauses to think about it.