7 ms·
In one of the more obscure Ursula K Le Guin books, there was a passage that has always stuck with me. She's describing a hypothetical society where (to paraphas
by dustractor 4y ago
In one of the more obscure Ursula K Le Guin books, there was a passage that has always stuck with me. She's describing a hypothetical society where (to paraphase) they had eventually come to the realization that:
"the computer, once invented, could not be un-invented"
They put most of the storage on the moon, most of the processing power in a network of satellites, and in every village there was a hut with a dumb terminal. The vast majority of the population didn't need computer skills, only the handful of people whose lifetime tenured position was to maintain the hut and the terminal. The only 'useful' function provided by the terminal was you could tell it what you had and what you wanted, and if there were people nearby with complementary needs and wants, it would tell you which direction to walk.
- widjit 4y agothat sounds very interesting; do you have any idea which book this was?
- brian_herman 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Always_Coming_Home https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Always_Coming_Home
- wcerfgba 4y agoSounds great! Which novel was this?
- rst 4y agoSounds like Always Coming Home
- pmoriarty 4y agoThis seems like it would leave the dumb-terminal users at the mercy of whomever controlled the compute and storage infrastructure.
- gunshai 4y agoMy very first thought. hah
- guerrilla 4y agoWeird that you automatically assumed it would be private property rather than democratically managed or self-managed.
- EUROCARE 4y agoWeird that you don't consider how democracy doesn't always work out as intended. See: Corruption, Donald Trump. Not that it's bad or isn't the best we have, but there are a lot of superficially democratic states that became de facto property of one or a few. See: Russia.
- guerrilla 4y agoSuperficially democratic states (I like your term) aren't democracies to me. I meant literally democratic, not a theatrical aristocracy. I don't consider the US to be democratic for that reason. Something like liquid democracy or a representative democracy with arbitrary right of recall would work.
- EUROCARE 4y agoStill, even that system could be influenced and converted by someone.
- guerrilla 4y agoI don't know how to respond to your claim because it's too vague. In any case, perfection is the enemy of good. Actual democracy would be better than this. It seemed like the society they were talking about was utopian anyway, so everyone was being kind and cooperative, not operating adversarially like we do today. From the synopsis of the book: > they do nothing on an industrial scale, reject governance, have no non-laboring caste, do not expand their population or territory, consider disbelief in what we consider “supernatural” absurd, and deplore human domination of the natural environment.
- ASalazarMX 4y agoDoes the history deal with the obvious risks of such system? This looks like the postapocalyptic equivalent of "Meet hot milfs near <SUBJECT_CITY>".
- its_bbq 4y agoWhat's the name of the book?
- yreg 4y agoLook at the niece / nephew comments.
- boffinAudio 4y ago"The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment."
- tim333 4y agoBut how would they share TicToks?