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Techno-optimism tells us "everything will be fixed with this new, disruptive approach!" Meanwhile, the solutions to our problems today basically mirror the one
by uoaei 4y ago
Techno-optimism tells us "everything will be fixed with this new, disruptive approach!"
Meanwhile, the solutions to our problems today basically mirror the ones we've been using for centuries.
It's like in the face of all this insane tech profit people decided that it's better to be impatient and extractive rather than patient and foundational. You see it in all the ventures going "I started a startup for the express purpose of justifying its sale to someone much larger". When it ends up being a relatively pointless innovation whose sole purpose is to be a VC money sponge.
- jabradoodle 4y ago> Meanwhile, the solutions to our problems today basically mirror the ones we've been using for centuries. What exactly does this mean?
- uoaei 4y agoYou don't need an automated energy hog HVAC system when passive cooling and good insulation have been successfully used for millenia. You don't need an automated vertical hydroponic warehouse or huge expensive carbon-sucking fans when simple land management strategies result in healthy productive topsoils that are strong carbon sinks. These are microcosmic examples of a macrocosmic concern. In general, successful technologies of the past, up until about the time we started converting fossil fuels to energy at industrial scales, were about decreasing human energy requirements by taking advantage of existing and mostly passive physical phenomena. Then a precise notion of "capital" came into focus and less than 100 years later the profit motive demanded extractivist methods of unconstrained "growth". This approach ends up re-calibrating the accounting qua "efficiency" from energetic to monetary, which introduced significant disconnects between what can be called "sustainable" growth in the physical vs fiscal contexts.