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Computers are an inherently oppressive technology (2022)

14 points by bertman 2y ago

deleted 2y ago
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slowmovintarget 2y ago
The title really is the thesis. But the author backs it up with opinion. Like many of these articles, the author seems to apply all these adjectives that impute intent. No technology is "inherently oppressive" nor is any technology "ruthless" because machines themselves have no intent. I believe this anthropomorphic sleight of hand is deliberate because the author does get around to changing the topic to "machine-assisted ruthlessness." He might as well say that "tools are inherently oppressive" because any tool can be used by oppressing humans to enforce their own oppression or ruthlessness. This is the same as opining that knives are inherently violent. The argument is illogical, and an appeal to emotion.
- hlandau 2y ago
  Author here. This misses the point that computers are a technology. Like any technology, the choice to adopt a technology is always made by a human actor with some knowledge of the relevant tradeoffs. Ergo, wilful adoption of a technology which (necessarily) possesses the attributes I describe can be taken as tacit consent to those attributes and the collateral damage they cause. There is a human actor hiding behind every life ruined by "computer says no". Saying that no technology is inherently oppressive is strange to me. Are prisons not by design an intentionally oppressive technology? The human perception of agency in inanimate objects is curiously variable. To my understanding, this is a factor in why some people are more religious and some people are less so. Since my article is intrinsically written from the capacity to perceive agency as present in an inanimate object, it's perhaps less compelling to people who aren't wired this way, is my guess. This is not a criticism of anyone, just an observation of an interesting human neurological variability. Other constructions of the same argument are of course possible. In any case, the point here is that a human actor decides to adopt computers as a technology; and that that act generally replaces a human interaction which was previously social, human-to-human, and therefore on some level adaptive and modulated by empathy, whereas a human-computer interaction is inherently uncaring. The adoption of computer technology in society has led to a generalised trend of replacing human-human (social) interactions with human-computer or human-computer-human interactions, which generally remove all opportunities for adaptation or empathic variation. This leads to my view that computers as a technology in society are inherently oppressive. Though I suppose one possible qualification would be that this possibly is only the case when applied as a technology by a different party to the party which will be subject to it. A computer in someone's home by their free choice, which is purely controlled by them (which is therefore not any modern computer, I should note) seems like an exception.
  - slowmovintarget 2y ago
    My position is that the technology does not possess the attributes you claim it does. Prisons are not a technology. Prisons are buildings that use various technologies, including optics, metallurgy, concrete, electronics... etc. But prisons are an application. Adoption of computers, and the decision to use them to oppress or to free, is entirely within in the purview of the adopter. That is, the only people to blame are the ones who set the technology to a specific purpose, those who apply it. Your essay confuses application with existence, and I don't think that make sense. A car exists. It can be used to drive kids to school, or it can be used to mow down pedestrians. There is nothing inherent in the technology with relation to intent. I think the same is true of computers. Potential application is not the same as intent.
    - hlandau 2y ago
      Prisons are a technology as I define it, as is writing, agriculture, etc.
      - slowmovintarget 2y ago
        I disagree that prisons are a technology, as that doesn't fit the term. However, even if we were to consider prisons a technology, there are good applications and bad applications. Prisons may be used to keep violent predators away from the civil society they might harm. Prisons may also be used as a deterrent against crime, also beneficial to a civil society. That prisons are used as profit centers by corporations who also have regulatory capture is an evil of the people running those corporations and the corrupt officials who look the other way in order to line their pockets. But neither the good, nor the evil has anything to do with concrete, steel, monitoring systems, and plumbing of a prison. Humans are good or evil, or sometimes a complicated mixture of both. Shifting the animus to the inanimate shifts the responsibility, and I doubt even clear-thinking religious people would be on-board with that. (I'm not, and I'm religious.) Action, intent, and agency are human things. Ascribing those things to technology hearkens back to animism not rationalism. The spirit of the river made it jump its banks and flood because the river had an ill temper. The computer was ruthless when it calculated the pay of Bob. That's not how our universe works. I agree with the premise of "machine-assisted ruthlessness." I simply disagree with the notion that the ruthlessness or oppressiveness is inherent to the tech.
haswell 2y ago
If computers and machines are inherently oppressive for the reasons stated, then so is all of existence. The cosmic machinery that governs these computers is really at the root, and that machinery’s “ruthlessness” extends beyond modern technology. The “sinister ruthlessness” the author projects is also observed on a much broader scale in nature and isn’t limited to human-made machines. I think there’s a very important conversation to be had about the role of technology in our lives and the ways that it can be harmful. But I don’t believe that anthropomorphizing it, assigning terms like “sinister”/“ruthless” or viewing it as “inherently oppressive” moves that conversation in a useful direction.
- shrimp_emoji 2y ago
  Yeah... I guess Landian accelerationism really is the Tao indicated by the cosmos. Alright, fine, where do I sign up?
- hlandau 2y ago
  Author here. In a word: yes. The universe is cold, ruthless, and does not care about us. I make no claims otherwise. Society isn't that, though. Not least because nobody is particularly happy about the above fact and most people are trying to get away from it, not embrace it. And so, society is made up of people who have the capacity for empathy and adaptation to the nuances of others. So the relevant comparison here is not the timeframe before human civilization came to exist, but the society which existed prior to computerisation. The adoption of computers within a society largely replaces human-to-human interactions with human-to-computer interactions, or interactions between humans which are now modulated and controlled by a computer (human-computer-human). That adoption trend inherently converts relationships between humans which are adaptable and contain a component of empathy, to interactions controlled by non-adaptive machinery with no capacity for empathy. The adoption of computers as a technology within the context of a society seems, to me, to make society inherently more oppressive and less humane for this reason. (The main exception I would grant is computers only used by the people who have freely chosen to own them (as per comment above), and to which other people aren't subject to non-consensually.)
  - 2y ago
TimK65 2y ago
I think the author (Hugh Landau) is making a point about the nature of machines. I accept this point, and the related one that humans can use machines to enforce ruthlessness, and that the machine interface means that there's no human who can readily be blamed for the ruthlessness. However, the point is a little bit undermined by Landau's erroneous assumption about slam-door railway stock in the UK. It absolutely was not abandoned to improve schedule-keeping; on the contrary, it was abandoned because it was unsafe as hell. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slam-door_train https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slam-door_train
- hlandau 2y ago
  Author here. Can you elaborate? I don't see anything to support this claim from the link you provide. You are correct that the completion of the phase-out of slam-door rolling stock in the UK will relate to modern safety (and accessibility) regulations, amongst other factors. But that is different to what motivated the initial introduction of remotely controlled doors, which as that article states, dates back to the London Underground in the 1920s. While it might be the case that centrally controlled doors are mostly more safe (with some exceptions), that mere fact doesn't imply that it is the primary motivating factor behind the historical adoption trend. So it's an interesting claim, but unless I'm missing something in the link I don't see it as supporting this claim?
  - haswell 2y ago
    > "These newer units are safer as the doors have central locking ... In the past, the doors on slam-door trains could be opened at any time, even while the train was moving." > "Due to a number of high-profile accidents in the 1990s, the manually-locked slam doors were supplemented with electronic, driver- or guard-operated central locking before they were gradually phased out in favour of sliding doors through the 2000s, resulting in a sharp decline in the number of deaths per year from passengers falling from trains" > "Some units had individual compartments, each with its own door and no access to any other part of the train; however, these were unpopular due to security concerns and the lack of access to toilets ... The phase out was speeded up after the Murder of Deborah Linsley in such an individual compartment in 1988." The Asbestos in many of these slam-door trains is less relevant to the central point, but was also a factor in the transition.
raspyberr 2y ago
Eh? Tools and machines are just accelerants. Computers are generic tools so they accelerate anything and everything including oppression.
coisasdavida 2y ago
According to Flusser, these things are not machines, they are apparatus. Machines process things, apparatus process information. They accept inputs and return outputs. They emulate theories and thoughts - like rules in games, differentiating them from toys, these theories/rules are one thing that make them what they are - to achieve some output, certain inputs have to be provided. Ruthless? They are far from unpredictable, how can something like that be ruthless, if you know how it will respond to specific inputs?

14 points by bertman 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

slowmovintarget 2y ago

The title really is the thesis. But the author backs it up with opinion. Like many of these articles, the author seems to apply all these adjectives that impute intent. No technology is "inherently oppressive" nor is any technology "ruthless" because machines themselves have no intent. I believe this anthropomorphic sleight of hand is deliberate because the author does get around to changing the topic to "machine-assisted ruthlessness." He might as well say that "tools are inherently oppressive" because any tool can be used by oppressing humans to enforce their own oppression or ruthlessness. This is the same as opining that knives are inherently violent. The argument is illogical, and an appeal to emotion.

hlandau 2y ago
Author here. This misses the point that computers are a technology. Like any technology, the choice to adopt a technology is always made by a human actor with some knowledge of the relevant tradeoffs. Ergo, wilful adoption of a technology which (necessarily) possesses the attributes I describe can be taken as tacit consent to those attributes and the collateral damage they cause. There is a human actor hiding behind every life ruined by "computer says no". Saying that no technology is inherently oppressive is strange to me. Are prisons not by design an intentionally oppressive technology? The human perception of agency in inanimate objects is curiously variable. To my understanding, this is a factor in why some people are more religious and some people are less so. Since my article is intrinsically written from the capacity to perceive agency as present in an inanimate object, it's perhaps less compelling to people who aren't wired this way, is my guess. This is not a criticism of anyone, just an observation of an interesting human neurological variability. Other constructions of the same argument are of course possible. In any case, the point here is that a human actor decides to adopt computers as a technology; and that that act generally replaces a human interaction which was previously social, human-to-human, and therefore on some level adaptive and modulated by empathy, whereas a human-computer interaction is inherently uncaring. The adoption of computer technology in society has led to a generalised trend of replacing human-human (social) interactions with human-computer or human-computer-human interactions, which generally remove all opportunities for adaptation or empathic variation. This leads to my view that computers as a technology in society are inherently oppressive. Though I suppose one possible qualification would be that this possibly is only the case when applied as a technology by a different party to the party which will be subject to it. A computer in someone's home by their free choice, which is purely controlled by them (which is therefore not any modern computer, I should note) seems like an exception.
- slowmovintarget 2y ago
  My position is that the technology does not possess the attributes you claim it does. Prisons are not a technology. Prisons are buildings that use various technologies, including optics, metallurgy, concrete, electronics... etc. But prisons are an application. Adoption of computers, and the decision to use them to oppress or to free, is entirely within in the purview of the adopter. That is, the only people to blame are the ones who set the technology to a specific purpose, those who apply it. Your essay confuses application with existence, and I don't think that make sense. A car exists. It can be used to drive kids to school, or it can be used to mow down pedestrians. There is nothing inherent in the technology with relation to intent. I think the same is true of computers. Potential application is not the same as intent.
  - hlandau 2y ago
    Prisons are a technology as I define it, as is writing, agriculture, etc.
    - slowmovintarget 2y ago
      I disagree that prisons are a technology, as that doesn't fit the term. However, even if we were to consider prisons a technology, there are good applications and bad applications. Prisons may be used to keep violent predators away from the civil society they might harm. Prisons may also be used as a deterrent against crime, also beneficial to a civil society. That prisons are used as profit centers by corporations who also have regulatory capture is an evil of the people running those corporations and the corrupt officials who look the other way in order to line their pockets. But neither the good, nor the evil has anything to do with concrete, steel, monitoring systems, and plumbing of a prison. Humans are good or evil, or sometimes a complicated mixture of both. Shifting the animus to the inanimate shifts the responsibility, and I doubt even clear-thinking religious people would be on-board with that. (I'm not, and I'm religious.) Action, intent, and agency are human things. Ascribing those things to technology hearkens back to animism not rationalism. The spirit of the river made it jump its banks and flood because the river had an ill temper. The computer was ruthless when it calculated the pay of Bob. That's not how our universe works. I agree with the premise of "machine-assisted ruthlessness." I simply disagree with the notion that the ruthlessness or oppressiveness is inherent to the tech.

haswell 2y ago

If computers and machines are inherently oppressive for the reasons stated, then so is all of existence. The cosmic machinery that governs these computers is really at the root, and that machinery’s “ruthlessness” extends beyond modern technology. The “sinister ruthlessness” the author projects is also observed on a much broader scale in nature and isn’t limited to human-made machines. I think there’s a very important conversation to be had about the role of technology in our lives and the ways that it can be harmful. But I don’t believe that anthropomorphizing it, assigning terms like “sinister”/“ruthless” or viewing it as “inherently oppressive” moves that conversation in a useful direction.

shrimp_emoji 2y ago
Yeah... I guess Landian accelerationism really is the Tao indicated by the cosmos. Alright, fine, where do I sign up?
hlandau 2y ago
Author here. In a word: yes. The universe is cold, ruthless, and does not care about us. I make no claims otherwise. Society isn't that, though. Not least because nobody is particularly happy about the above fact and most people are trying to get away from it, not embrace it. And so, society is made up of people who have the capacity for empathy and adaptation to the nuances of others. So the relevant comparison here is not the timeframe before human civilization came to exist, but the society which existed prior to computerisation. The adoption of computers within a society largely replaces human-to-human interactions with human-to-computer interactions, or interactions between humans which are now modulated and controlled by a computer (human-computer-human). That adoption trend inherently converts relationships between humans which are adaptable and contain a component of empathy, to interactions controlled by non-adaptive machinery with no capacity for empathy. The adoption of computers as a technology within the context of a society seems, to me, to make society inherently more oppressive and less humane for this reason. (The main exception I would grant is computers only used by the people who have freely chosen to own them (as per comment above), and to which other people aren't subject to non-consensually.)
- 2y ago

TimK65 2y ago

I think the author (Hugh Landau) is making a point about the nature of machines. I accept this point, and the related one that humans can use machines to enforce ruthlessness, and that the machine interface means that there's no human who can readily be blamed for the ruthlessness. However, the point is a little bit undermined by Landau's erroneous assumption about slam-door railway stock in the UK. It absolutely was not abandoned to improve schedule-keeping; on the contrary, it was abandoned because it was unsafe as hell. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slam-door_train https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slam-door_train

hlandau 2y ago
Author here. Can you elaborate? I don't see anything to support this claim from the link you provide. You are correct that the completion of the phase-out of slam-door rolling stock in the UK will relate to modern safety (and accessibility) regulations, amongst other factors. But that is different to what motivated the initial introduction of remotely controlled doors, which as that article states, dates back to the London Underground in the 1920s. While it might be the case that centrally controlled doors are mostly more safe (with some exceptions), that mere fact doesn't imply that it is the primary motivating factor behind the historical adoption trend. So it's an interesting claim, but unless I'm missing something in the link I don't see it as supporting this claim?
- haswell 2y ago
  > "These newer units are safer as the doors have central locking ... In the past, the doors on slam-door trains could be opened at any time, even while the train was moving." > "Due to a number of high-profile accidents in the 1990s, the manually-locked slam doors were supplemented with electronic, driver- or guard-operated central locking before they were gradually phased out in favour of sliding doors through the 2000s, resulting in a sharp decline in the number of deaths per year from passengers falling from trains" > "Some units had individual compartments, each with its own door and no access to any other part of the train; however, these were unpopular due to security concerns and the lack of access to toilets ... The phase out was speeded up after the Murder of Deborah Linsley in such an individual compartment in 1988." The Asbestos in many of these slam-door trains is less relevant to the central point, but was also a factor in the transition.

raspyberr 2y ago

Eh? Tools and machines are just accelerants. Computers are generic tools so they accelerate anything and everything including oppression.

coisasdavida 2y ago

According to Flusser, these things are not machines, they are apparatus. Machines process things, apparatus process information. They accept inputs and return outputs. They emulate theories and thoughts - like rules in games, differentiating them from toys, these theories/rules are one thing that make them what they are - to achieve some output, certain inputs have to be provided. Ruthless? They are far from unpredictable, how can something like that be ruthless, if you know how it will respond to specific inputs?