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I don't agree, and I think you completely missed the point of my original post. Is technology somehow good for its own sake, or is it good because it makes ind
by maxharris 14y ago
I don't agree, and I think you completely missed the point of my original post.
Is technology somehow good for its own sake, or is it good because it makes individual people better off? My view is the latter. Therefore, the answer to the question of who should get moral credit for bringing a technology to life is: everyone that had a consciously played part in making it so that person X could have thing Y in their lives.
- zeruch 14y agoI didn't miss the point; I disagree with it. Yes, it "takes a village" to bring that technology to a marketable life, but ultimately the large part of that chain isn't doing the "innovative" part (the actual out the box conceptualizing to fruition of a truly novel concept) but taking said innovation and making it consumable by a perceived (or primed) audience. I am making a distinction between participants. What you are saying implies that its those because it makes something "better off" but I could say that about a lot of things that are not novel either (i.e. vaccination of poor populations that can't otherwise afford it), so innovation doesn't necessarily mean (or in my mind have to be) marketable to large numbers (i.e. novel new treatment for a niche disease). Innovation != "bring a technology to life" (take it to market), its proving/crafting something truly novel. Whether it makes it to wider usage doesn't make it any less novel, nor does successfully selling non-novel ideas at scale make that success any less valuable. I simply refuse to conflate the two.