5 ms·
The list of technologies that have not become a front for consolidation of resources and power appears below:
by d4rkn0d3z 11mo ago
The list of technologies that have not become a front for consolidation of resources and power appears below:
- tim333 11mo agoThe printing press and communications technology. Prior to that everything was run by the king who was chosen by God himself.
- arexxbifs 11mo ago...which is and has been used, very successfully, in the service of propaganda used to consolidate resources and power.
- ben_w 11mo agoThe printing press may have started by moving things away from the existing power base, but it very quickly got used by the existing power base, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congregation_of_the_Vatican_Press https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congregation_of_the_Vatican_Pr... And printing presses themselves ended up being licensed by the state, e.g. this in England: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licensing_of_the_Press_Act_1662 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licensing_of_the_Press_Act_166...
- h2zizzle 11mo agoNot to come down on either side, but I am begging commenters to refrain from using a Eurocentric lens when discussing a technology that wasn't even invented in Europe.
- schmidtleonard 11mo agoHistory of non-european printing press development: cool! Summary of above: cool and useful! Example based on the above: cool and insightful! Slamming someone for using a european example because that's what they know: not cool, not insightful, not useful.
- h2zizzle 11mo agoI don't know the history. That would be the source of my discontent. Every time things like this come up, the hyperfocus on Western experience erases whatever insight could have been gained by looking at the topic in its totality. My guess is that whatever dynamic the history of the printing press in the East might have lent to this conversation wasn't even considered until I brought it up. That was my contribution. Please don't take out your embarrassment on me.
- schmidtleonard 11mo ago[flagged]
- h2zizzle 11mo agoYou should look in a mirror (and proofread). Everything you're accusing me of applies to you. It's an overwrought reaction which indicates that I hit a nerve. You'd better soothe that ego bruise with a bit of curiosity, than with the tantrum you've been throwing.
- schmidtleonard 10mo agoYou tackled a contributing member of our community into the mud. I tackled you into the mud. We are not the same.
- h2zizzle 10mo agoYou've got it flipped. He was working from a false premise; his conclusions were a net negative to the conversation. I brought it back to zero by pointing out the flaw. And now you want to paint me as the bad guy, probably because I dashed the egotism at the core of his mistake, which you drew some amount of esteem from. The same deal as the people who persecuted Galileo for upending the geocentric model of the universe. Just because he couldn't extrapolate all of the ramifications of a heliocentric model doesn't mean he "wasn't contributing" by pointing out its significance. But I suppose this analogy reveals that your tack is fundamentally European. So, at least you're consistent. What would be better is if you'd have some humility. Say it with me now: "We forgot to consider prior art because it originated from a part of the world that we tend to fail to acknowledge. This failure adulterated our analysis with an inferior premise. Thank you for pointing this out. We will now make a more appropriate analysis using research on the subject that was previously in our blindspot."
- ben_w 11mo agoAh, you think nothing is better than something?
- h2zizzle 10mo agoPointing out a problem without providing a solution is still better than pretending that the problem doesn't exist and suffering the consequences of a flawed mental model.
- ben_w 10mo agoPointing out a problem is one thing, I don't think anyone here would object to that especially given normal nerd dynamics, but you did also beg everyone to refrain from speaking of things they're most likely to actually know anything about.
- h2zizzle 10mo agoInsisting on Eurocentrism wrt an Asian invention leaves the impression that you don't actually know what you're talking about. It's essentially misinformation. You know exactly why this in particular hits a nerve.
- int_19h 11mo ago> Prior to that everything was run by the king who was chosen by God himself. That was only true for a subset of polities. Not all had kings, and some had elected kings etc.
- vic_nyc 11mo agoBitcoin
- pjc50 11mo ago.. most of the coins are held in giant blocs by unknowns, and the price is largely driven by a couple of funds issuing tokenized dollars?
- MangoToupe 11mo agoThe proportion if wealth consolidation that bitcoin poses if it can consume fiat currencies makes all other coercive powers in history look like they weren't even trying.
- ben_w 11mo agoIf. BTC itself can't do that: the transaction rate would be borderline even just for a low-ball estimate of all the once-a-month payments happening in just the city of Berlin. The various proposals for layer-2 stuff makes it look like a bunch of banks using a funky currency without any of the controls that exist because weird currencies are bad for business, but AFAICT because of that, the BTC part itself works like interbank balancing transactions, and the BTC transaction rate isn't sufficient to cover once-a-day interbank balancing transactions.
- fleshmonad 11mo agoGreat joke. Truly a free and untraceable currency the plebs are profiting off right now. I am mining some too! I just cashed out my 50 dollars profit and bought myself a meal at my local trader Joe's, next time when I'm there, I will probably pay with chainlink though.
- 5350-uiop-1130 11mo agotorrent
- BiteCode_dev 11mo agoIt did, just not the usual people. If you go to yandex, you can see that the russian mafia makes good money with trackers. I love torrent, but it's legal used are cripple by corporate infra, so it's mostly florishing thanks to illegal stuff paid by shady ads.
- oytis 11mo ago> If you go to yandex, you can see that the russian mafia makes good money with trackers What's the business model though? Most Russian torrents are about giving away copyrighted stuff for free.
- WesolyKubeczek 11mo agoHave you ever seen what kind of ads they run?
- oytis 11mo agoSo their business model is good old conextual ads? That's pretty innocuous by modern standards. UPD: I've checked what ads it shows me on Rutracker - it's VPN services and online gambling. Youtube and Facebook have shown me worse
- WesolyKubeczek 11mo agoOnline gambling, most of which is about good ol’ money laundering, and thepiratebay seems to not censor their ads at all, so you may get all kinds of scams and malware spread via ads.
- whstl 11mo ago
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- fragmede 11mo agohow about the wheel bicycles sewing machines hand tools musical instruments open radio bands like CB and FRS ham radio (licensing exists but not corporate control) meshtastic blacksmithing glass blowing garden tools propane camp stoves mechanical clocks and watches open source software (the ecosystem overall, not specific projects) email as a protocol RSS SMS as a protocol USB storage devices SIP based VOIP mesh networking gear 3d printers in the hobby market drones under 250g amateur astronomy gear microcontrollers like Arduino LED strips and controllers bicycles composting tech sourdough starter culture tech (yes really)
- dudeinjapan 11mo agothe wheel --> chariots, pottery (see Sumeria), Roman roads, siege weapons (play Civ!) bicycles --> police forces, see the Japanese in Malaya 1941 sewing machines --> factory labor, mass production of clothes hand tools --> Guild systems musical instruments --> organized religion, national anthems, cultural soft power open radio bands --> policing, surveillance blacksmithing --> weapons etc. etc. we can do this all day :)
- skeezyjefferson 11mo agoRSS was such a redundant idea
- somenameforme 11mo agoI'm about as cynical as they come, but it has to be said that something like 99.9999% of all fundamental technologies are completely public at this point. Humans in the ancient past were unlikely to be that dramatically different in terms of present humans in terms of intellectual ability, but were held back by a lack of knowledge. For instance, we still use steel - and for 99% of humanity's existence nobody knew how to make it. It turns out it's really easy, and it's just one amongst countless other techs along a similar lines. A human who spent a year dedicating himself to consuming freely accessible information, who was then warped back into the past, could send humanity forward by tens of thousands of years - all by himself. We're all free to use these technologies in any way we see fit, but somehow we've created this weird society where we have all the potential in the world, but instead we spend inordinate amounts of time doing pointless things like shit posting on the internet and mostly being upset about what we can't do and/or have, even though even if we had access to such in all probability we'd again take it for granted and find something else to complain about. This isn't really a condemnation of humanity. Probably this sort of eternal discontent we have is precisely what drove us to discover all of these great things. Like I mean who in their right mind would have left the basic oasis of Africa to go freeze their ass off and struggle just to live in the inhospitable areas up north? There's something wrong with that guy, and that guy is all of us, for the most part.
- h2zizzle 11mo ago>Like I mean who in their right mind would have left the basic oasis of Africa to go freeze their ass off and struggle just to live in the inhospitable areas up north? I don't know that this is the correct characterization of how out-of-Africa migrations progressed. Youth (and people with the influence to shield themselves from danger) are expeditious, families and societies head where living looks to be easier and away from where living looks to be hard, whatever the pressure may be.
- hydrogen7800 11mo agoI read a description of this somewhere. Just moving a few km per generation, while being able to maintain direct links to your previous home, would push humans to the extents of the globe over tens of thousands of years.
- ndsipa_pomu 11mo agoLow cost refrigeration allows remote places to stock life saving medicines. Also useful for storage of foods, but that's a secondary benefit although far more common
- mnky9800n 11mo agoif technology is defined as "creating efficiencies" they will by definition consolidate resources and power since the work done by many can now be done by few.
- insane_dreamer 11mo agoYou need to qualify: > The list of technologies that have not become a front for consolidation of resources and power _and which consumed capital investments equal to a significant portion of the entire market_ appears below
- IshKebab 11mo agoSomething tells me whatever counterexamples I give you you'll twist to somehow fit this silly narrative.