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Yet, the basic point holds. On the whole, the Internet makes people and organizations vastly more productive. Furthermore, morphine and opiates are regularly us
by newt0311 18y ago
Yet, the basic point holds. On the whole, the Internet makes people and organizations vastly more productive. Furthermore, morphine and opiates are regularly used when the benefits outweigh the costs (like for anesthesia) so thats not a very effective counterexample.
If one wants to start regulating parts of technology, they must ask the question of whether the expected gains from said regulation would outweigh the costs. With narcotics, its easy: addiction is very expensive, especially for the addicts and productive and non-productive uses are generally easy to tell apart (medical use of morphine v. junkies for example). OTOH, technology is difficult to separate and the side-effects from flash games, irc, et al. are not that significant.
- silentbicycle 18y agoI think we're talking past each other. You argued that heroin/opiates do not have a significant positive side-effect, and technology does. I disagree, because (in the historical period the article discusses) many people would have died without opiates, and while technology* can be a positive force, it too is a decidedly mixed one, and one whose side-effects we still don't fully understand. My filter for what made me more or less productive (or an unclear mix) was whether it tended to distract me / take up my time. Spending time on irc when I meant to be working on my programming projects doesn't give me the shakes, but it's still burns up the finite amount of time I have. Also, I was never suggesting regulation. I don't know where that came from... * By which the author seems to mean computers and the Internet, specifically. Dyed fabric is a product of technology. So is bookbinding.