5 ms·

This is an interesting dilemma. I'd rather have no technology than live under oppression powered by it.

by hp50g 13y ago

ZirconCode 13y ago
Technology just magnifies the power of a person, so in saying that you would rather have no technology, are you not also implying that people who's incentives you dislike, already have more power in the world than the rest? Technology doesn't cause these problems, it magnifies them.
- eru 13y ago
  Technology makes certain kinds of oppression (and means of gaining and keeping power) easier or possible at all, and makes certain other kinds harder or impossible. Technology does more than simple magnification.
  - ZirconCode 13y ago
    Both sides are present though, it's a pretty balanced arms race. Technology also helps people gain freedom, you can't simply look at one side of a sword, and say it has one edge. Many of the protests in Egypt were planned through social networks, and things like TOR can't be ignored either. North Korea on the other hand, manages perfectly well to oppress it's people without technology. Imagine what would happen if those people had an internet connection.
    - hp50g 13y ago
      It's definitely not balanced. It's a cat and mouse game with temporary advantages on both sides. However, all advantages are lost the moment someone legislates always in favor of the rulers which is what happened in the UK. Now we're tied and gagged with permanent threat of imprisonment for having an opinion (this has happened a LOT recently).
      - zobzu 13y ago
        this. and we're acting as if those things couldn't happen anymore, that its a thing of the past - but its happening right now and we aint stopping it.
- hp50g 13y ago
  You are correct. I'd say magnify is the wrong term. It empowers people who have disingenuous motives.
- lmm 13y ago
  Pragmatically speaking, technology causes new problems. You might say it's already a problem that there exist crazy people who want to destroy the world, but really this is not a substantial issue nor one that is tractable to solve. So if there were a piece of new technology that meant that everyone had the power to destroy the world, that would for practical purposes be a new problem. There is an established, reasonable position (e.g. Watchmen) that it is bad to increase the power of individuals, because when large power can only be wielded by large societies this limits the damage it can do, compared to the same power in the hands of a single individual.
wladimir 13y ago
I understand your feeling, I know it very well. But that isn't a choice. There is no way to "stop technology". Humanity has always been about technology, from the moment we started picking up sticks. All we can really do is make sure that technology, and knowledge about it, is more evenly distributed, so that central control is more difficult: make sure it isn't seen as kind of magic to people that they deem is impossible to understand and out of reach to them. Technology is simply a set of tools and should be regarded as such. Centralized technologies with easily controlled, single points of failure are by far the most dangerous, and the most attractive for oppression. This is why DRM, for example, is really bad. It lives by obfuscation and being hard and/or undesirable to understand.
- hp50g 13y ago
  Unfortunately technology's progression via marketing has turned it into a king of magic that is impossible to understand and is out of reach of them (past consumption). Look at most consumer IT products these days - black boxes for milking people. DRM, the cloud, closed source software, unified communications (commercial and government internet control) and surveillance already are enslaving us.
  - wladimir 13y ago
    I'm fully aware of what is happening, and how things appear to be going the "wrong" direction, at least according to the tech news. Don't let that despair you. What I proposed was something we (as in people with intimate knowledge about these things) could do to make this better. A lot of technical people are content with being high priests, and a lot of "consumers" content with not understanding what is going on. It may be possible to change that, albeit slowly. Looking beneath the surface level hyper commercialized pooha, there are quite active developments by in distributed protocols, mesh networks, cryptocurrencies, and people working on technology that is open and can meet basic human needs (for example see http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Global_Village_Construction_Set http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Global_Village_Constructio...), and so on. Another thing is that centralization makes things fragile. Even though centralization may be more efficient at first glance, once centralized systems collapse enough, people will look for more decentralized solutions.
mikecane 13y ago
The same "technology" that enables us to develop antibiotics so we can live also creates the biological threats that can massacre us during conflicts. Every knife cuts both ways.

This is an interesting dilemma. I'd rather have no technology than live under oppression powered by it.

by hp50g 13y ago

This is an interesting dilemma. I'd rather have no technology than live under oppression powered by it.

Technology just magnifies the power of a person, so in saying that you would rather have no technology, are you not also implying that people who's incentives you dislike, already have more power in the world than the rest? Technology doesn't cause these problems, it magnifies them.

eru 13y ago
Technology makes certain kinds of oppression (and means of gaining and keeping power) easier or possible at all, and makes certain other kinds harder or impossible. Technology does more than simple magnification.
- ZirconCode 13y ago
  Both sides are present though, it's a pretty balanced arms race. Technology also helps people gain freedom, you can't simply look at one side of a sword, and say it has one edge. Many of the protests in Egypt were planned through social networks, and things like TOR can't be ignored either. North Korea on the other hand, manages perfectly well to oppress it's people without technology. Imagine what would happen if those people had an internet connection.
  - hp50g 13y ago
    It's definitely not balanced. It's a cat and mouse game with temporary advantages on both sides. However, all advantages are lost the moment someone legislates always in favor of the rulers which is what happened in the UK. Now we're tied and gagged with permanent threat of imprisonment for having an opinion (this has happened a LOT recently).
    - zobzu 13y ago
      this. and we're acting as if those things couldn't happen anymore, that its a thing of the past - but its happening right now and we aint stopping it.
hp50g 13y ago
You are correct. I'd say magnify is the wrong term. It empowers people who have disingenuous motives.
lmm 13y ago
Pragmatically speaking, technology causes new problems. You might say it's already a problem that there exist crazy people who want to destroy the world, but really this is not a substantial issue nor one that is tractable to solve. So if there were a piece of new technology that meant that everyone had the power to destroy the world, that would for practical purposes be a new problem. There is an established, reasonable position (e.g. Watchmen) that it is bad to increase the power of individuals, because when large power can only be wielded by large societies this limits the damage it can do, compared to the same power in the hands of a single individual.

wladimir 13y ago

I understand your feeling, I know it very well. But that isn't a choice. There is no way to "stop technology". Humanity has always been about technology, from the moment we started picking up sticks. All we can really do is make sure that technology, and knowledge about it, is more evenly distributed, so that central control is more difficult: make sure it isn't seen as kind of magic to people that they deem is impossible to understand and out of reach to them. Technology is simply a set of tools and should be regarded as such. Centralized technologies with easily controlled, single points of failure are by far the most dangerous, and the most attractive for oppression. This is why DRM, for example, is really bad. It lives by obfuscation and being hard and/or undesirable to understand.

hp50g 13y ago
Unfortunately technology's progression via marketing has turned it into a king of magic that is impossible to understand and is out of reach of them (past consumption). Look at most consumer IT products these days - black boxes for milking people. DRM, the cloud, closed source software, unified communications (commercial and government internet control) and surveillance already are enslaving us.
- wladimir 13y ago
  I'm fully aware of what is happening, and how things appear to be going the "wrong" direction, at least according to the tech news. Don't let that despair you. What I proposed was something we (as in people with intimate knowledge about these things) could do to make this better. A lot of technical people are content with being high priests, and a lot of "consumers" content with not understanding what is going on. It may be possible to change that, albeit slowly. Looking beneath the surface level hyper commercialized pooha, there are quite active developments by in distributed protocols, mesh networks, cryptocurrencies, and people working on technology that is open and can meet basic human needs (for example see http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Global_Village_Construction_Set http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Global_Village_Constructio...), and so on. Another thing is that centralization makes things fragile. Even though centralization may be more efficient at first glance, once centralized systems collapse enough, people will look for more decentralized solutions.

mikecane 13y ago

The same "technology" that enables us to develop antibiotics so we can live also creates the biological threats that can massacre us during conflicts. Every knife cuts both ways.