There Is No Such Thing as Bad Technology...

[crunchysteve]

...but there are bad people, with bad intent, using technology to enslave and control us. Take the mongrel dog running DOGE, for example.

"Captain Armpit-Smell" bought a social media network that, while it was struggling financially, had way many more, and way more diverse users, than it does now. It has become, pretty much exclusively a social media mouthpiece for "The Captain" and his fanbois. And those fanbois are nearly all "bois." The news outlets and journalists who still primarily microblog there, over any other "social" medium are abrogating their responsibilities as reporters by not also using the fediverse. The original microblog is dead, long live the original microblog - all the while ignoring the more diverse, larger audience for editorial content audience on the diversely managed, as well as diversely populated Fediverse.

Then there's the problem of the centralised news outlet in a decentralised, yet commercially tribalised, world - uninformed debate. The algorithm is tuned to give only the most irritating response, because we give away the most information about ourselves in a our negative reactions. Social media, all social media, sets out to push our buttons. Clickbait headlines earn more viewers than rational headlines because they drive us to comment negatively and give away very precise data about our most malleable emotions and responses to those emotions.

Then there is the preposterous levels of our reliance on social media, rather than person to person connections. I'm not a sociable person but, since escaping facebook, I find personal, bricks and mortar shopping actually enjoyable and rewarding. Any shopping for a thing needed for day-to-day living, projects, work needs has an element of chore about it, but I find reward in looking at the websites of places near me for an option or three, then going to those places to compare the options. Product in hand, how it feels. How it looks, "May I turn it on and see the screen." This is real convenience.

"Mind if I try it out?" is a mighty question. You can't ask it online. No, really, there is no try before you buy. No real one.

The other problem with life online, E. M. Forster's "The Machine Stops." One hundred years ago, Forster predicted this very world we live-in. The descriptions of the tech have me envisaging props design like Terry Gilliam's "Brazil," but the lives, the characters living them, are us! We today!

I've written about "The Machine Stops" here, back in January. I raise it again because The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has a really good opinion piece that echos my above-mentioned blog post of earlier this year, only in more detail, calling on scientific experience in the relevant fields. Please head over to AI is changing our future, by Toby Walsh, Chief Scientist at the UNSW AI Institute, Australia. Skynet is not our doom, we're perfectly good at engineering that ourselves, and are way ahead of the "Terminator" franchise already.

Comments

[fred_mouse]

The Machine Stops feels somewhat prescient, but also feels like a genre of kids books I kept encountering in the late 70s/early 80s which were all about farm kids pitying the city folk and having to teach said city kids about how to survive in the 'real world'. Things like 'how to make bread', which was weird, because I grew up around hippies all of whom made their own bread as city folk, and none of the country folk I knew made bread!

[crunchysteve]

Not really a "city kid", me. I grew up in Launceston, Tasmania. Sort of related to country kids teaching city kids to bake, I taught myself how to make bread dough, cause mum and dad were struggling with a big (for the 70s) mortgage and I'd frequently ask for pizza for dinner and mum would nix it. One day I noticed a recipe for dough on the side of a yeast packet that, to this day, I have no idea why mum had a packet of dried yeast in the pantry, she never baked. Maybe she was hinting me :D I still make pizza when I can be bothered lighting the mini pizza oven next to the barbecue. Not today, though. Too hot and windy outside.

[fred_mouse]

Home made bread was just one of those facts of life, but the very rare times we had pizza it was from the local pizza shop. It has never really made it into my head as a thing to make at home, I think because it was one of the cheap takeaway options. Home made biscuits was one of the ways of keeping the grocery bill down, and I was encouraged from relatively early on to have an interest in baking.

[crunchysteve]

Pizza got me sparked to learn how to make pasta, too. No Italian heritage, just a glutton for pizza and pasta, especially after taking up cycling as transport.

Made a few cakes and cookies in my time, but nothing beats the ease of napoli pie at home or on a campfire. Or ribbons of. Flour and egg.