That part about Ivan Illich reminds me of Jacques Ellul, who wrote that basically the technique of technology monopolizes thinking and makes it the only place for solutions (for problems it itself created).
People are lonelier? Meta will create AI friends for you (which Zuckerberg argued in a recent interview)... mental illness is on the rise? Here's on-demand therapy through an app
The technique of technology forces people to think in small boxes where only it's the savior
Reading this, it’s hard for me not to think about that one LeGuin line, that “to oppose something is to maintain it”—I think from Left Hand. Even in that book, the line comes as an admission that simply rejecting something, anything from a political ideology to a daily inconvenience, doesn’t mean you’re imagining anything broader. Or as LeGuin puts it, you might be walking the opposite direction but you’re on the same road—you’re not going a different way.
Another term I've seen tossed around for this phenomenon is ratcheting. Every inconvenience that is solved by some bandaid is a "click" on the ratchet, that can't be wound back.
The car -> infrastructure -> less walkability pipeline is a result of clicks in one direction, so we're stuck with a limited design space after the fact in which to operate - a ratcheting of it's own since historical momentum now dictates there's only one way or one direction to turn the ratchet in.
Big tech believes that big tech can solve all the world’s problems and big tech leaders steadfastly maintain their dangerous blind allegiance but since the dawn of the computer age the world has been worse off. For most of the planet’s inhabitants, life is a struggle. Worldwide, excess deaths have increased. Wealth disparity, fueled and led by big tech billionaires, kills ten million people annually and pushes millions more into poverty. Big tech and all its power, intelligence and global reach has done nothing to address yet alone alleviate global hunger. War, on the other hand, has benefited greatly from big tech, which has given us the ghastly gift of robot warfare. Well-off white people also benefit, living longer than the creator intended thanks to computerized medical technology but these elders, who should have been gone years ago, who should be in the ground replenishing the earth, develop chronic diseases that bankrupt health care systems. New mothers struggle with no medical support for their babies and infant mortality rates, especially in the US, continue to rise. Meanwhile, great-great grandpa celebrates his hundredth birthday, pissing himself in comfort, the collapsed pathways of his urinary tract propped up by silicon stents.
That part about Ivan Illich reminds me of Jacques Ellul, who wrote that basically the technique of technology monopolizes thinking and makes it the only place for solutions (for problems it itself created).
People are lonelier? Meta will create AI friends for you (which Zuckerberg argued in a recent interview)... mental illness is on the rise? Here's on-demand therapy through an app
The technique of technology forces people to think in small boxes where only it's the savior
Reading this, it’s hard for me not to think about that one LeGuin line, that “to oppose something is to maintain it”—I think from Left Hand. Even in that book, the line comes as an admission that simply rejecting something, anything from a political ideology to a daily inconvenience, doesn’t mean you’re imagining anything broader. Or as LeGuin puts it, you might be walking the opposite direction but you’re on the same road—you’re not going a different way.
Another term I've seen tossed around for this phenomenon is ratcheting. Every inconvenience that is solved by some bandaid is a "click" on the ratchet, that can't be wound back.
The car -> infrastructure -> less walkability pipeline is a result of clicks in one direction, so we're stuck with a limited design space after the fact in which to operate - a ratcheting of it's own since historical momentum now dictates there's only one way or one direction to turn the ratchet in.
Big tech believes that big tech can solve all the world’s problems and big tech leaders steadfastly maintain their dangerous blind allegiance but since the dawn of the computer age the world has been worse off. For most of the planet’s inhabitants, life is a struggle. Worldwide, excess deaths have increased. Wealth disparity, fueled and led by big tech billionaires, kills ten million people annually and pushes millions more into poverty. Big tech and all its power, intelligence and global reach has done nothing to address yet alone alleviate global hunger. War, on the other hand, has benefited greatly from big tech, which has given us the ghastly gift of robot warfare. Well-off white people also benefit, living longer than the creator intended thanks to computerized medical technology but these elders, who should have been gone years ago, who should be in the ground replenishing the earth, develop chronic diseases that bankrupt health care systems. New mothers struggle with no medical support for their babies and infant mortality rates, especially in the US, continue to rise. Meanwhile, great-great grandpa celebrates his hundredth birthday, pissing himself in comfort, the collapsed pathways of his urinary tract propped up by silicon stents.