The technology fetish

nomarkeu
Wed, 06 Jun 2018 14:33:23 +0000

What excites humans the most today is technological progress. Faster computers, better autonomous driving, colourful displays - a preoccuppation with 'means'. There seems to be much lesser excitement and study among popular consiousness with what is done with all these tech. Your smartphone is a technological marvel - but what are you doing with it?

This seems to be in similar veins as the idea of human progress from stone age to bronze to iron. "Stone age people used primitive technology, bronze age better, iron age the best. There are still peoples in the world who are still stuck in the stone age".

But this is a biased perception of human endevours. What matters is what humans did, not what they did it with. The incas, mayas and aztecs were 'stuck' in stone technology. But they built marvelous civilizations, buildings and cultures rivalling the greatest achievements in the rest of the world in their time.

Advancing technology is a fetish. One in pursuit of which we forget what matters is what we do with it. But there seems to be little of that going on. Most of the doing is for improving technology. And most of it in a fetishistic attempt to get out of the ditch we dug ourselves in from past technological 'progress'.

Today, humans are like a bunch of sculptures spending most of their days dicussing chisel technology rather than sculpting.

Comments URL: https://tildes.net/~talk/1rx/the_technology_fetish

Votes: 18

Comments: 36