The technology fetish
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.
I'd argue you're spending too much time in the office with the chisel designers and not much time outside seeing the building. 30 years ago, the internet as we know it today didn't even exist. Just think for a moment how much of what we do today wasn't really possible. The only place you could learn about something was by going to a library or maybe university. There was no netflix or youtube for watching homemade videos. Realistic 3D computer games had never been played by a single person in history to that point. I'd argue that's a tremendous leap in only 30 years, and it was made possible by the same sort of chisel discussion you're talking about going on today. Who knows what major technology that will change our society in 30 years is being invented right now?
The above opinion about Technology is only going to grow as we start to analyze the effects of this Technological upheaval on society.
Technology has been a net benefit to society. But now we are entering an age when more and more people have always lived this way, so that 'net benefit' is now just considered normal day life. There was never a time for them where the fruits of this technological revolution where not widely available. People are able to criticize the negative effects of technology without envisioning a world without its benefits because they are living in its bounty.
Since you're top comment, I'll just say I'm trying to find common ground in this discussion. I'm not here to 'drop my wisdom' and then later throw my hands up and say how all these people don't understand reality. Without common grounds, we'll be talking over each other. That's not any good. I hope you all will take me in good faith. See the other thread.
I completely disagree, but I don’t have enough time to fully explain why right now. Suffice it to say that technological progress in and of itself is a means to an end, and that those means can be and are nested in complex hierarchical structures of purpose and meaning.
Sure there’s plenty of technological waste and hedonism that’s dominating popular culture right now, but some of those inventions are quietly but quickly advancing parts of the world that didn’t develop as quickly as the West did.
You can contend that the improvements in overall human knowledge and standards of living are inconsequential or misguided, but to deny that technology has enabled those things to happen in the first place is a huge mischaracterzation.
Every time that smartphone in your pocket improves, technology as a whole improves as well. Want to reduce fatalities on the road? The same people who are making your cellphone smarter are also working on the self-driving AI. The AI that can detect cancer better than humans? Same machine learning. Want to improve QoL in developing countries? The sort of technology that can help them only gets cheaper as we progress.
Additionally, technological advancement, much like scientific advancement as a whole, is complex and sometimes unclear. When people were studying the building blocks of matter, do you think they could have imagined that research would (eventually) lead to nuclear power?
So I'm going to ask a series of questions. I hope you will entertain me. Let's pick one line.
Why AI driving?
I'm bored at work, so sure.
There are multiple advantages to AI driving (though, granted, that was just an example off the top of my haed). On a more personal, noticeable level, increased productivity and reduced stress. I'm sure many people find city driving unbearable, and I know I'd love nothing more than to be able to just forget about parking, traffic, all that, and just be able to read or relax on my way to work.
On a larger scale, as it becomes more and more adopted, it should greatly reduce accidents and fatalities. Humans are pretty terrible drivers compared to computers.
Why drive?
To get places. Whether it be for work, leisure, or whatever. North American cities, in specific, were created with cars in mind.
And where are all these people driving to mostly?
Work
And what are most these people ultimately working on, mostly?
It is possible to continue this all the way to "Why are we not sitting on our buts in a cave?". However, that is not a better society than our current one. Perhaps the parts are hard to justify individually, but as a whole . a better society is created.
Oh, let's not just jump to conclusions like that. We were having an interesting thing going. And no I don't think we should all be sitting on our butts. I just want us to establish clear common grounds. This is the beginning of a conversation. I'm not just gonna say gotcha!
So, what are most these people ultimately working on, mostly?
edit: oh you're not op! but doesn't matter.
To the original question then:
In the united states, 1.6% are producing food for the other parts of society. A further 18.3% are producing other goods for society. The remainder is providing services, which probably includes other parts of the chain of providing food and other goods, such as a supermarket employee, as well as a myriad of other jobs.
I continue here. https://tildes.net/~talk/1rx/the_technology_fetish#comment-i9r
Sorry I think it is better to stick to one thread. But you are great help. I will be reading everything.
To make money, I'd imagine.
No I meant what are they working 'on', not 'for'.
Ah. Couldn't say, then. I'm working on software, but I couldn't tell you off the top of my head what most people do.
Edit: ZaphodBeebblebrox has you covered with the spread pretty well, though. So I'll just take his answer.
Okay. I'm just going to stick to this thread.
Thanks for keeping me on my toes. I have to introduce some new ideas here.
So I was talking originally about human endevour, you know society as a whole, what we're trying to do. So there's human effort being spent on maintaining humanity. That is staying alive, basically - this includes food, shelter, safety etc and only the status quo work in this resepct. And others being support systems for the general human endevour - like banking, supermarkets etc. And there's making and taking care of children and raising them as our replacements. All good.
All, or let's say most of that is due the animal in human. That is arising from what we have in common with animals (spiders, bees, ants..). We have to not die of hunger, not die of violence, not die of elements, and make kids - the bare minimum to keep humanity going - you know in the present - the base case - now. I have something to say about this too, but let's try to scrape the barrel of common grounds. Otherwise we'll be talking over each other.
So, there's this other part of human effort that goes in to improving 'technology' - for various reasons. But the point of the discussion for me, is the one that is done as a matter of fact - due course. This could be just to improve the state of the present in some sense. Or to solve some apparent problems with the present. Both to make society 'better'. Or to make the human condition better. Right? Would you agree in general with what I have said here?
The main purpose of improving technology is making the human condition and society better. I believe that further improvements in technology can continue to do so. One could make an argument that the current state of society is optimal and any further improvements will only harm society. I think its impossible to disprove it now, it takes time to prove it wrong. However, I do not see any likely reason why improvements in current technology would harm more than they would help.
Okay. What makes a better human life - in the most general sense?
A better feeling of self-worth, more free time to enjoy (up to a certain extent), more enjoyable work. I can give examples, but generalizations is hard.
First of all, we reached common ground I think. We agree that it is always a good idea to make human life better in the abstract - 10000 years ago, now, a 100 years from now - always holds.
Self-worth good. You seem to be making a distinction between 'free time to enjoy ' and 'enjoyable work'. As in both are ways to spend human time. What's the difference?
Enjoyable work is different because it will never be as enjoyable as free time, but it will give people more of a sense of purpose than spending their whole life doing nothing.
A human has a limited amount of effort per day. You mentioned more free time to enjoy and more enjoyable work as two lines that would make human life better.
But then
you're equating enjoying free time as doing nothing. And work as doing something. Is this what you're saying, to be clear?
I am not equating free time as doing nothing. However, people's uses of free time is usually less productive than the work they do during their job. Something like playing a video game, reading a fiction book, having interesting but ultimately pointless conversations online, etc. is interesting but not productive.
So what is productive work? Compare what Galileo was doing when he was staring in to the sky.
He was not merely looking into the sky, he was studying the sky and the objects in it. I think this would still qualify as work, even if it is work that he enjoyed.
Free time = Personal good/pursuits
Work = Communal goods/pursuits
Autonomous driving cuts costs of delivery and shipping. Cutting costs in these areas, leads to more money being spent in other areas - such as R&D.
When you factor that in with human safety, autonomous driving becomes the ideal pathway to take.
I'm not the one you asked, but I very much agree with what he said so I'll come in.
As a direct result, AI driving will ensure safer, faster and more efficient transportation on top of the added convenience.
As an indirect result, research in the field could promote growth in other related fields such as, say, pattern detection in images. That could in turn be used for something like detecting bone fractures in an x-ray scan, which could make those diagnostics more accessible/faster/cheaper and improve quality of life in general.
I think this is an interesting post, and probably going to be an unpopular opinion here on ~.
At the end of the day, means matter because they define what problems are solvable through what methods. You had the problem of having this thought and not enough people to share it with. You sat down and used a number of technological marvels to deliver it to strangers.
MRI, CAT scans, and smaller medical tech like TENS units and pacemakers are getting better all the time. These tools help to diagnose and treat conditions that would have been on the excruciating to fatal scale just 100 years ago. In the future, tools like teleoperated surgical robots will not only make the best surgeons better, but help them spend less time traveling and more time saving lives.
The same kind of trend is happening in most fields where humans would like to make material progress. There is still a huge way to go in terms of cultural achievement, but it's easier to work on that when people aren't starving, dying of preventable disease, or working mind numbing jobs.
When it comes to computing, faster processing directly relates to technological ability. The same is true for internet - faster internet means higher quality streams/data transfers.
Better technology leads to better software and research in the future. I believe the lust isn't based solely on speeds or nicer displays, but instead on what those mean for the future of tech and the possibilities.
People get excited about the advancing of tech - which is directly tied to processing power
My vocation is as a goldsmith, which is a job humans have been doing consistently in some way since the beginning of time, pretty much hitting soft metals with hard rocks. Today, I sit in a room with two computers, two subtractive milling machines, an SLA 3d printer, an LED curing machine, an ultrasonic cleaner, and some electroplating equipment, so new technology has definitely been changing this industry by leaps and bounds.
However - I feel that it is in direct service to the work that we can produce that this technology has been developed. I'm sure the people who are involved in producing the technology itself probably have a different experience of its creation than I, but as an end user, the person a lot of this was designed for, it's been pretty amazing to see what the technology we have worked up lately has done to not just my personal work, but metalsmithing as a whole.
If personal ornamentation can be considered to be a valuable part of civilization can be kind of a different discussion, but let's just embrace it here - technology has lowered our costs to produce fine work, making it more accessible to the average person. More people have beautiful custom made jewellery right now than any other time in history, I think.
So, as someone who would consider myself pretty much the sculptor in your example, I think you might be sitting with a bunch of chisel designers discussing chisel design, while the sculptors are elsewhere, making better, faster, and more affordable sculptures than ever before with their fancy new chisels, thanks to those designers.
"Men loven of propre kynde newefangelnesse" -- Geoffrey Chaucer, The Squire's Tale.
Yes, there are some people who will spend all day discussing the chisels, but there are lots of people finding new ways to use the chisels. Go find a Maker Faire near you and look around. 1/3rd is bad ideas, 1/3rd is just for the fun of it, and 1/3rd is interesting new combinations of things.