The centralization of stuff into Amazon, Google, and Facebook's offerings has been extremely destructive to the status quo for control and privacy.
That's control. And privacy is much better now than it was in the "glorious early days of the internet" when your two choices were SMTP and IRC and both were subject to monitoring by local sysadmins and pretty much any node your packets passed through.
Just because the present is not perfect does not mean the past was better. I much prefer the privacy and control of today's internet over yesterday's internet.
How do I prevent Google from reading my email conversations when a huge chunk of the destinations are on the Gmail platform?
I DON'T have control. And I DON'T like it.
I fear the set of Orwellian rules that would be required to make you happy.
I mind that Google and Facebook have access. They are already Orwellian, and figuring out how to control that would be anti-Orwellian.
Said nobody who truly understands network effects or knows someone who depends on Facebook for day-to-day communication with 5-10 people.
Quitting Facebook by yourself is easy but it's pointless if your friends don't do the same. Forcing your social circle to switch at the same time (particularly if they aren't technologically inclined) is folly.
However, women, children, and minorities have far more freedom and privacy than they ever have historically. There are some ways you can look at this so that it seems that corporations have more ability to see into your life. In large, it is really just a rise in their accuracy. Their attempts and actions are actually lessened.
Why should technology get the credit?
If you want your kids to go to school, there needs to be resources for that to happen (and you personally have to have enough resources that you aren't using them for labor).
Different technologies, sure. But the liberating effects of labor saving devices is pretty tough to dispute.
Zoe Quinn, black men getting shot at traffic stops and victims of cyberbullying might all have a different opinion about that.
None of those things are good. But you needn't dig hard to find our culture actively doing these things almost with glee not long ago. Our bar is rightfully higher than it was, and we have legitimate criticisms to overcome. But don't let that detract from the fact that the bar is higher.
Meanwhile, wages remain stagnant and automation threatens the jobs of everyone without an apprenticeship in mechanical engineering or a PhD in computer science. And literally every internet-connected device in our lives are surveillance tools being exploited for some corporate interest.
Yet there are piles of laundry in my home that aren't washing or folding themselves. Anything other than a TV dinner won't cook itself. Cars...might eventually drive themselves, I suppose, until enough bored teenagers poking around on Shodan decide they'd like a turn at the wheel.
Tech has risen to meet the needs of the average household by providing us...cellphone apps that put us in contact with some desperate human willing to perform tasks for those who can afford it, invisible money whose value fluctuates and gets stolen in more ways than is possible to spend, and gypsy cab/delivery services.
I can't think of a recent technological development that has made my life any better or easier. Instead, I spend more time troubleshooting half-assed, overcomplicated black-box shitware (with even less support!) than ever before. No thank you. It's been a race to the bottom since the late 2000s.
There are concerns over expectancy going flat or down. My understanding is that a few points down does not indicate the swing down has started. Should be looked at, but evidence is equally indicative of standard variance in growth.
That is, the anomaly was the constant growth in expectancy. Certainly an outlier in our histories.
And you should try harder in looking for things that are easier in life. It may not have got your life, yet. We should do what we can to spread the rewards to everyone, including you.
So yeah, if you can afford it, tech is wonderful. If you’re a Chinese Uigher, maybe not so much, and “any talk to the contrary” is disingenuous at best.
Worldwide incomes have risen more in the last 30 years, especially for the poor, than at any other time in history.
Tech might not have improved the lives of people who lost their jobs to “gig” workers who are paid a fraction of minimum wage.
This is mostly a myth. Gig workers tend to make a bit more than minimum wage. Which, sure, isn't great but these are unskilled jobs where you make your own hours. It's not surprising that the wages tend to be on the low side.
Tech has downright hurt the environment, even if you only look at sheer waste.
GDP per unit of energy consumed has risen dramatically due to better technology.
You probably don’t appreciate the future of drones I’d your experience with them is being bombed by them.
Deaths due to warfare are at all time historic lows. I can't say that this is due to new technology but it is worth noting.
gotta buy that shit they're selling now that WORLD TRADE is here. thank goodness for foreign products instead of whatever came before that.
> GDP per unit of energy consumed
using this metric presumes that GDP is the goal. fortunately or not, there's no quantitative measure of well-being. certainly we could suggest that not dying during childbirth is an improvement... but if you're instead spending life under the thumb of an extraction economy established by colonialists with the explicit intent to remote-rule thru division[0], then... well, it's at least not so crystal clear that foreign tech comes from the hand of the savior.
> Deaths due to warfare are at all time historic lows.
I like this statistic, too, but I suspect it's inflated by medics around battlefields not letting people bleed, or rot from infection, to death.
anyway, I just wanted to make the point that it's not so clear cut. I think technology is largely good... and whatever it is, it's not going away.
There are the big twin baddies of climate change and mass migration to contend with, and nobody seems to be contending. We’re in a decent place, but I would argue, a profoundly negative trajectory. In the same way that the Late Bronze Age was both a time of wonders, and utterly doomed.
Edit: Or better yet, stick with my original example of the DRC, which is not a happy tale.
Similarly, suicides are not only not a new phenomenon, but they are actually not as high as they have ever been historically. This is precisely what i meant by us having a higher bar. And we should continue to raise the bar. But don't talk about how tech could possibly make our lives better. Instead, lets continue the progress we have made.
Again, the claim is that the bar is rising. Not that it always rose fairly. Nor that it has equally reached everyone. Just that, by and large, technology has made our lives better.
yeah, "tech" is changing things and I couldn't imagine life without it... I imagine there are beings on the planet that can't imagine life with it, and they seem to live fine lives.
we're special animals... in that technology is part of "us". but I don't know that makes our lives better.
bill joy and some others disagreed, too
Oh totally, war was much less dramatic before atomic bombs. /s
Edit for substance: Tech is a massively double-edged sword, and looking only at the benefits is dishonest. You have nuclear power, which is truly amazing, and nuclear weapons, which may yet end us all. You have vaccines, but also biological weapons, medicines and poisons, better plows, better swords. You can argue that tech is a net positive, but if it’s anything, it is dramatic.
Still thanks to technology (e.g. radio, satellite, improved espionage capabilities).
> Western Europe isn’t almost constantly killing itself in endless wars
Once again, thanks to technology. We're now able to do more for less, and many of the motivations for war (resources, land) are no longer as much as a contributing factor.
Look away from your personal circumstances for a minute and consider the trajectory overall, for everyone, and not just you. This Panglossian “optimism” is downright destructive. It feels a lot like being in an airplane which has entered an unpowered, uncontrolled descent, and the guy next to tells you to be happy, it’s a miracle that we’re flying, humans never flew in all of history until recently.
This has nothing to do with whether I agree or disagree with your premise. It's the delivery of the message that you need to improve if you want it to come across in a way that is productive.