Re:Everyone Deserves Great Design
by dragonwriter on Tuesday April 22, 2014 @02:54PM
(#7629597)
> To claim that you can't solve social problems with technology is silly.
Its true, though one can extend it to the silly version that you can't enable solutions to social problems with technology.
> People defecate in the same bodies of water that people drink out of. Modern civil engineering technology has solved this in many contexts.
Actually, I think social solutions to the social problem here are far older than modern civil engineering technology -- the technical problem is that, even with the social factors addressed, there stop being viable alternatives when you have large numbers of people packed in close quarters without sufficient technical means to separate waste streams from supply streams. Modern civil engineering solves that technical problem, allowing the social solutions to be effective in conditions where they otherwise would not be.
OTOH, technical solutions to, e.g., food production and distribution problems (which the world has many of) don't work when the social infrastructure is not in place to support them (which is why people starve in a world with plenty of food.)
Lots of things that are described as single problems have both technical and social aspects, and addressing one doesn't resolve the other. Resolving the complex problem often requires solving both a social problem and a technical problem.
Its true, though one can extend it to the silly version that you can't enable solutions to social problems with technology.
> People defecate in the same bodies of water that people drink out of. Modern civil engineering technology has solved this in many contexts.
Actually, I think social solutions to the social problem here are far older than modern civil engineering technology -- the technical problem is that, even with the social factors addressed, there stop being viable alternatives when you have large numbers of people packed in close quarters without sufficient technical means to separate waste streams from supply streams. Modern civil engineering solves that technical problem, allowing the social solutions to be effective in conditions where they otherwise would not be.
OTOH, technical solutions to, e.g., food production and distribution problems (which the world has many of) don't work when the social infrastructure is not in place to support them (which is why people starve in a world with plenty of food.)
Lots of things that are described as single problems have both technical and social aspects, and addressing one doesn't resolve the other. Resolving the complex problem often requires solving both a social problem and a technical problem.