Gregory's Server
Technology is not a net good, or even a neutral force. Technology is a Force Multiplier. It reshapes the world to fit the vision of those who design it, regulate it, and wield it. Oil companies poison our lakes and rivers, slowly boiling our planet. Facebook tracks everything we do online and uses that data to make us miserable. Disney owns an outsized portion of modern folklore. The FCC decides who gets to launch a radio station, and under what circumstances. Television turns reasonable people in to rabid fans of raving monsters, and turns raving monsters in to celebrities, politicians and thought leaders.
It does not have to be this way.
@ajroach42 There are technologies which are (in at least direct effects) force dampeners / dispersers. Though in general application those ... are probably still force multipliers as they're more available to those with an extant resource / capability advantage. These include shields, camouflage, and other types of mechanisms.
Otherwise, I tend to agree.
If I've not already pointed to it, see Bernhard J. Stern's "Resistances to the Adoption of Technological Innovations" (1937) which discusses how entrenched interests often oppose emergent and disruptive technologies, often with the cycle repeating itself, e.g., as with the telegraph industry against telephones, and telephony against the Internet.
Hard-to-read Internet Archive scan: https://archive.org/details/technologicaltre1937unitrich/page/39
Hand-typed version (Markdown): https://rentry.co/szi3g
Pass the source through pandoc to generate a version with proper footnotes in your preferred format (e.g., PDF, ePub, HTML, etc.)
#BernhardJStern #ResistancesToTechnologicalInnovation
@ajroach42 There are technologies which are (in at least direct effects) force dampeners / dispersers. Though in general application those ... are probably still force multipliers as they're more available to those with an extant resource / capability advantage. These include shields, camouflage, and other types of mechanisms.