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The accelerating rate of technological advancement is transforming society more and more quickly. There is no precedent for a transformation like this. Nor is it clear where we'll ultimately end up. The control regime is using emerging tech to influence our thinking and behavior, in part by erasing privacy. At the same time, other emerging tech is making it possible for the first time to organize viable alternatives to control regime systems.
Automation is beginning to eliminate many jobs and that's a good thing. In my opinion, anything that can be automated should be automated. In a perfect world, workers would own shares in the machines that replaced them. More realistically, the right Universal Basic Income plan might take the sting out of technological unemployment.
AI appears to be on the cusp of changing everything. This has clear downsides. Precrime. Deepfakes. Next level mass surveillance and targeting of dissidents. Less ominous are possibilities like next level medical cures, more accurate models of the future, and better computer games.
The risks of unwise technological choices are evident all around us. Fracking causes earthquakes. Glyphosate messes with hormones. Gain-of-function research likely brought us COVID. Satellite swarms may soon weaken or distort the planet's magnetic field.
As our technologies become more sophisticated, their risks become more complex. One thing I'm particularly concerned with are the cognitive impacts of an online lifestyle. Over the years, an increasingly large share of my brainpower has been taken over not by knowledge, but by how to find knowledge in computer systems. I feel like this probably has implications for how I think, though I doubt it's anything to worry about.
The impacts of technological advancement on our interactions with each other are more pronounced. Electronic devices and social media platforms mediate more and more of these interactions. Tech that promised to connect us has atomized us instead. Continuing down this path seems unwise.
Technology should connect and empower us. And it will once we learn to harness it more appropriately. In the meantime, there's nothing stopping us from abandoning mainstream social media entirely in favor of ready alternatives. That might not reverse the trend towards atomization, but it would be a start.
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