Techno-Utopia

Why do we, human beings, develop new technologies? What are inventions for? From the first advancements, like tools, fire and the wheel, to the latest digital and electronic gadgets, what purpose do they serve?

The obvious answer is that technological and scientific advancements serve two basic and deeply human goals; 1) they satisfy our immeasurable curiosity and 2) they make our lives better. And there's nothing more to it. Or there shouldn't be. We've evolved as social animals, so very early on we conquered our natural environment through or unparalleled capacity to work together in organized groups. Cooperation was our very first tool; it alone enabled us to stand up against nature's fiercest predators and even made those predators part of our daily meal. One man with a spear is helpless against a mammoth, but a group can make a whole lot of noise and drive the animal into a prearranged trap.

The cavemen used different techniques for catching these massive animals. One of the most known techniques included chasing the animal toward a cliff or into a pit full of spikes. [...] Another strategy was to surround the woolly mammoth and use spears to kill it. The cavemen used spears with blades made of flint. They threw the spears at the woolly mammoth, hoping they would penetrate the thick skin and kill the animal.
_{source: History of Yesterday}

Cooperation, organization and inventing tools, those are the strengths of our species. Strengths that enable us to make better lifes for ourselves and each other. One woolly mammoth could feed a small tribe for a week or two and many scientists have serious doubts about the common belief that prehistoric man had to slave all day every day in order to survive. In that sense, maybe they had better lives than we do now. In a family of two parents with two kids, the parents each have to work to feed that family. And that's with available technology that's light-years removed from the stone-tipped spears of the cavemen.

The reason for this is obvious: we do NOT use technology to make our lives better. Not anymore. For centuries now, technology, just like almost every other aspect of human endeavor, serves only one end, and that's to make more profits, to grow the economy. The cavemen didn't have an iPhone and food was a lot more scarce, but they hadn't yet forgotten what's important. Our most precious commodity is time, and we've got the technology to make time abundant for everyone of us. If we learn from the cavemen, and rearrange our priorities to make technological advancements serve humanity instead of profits, we'd have a techno-utopia (think Star Trek) instead of the techno-dystopia that's already upon us.

Technology could be used to make our work-days shorter. Instead we make our days longer. Technology could free up hands to do other necessary things, but instead our quest for more profits has made man another cog in the machine, condemning most of us to do the same thing over and over again every day, killing our spirit and body in the process. Instead we could divide all that work evenly, kill all the unnecessary jobs in middle management and bookkeeping (profits aren't the aim anymore, remember?), which would leave us with a one day workweek per person, maybe two days. With all the time we now have left, we could fully focus on the things we love doing, which is how every major invention and every great artist or sportsperson came to be. Newton, Einstein, yes even Musk; they all reached their extraordinary achievements because they had the time to focus on what they did best, without having to worry about how to pay for next day's meal. We have the potential to achieve true greatness, we could have wealth, all of us, without killing the planet, but we do the exact opposite, enslaved to a system that works for just a handful of people. It's a tragedy, and it has to end before we end ourselves.

This topic, among many others related to anarchism, socialism and libertarian communism, is discussed by socialist/anarchist Zoe Baker in the below linked video. The part about technology starts at the 1:18:00 mark, but the entire interview is good food for thought. Enjoy!

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