It takes a lot to make Alec comment on digital technology
I may have just found my next album title.
Well, ârender unto Caesar what is Caesarâsâ does include the possibility of being stabbed 23 times.
Thereâs an old Roman marching song that satirized Caesar.
Citizens, keep an eye on your wives, weâre bringing back the bald adulterer
He fucked away the gold in Gaul that you loaned him here in Rome
Caesar conquered the Gauls, Nicomedes conquered Caesar (as in, sexually)
Caesar triumphed in conquering the Gauls
Nicomedes does not triumph in conquering Caesar
I can imagine these guys singing it and snickering
The Ides of March will be next saturday, Just saying.
I mean⊠maybe, but when has just mirroring what the right is doing ever been an effective strategy?
I still have my techno-optimism.
Heâs rerunning The Apprentice. Send those residuals right into Trumpâs pocket. Hell - heâll probably cook the streaming numbers to send Donnie more money.
I donât think a left version of techno-optimism makes any sense because the problems donât have to do with things people canât do, they have to do with things they shouldnât do. Right now the biggest obstacle to abundance is that everything we accomplish keeps being stolen and turned against the rest of us.
I mean, the most obvious place where technology might help is clean energy â and yet even there the biggest limit to progress is that oil companies keep sabotaging it. We could use better ways to treat diseases, but Covid wasnât so deadly because people couldnât figure out how to stop it, it was because businesses complained and the right refused. I donât even know where to begin with Khanâs example of AI. Talking about technology buries that itâs all social problems.
Welp, apparently, theyâre doing a whole series of these âwhy isnât the left ALL IN on modern tech!!!â this weekâŠ
This one is saying the same thing, but in a slightly different, condescending way! FUN!
I think this person and the previous one are just⊠missing the point of the left wing critique of whatâs happening in tech right now. They really should be reading folks like Doctorow, Merchant, and Zitron to understand the leftist perspective a bit betterâŠ
Yeah, the left arenât criticizing the tech as much as they are how itâs being used. Tech is very much a general purpose tool, and like a hammer, can build or destroy things depending on the weilder.
Agreed, and the last article I posted addresses that point (that technology is a neutral tool)⊠but, also, Is it though? Iâm not sure that it is. Was the nuclear bomb âneutralâ? Has social media been âneutralâ? People creating technology are not themselves âneutralâ, so I find it hard to think that the things that they create are themselves neutral⊠How much of whatâs been created has merely shifted power around in our society to privilege some over others (tech-dude-bros over all of us).
I think these are questions worth addressing and debating⊠But what Iâm getting from these articles is that these questions should not be, and that instead they should accept that the technology that exists is a âgoodâ think⊠I donât know if either of these have addressed the deeper question of whether or not these technologies ARE actually neutral tools, or if how they are made and what they actually are doing right now tell us something different.