Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All
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Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All
"LOVE LOVE LOVE your futorological brickbats! Love them! You are in fine company with Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary with these." -- Paulina Borsook
"Devoted to highly rhetorical nitpicking, but it is fun to read." -- Chris Mooney
"Rather close but correct reading." -- Evgeny Morozov
"Mean, but true." -- Annalee Newitz
"Dale Carrico's skewering of the salvific pretensions of Silicon Valley's soi disant savior/founders never disappoints." -- Frank Pasquale
"Pretty breathless, but I guess it had to be said." -- Bruce Sterling
"An essential reality check for those who are too entranced by transhumanism to notice the sordid reality behind the curtain." -- Charlie Stross
2 comments:
Well naturally, if you're on the Right.
"Helping people" isn't really helping people,
dontcha know, it's demotivating them and subjecting
them to "moral hazard". And by softening or
removing the consequences of bad behavior, it's setting
a bad example for onlookers who might also be
tempted to laziness or immorality. ("Immorality",
in this context, means self-indulgence, sexual
or otherwise. It certainly doesn't mean dealing
smartly with your employees, your customers,
or the government.)
"Killing people" means exhibiting the manly virtue
of defending civilization against the barbarians,
or the faithful against the infidels, or the
capitalists against the communists, or whatever.
Politics 101. They should teach this stuff in
pre-school, don't you think? ;->
Curiously enough, however, actual practice seems predicated on the assumptions that elite-incumbents need to be coddled with tax cuts and incentives and an infinitely supportive business climate followed by golden parachutes however badly they perform, meanwhile our bombs are humanitarian interventions... it's as if there is not so much an aversion to helping people, as that there are strange notions as to who needs help (apparently, it's the already rich and privileged) and what constitutes help (people suffering under tyranny need to die as collateral damage in the bombing of the infrastructure they depend on for survival).
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