For the past 20 years, tech has promised to make things more efficient while making almost everything more complicated and less meaningful. Innovation, for innovation’s sake, has eroded our craftsmanship, relationships, and ability to think critically.
I feel this in my bones.
Tech has made things more efficient - the rewards of such are simply being funneled from the average person to the wealthy.
tech is not the problem, corporations are.
My phone struggled to load the site to order a single cold brew, pop-ups to install the custom App kept obscuring the options, and I had to register with my phone number, email address, and first and last name to buy a $5 cup of coffee.
Then walk out. Don’t reward the bullshit with your money. The coffee shop ain’t gonna give a shit if you keep buying coffee just to go home and complain on your blog.
Or… ask the staff for a menu, order with them, respectfully let them know how you feel about the qr/app thing (unlikely it was their decision to implement but they can pass on the complaint), and if they’re unwilling to take your order (which is hopefully unlikely at this point) feel free to make a little stink (if you feel inclined) and walk out. Still ok to complain on your blog about being spammed with the app but I’d rather try the obvious options first rather than expect the owners to heuristically discover via non-returning customers that we really don’t want the app.
That is, if the coffee/food/service is good, otherwise yea fuck em
I disagree about such a generalization.
There are very few instances where people decide to be dumb and use technology for it but in general my life is much better thanks to technology.
My job exists due to technology, the Internet allows me to work from home, a washing machine washes my clothes, I can order food in the middle of a meeting and have it delivered on my lunch pause, I can speak to my family half a world away everyday, with video, for free, I can have the answer to any question in seconds from my a tiny device in my pocket, my car brakes automatically if I’m distracted (and heats up before I sit down in the morning)… you get the deal.
lunch pause
car brakes automatically if I’m distracted
These two lines paint a very sad picture.
“In some parts of the city, you can’t even park your car anymore without downloading an app.”
Omg, this. I left my phone at home by accident and quickly found out that I could not pay a meter on the area I went to … You had to download an app to pay or use you phone to register a phone number and manually enter a plate and credit card.
No phone…meant no parking.
Good luck too if your phone happens to run out of battery.
Yep, technofeudalism is here.
I don’t agree. Technology in itself is not helpful nor harmful. It’s a tool like a hammer or a knife or a pen and a block of paper.
I agree if one says that technology makes it easier to do harm.:) People and their motives and actions are the same as always, since the stone age and ago.
Tech speeds things up. If you want to do good, it’ll help you do it faster. If you want to do evil, it’ll help you do it faster.
I think when most people say something like “technology is making the world worse” they mean the technology as it actually exists and as it is actually developing, not the abstract sense of possible futures that technology could feasibly deliver.
That is clearly what the author of the piece meant.
If the main focus of people who develop most technology is getting people more addicted to their devices so they are easier to exploit then technology sucks. If the main focus is to generate immoral levels of waste to scam venture capitalists and idiots on the internet then technology sucks. If the main focus is to use technology to monetize every aspect of someone’s existence, then I think it is fair to say that technology, at this point in history, sucks.
Saying “technology is neutral” is not super insightful if, in the present moment, the trend in technological development and its central applications are mostly evil.
Saying “technology is neutral” is worse than unhelpful if, in the present moment, the people who want to use technology to harm others are also using that cliche to justify their antisocial behavior.
