Algorithm and Blues: The Tyranny of the Coming Smart-Tech Utopia
cyberlaw.stanford.edu
cyberlaw.stanford.edu
All too true. The kinds of comment like "but they can just not use X" always appear in the context of Facebook/Google (often when they appear on HN). But that's like saying you should just "not use CCTV". I'm not a user of FB/Google/Smart Tech, it uses me, and when it is deployed pervasively, it becomes by definition, impossible to avoid. I can't stop my friends getting an Alexa / Siri / Google Home thing, so I can't help coming into contact with them.
We can't have it both ways. Making tech / apps / etc addictive or indispensable or "impossible to live without" (once you've had it a few weeks and so do your friends), and then asserting people can "just not use it" is contradiction 101. As a corpus of people, I think we engineers need to look much harder at the world we are building and the constraints / motivators that are causing us to do it.
It would be one thing if the Alexa was free... but they actually charge for the thing, and they don't even develop their own apps/skills, that's on the community.
One of the big plot holes of the Star Trek universe is that money and bartering would ever go away (they ended up back tracking in a major way on this) or that anything like the Federation would ever be as benevolent or magnanimous as it is portrayed.
That is, I don't think taking corporations or greed out of it will make the tech better. People are people, whether they report to the Minister of Stuff or the Chief Whatever Officer.
Like if the earth spent a while as a cyberpunk dystopia and had "ancestors" of Augments who had lesser issues but were used to give the elites a self-perpetuating edge writ large, disregarded space as having no profit, and refused to provide any welfare despite a pitance of their production being required to prevent horrific suffering could give justification for why the federation is so radical on certain issues and why Ferngari would consider Wall Street worthy of pilgrimage - awed that humans of all species once "bested" them. Granted that should probably be regarded with about as foreigners visiting sites of travesties to celebrate them.
On some level it was a joke shot through with distortions, deliberately inaccurate misinterpretations of history, and willful ignorance among the characters of the xenophobia’s capacity to forge bonds among the ingroup of humans volunteering to accept the burden of fighting outsiders as a gateway to other privileges.
This part is glossed over with the premise of starfleet academy, or the motivating factors that impel characters toward their rank and status. So, we start to see that star trek is something of a cartoon, with “post-scarcity economics” being a deus ex machina for unlimited resources, leading to unlimited technology, leading to unlimited resources, with only a vague line connecting warp drive to first contact with vulcans, which then grants all other technologies for free as originating from alien discoveries.
Anyway, I think we’re pretty close to the idea of robots doing a lot of tedious things for us, if we play our cards right, which means we start to see a lot of things essentially growing on trees. Automatic hamburger machines mean less people slaving away over a hot grill in a low paying fast food chain, which is great, but this premise of automation won’t really save us unless robots can solve the human condition end-to-end.
It means we need a place to stay, clothes to wear, food and water, and something to keep us stimulated and occupied in such a way that we don’t get lonely. All this so that we can go out and find things that keep life interesting, once all our basic needs are met by default. That doesn’t seem to be where all our great inventions are taking us though.
With a harsh light and a strong lens, a lot of consumer oriented inventions do nothing for anyone. Business still seems to aim at bankrupting customers and competitors alike in furtherance of bigger business. Taken to logical conclusions those coziest with successful businesses get taken care of, and it’s near total neglect everywhere else.
But that doesn’t exist in a vaccuum. Really all the most extraordinary inventions have been miitary concepts. Preparing for war makes peace. Maybe that’s the proper inspiration at work here...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_Tense_(Star_Trek:_Deep_Sp...
I think it's great to have future utopian stories to tell ourselves.
It's likely we'll end up somewhere in the middle but if we only listen to the bad stuff then that is all we can hope for because we can't imagaine any other state :)
Microsoft actually commissioned a bunch of authors to write some positive short stories about the future in hopes of getting people in a more positive mindset.
It's called Future Visions and you can grab it for free here: https://news.microsoft.com/futurevisions/
You take your fingers, and take your 100+ key keyboard, and you think about how reliable your structured articulation of codified text syntax can be, when storing files on a file system the UNIX way.
Take that same philosophy, and make that happen with spoken word, and a language that has ~65,000 words. Phrases over text files, spoken through the air, instead of written down, saved and interpretted.
If that were what these speaker/microphone combo systems were about, and they weren’t internet connected, and exclusively piping profitable surveillance data home to some corporate data center to mine for buying habits in aggregate, this would all be very different.
Anyway, the future is fucking stupid, and I hate it. I hope JavaScript bitcoin mining eventually sucks so much accidentally wasted computational energy into some quantum computer with an unterminated while loop, that it conjures a black hole and erases us all.
Just my two cents.
Why do you think everything is recorded and sent to a remote server?
It's tempting to see these trends and just cut yourself off even further; boycott Big Tech and claim that they don't affect you because you're opting-out. But we're reaching a point where that's not enough, because eventually we won't have the option to opt-out unless we do something about it now.
Instead we have to engage with our society and take action in our democratic channels, to change things before they get to that point.
Not that I disagree with your overall sentiment.
Like you say, lots of people get by fine without, but is that because you have never really used them so much as to become dependent on them? The world worked without the internet, but try taking it back to that place now and you'd be laughed at!
There are viable alternatives to Google and Facebook that don’t require giving up on technology. It’s important for people to realize that.
Now we have to know how to navigate healthcare.gov to understand our insurance options, understand email, text, and all other smart phone etiquette. We need to know how to scan our own items at the store, how to use GPS and other touch systems in our vehicles, and know how to use multiple operating systems on computers, tablets, and other devices.
It is never ending! In 20 years, I imagine most engineers and computer scientists won't really be able to understand the scope of all tech we need on a daily basis. Technology will eventually become the equivalent of a magic crystal we carry in our pocket, but have no clue what it's source of power is or how it functions. Technologists will effectively become wizards! Without those wizards, the tech-powered society would crumble into dust.
The author is right that most people will effectively become automatons, mindlessly obeying the little taps and chimes of their tech-addled existence. They wouldn't have a choice of course, unless they are one of the few capable of obtaining a couple masters degrees in STEM.
That's already quite difficult given high specialization in IT. Even if you put hardware aside and take only software engineering, the difference between, say, kernel coding and the so-called "front-end development" is enormous. It literally takes years to master an ecosystem, and the complexity increases steadily just as we speak.
A couple of masters degrees in STEM isn't going to save someone from having their serotonin spike when their phone vibrates. Being the blacksmith that forges the shackles doesn't make your wrists impervious to your own creations.
I would argue that the future we have created with technology is still mostly pretty janky - and we give the tech too much credit.
The complaints that life is more complex than before usually fail to compare it to the complexity of things we're accomplishing and what that could have looked like 50,500, 500 0 years ago...
made up example: Communicate with someone on the other side of the planet...
Now: type a message or skype, instantaneous, searchable, recorded backup...
- 50 yrs ago, make an international telephone call. Its unclear, not recorded, difficult to verify(securely) who you're talking with etc.
- 500 yrs ago, write, if you can, on some paper and send it via horses or merchants... who knows if its delivered or if an answer is coming
- 5000 yrs ago. No. You can only talk with people in your village unless you're wealthy, royal or otherwise powerful.
I am not trying to argue that it does or does not. Just that we are operating on that assumption. I could see the counter example that a simpler life could be a more fulfilling.
Telephones/Telegrams allow for quick communication at the cost of guaranteed integrity of the information (in the case of an eavesdropper altering data in transit), at the cost of privacy and at the cost of reliability. None of these issues have to be problems faced by the users but all have the capacity to be introduced by the service providers at leisure or as a byproduct of their foresight.
Telephones, telegrams, cars, horses, houses, boats, schools and governments have all brought with them new forms of dependence -- and people have thus far been able to perform cost-benefit analysis of and bring innovation to these technologies. However, it seems that today more and more people are incapable of coming to true results when performing an analysis on the integrity of today's technologies and service providers, perhaps out of naivety -- and this is likely the product of not understanding the technology well enough to move on, to develop an alternative platform, or to properly govern one's activity on the platform to mitigate perceived risks.
The idea that modern annoyances (sitting in traffic, waiting in checkout lines, searching/browsing for information) are somehow essential to the human experience is super weird given that most of these things have only been around for 50ish years in their current form and less than 1,000 years in any form.
If I didn't have house chores or a commute, then I could spend a lot more time learning new pieces of Mathematics. Or work through the rest of the half-finished anatomy textbook on my bookshelf. Or finally get around to building a digital simulation of a human heart. Or start a garden. Or just hang out with a coffee at the hackerspace or coffee shop or church basement.
There are a lot of opportunities for serendipity, many ways to build grit, and infinite opportunities to socialize.
Sitting on a 1950's style cement highway for 30 minutes to go to a mall where I stand in the 1960's style Macy's checkout line is not the end-all and be-all of what it means to be human. That lifestyle an odd cultural aberration unique to the 20th and early 21st century.
The idea that doing dishes or vacuuming or driving a car in rush hour traffic are necessary to experience serendipity or frustration or boredom is a truly tyrannical vision of what it means to be human.
It's certainly true that we're not headed for a tech utopia (or dystopia), and that new technologies will have unintended and probably negative consequences (in addition to positive consequences).
But I'm not worried about ending commutes or killing the modern grocery shopping experience. Those things are inessential to the human experience and a net drag on society.
Why shouldn't the techno Utopia be able to take advantage of psychological findings to maximize happiness of humans? If the theory about congestion leading to happiness is true and empirically discoverable, then the techno Utopia can take advantage of it to increase happiness by integrating the 'best' kind of congestion possible into the lives of its human constituents.
I personally agree that these congestions are inessential. They are only desirable insofar as they force people who ordinarily "live in the fast lane" to meditate, daydream, and socialize. These are actual essential activities in my opinion. When inefficiencies are removed people will actually have more time to directly focus on these things, rather than having their meditation/social time relegated to periods where they are waiting on something they should not have to.
There two ways (at least) that the argument can still be perfectly valid:
1) Recentness or not doesn't matter. Women vote and no slavery/segregation are also recent things that have also "only been around for 50ish years" (or close enough), but one would presumably still consider them essential.
2) The gist of the argument is probably not about those particular annoyances per se, but about having annoyances (or non-optimizations or room for error, etc) in general (all of which are driven away by technology).
Your second point is already addressed: learning a new field of mathematics or science can be deeply frustrating and requires grit. The automation of daily chores does not necessitate the death of annoyance or grit.
Just like people still work hard every day even though farming highly automated.
>If I didn't have house chores or a commute, then I could spend a lot more time learning new pieces of Mathematics. Or work through the rest of the half-finished anatomy textbook on my bookshelf. Or finally get around to building a digital simulation of a human heart. Or start a garden. Or just hang out with a coffee at the hackerspace or coffee shop or church basement.
> There are a lot of opportunities for serendipity, many ways to build grit, and infinite opportunities to socialize.
Indeed, you would technically have more time to do these things. But you would not necessarily know you want to do them, nor find the time to sit and ponder. Not if every moment has been optimised to speed you through your day and onto the next productive task.
Perhaps, you argue, we would realise such moments are important and build them into the system, leaving patches of "hard reality". But we have already begun the process, and the activities you cite are so far faring badly. Putnam and Murray (Bowling Alone/Coming Apart) have both shown how the last half century has eroded actual participation in the activities we have been freed to do more of. They also show that it is hurting us, particularly anyone who is not bright or rich.
Ultimately, we need both the time to build grit, socialise and be serendipitous, as well as the moments of frustration and boredom which allow our minds to wander to such possibilities.
> the activities you cite are so far faring badly. Putnam and Murray (Bowling Alone/Coming Apart)...
There are two problems with Bowling Alone.
1. Bowling is boring; I'd rather grab a cappucino.
Putnam and Murray suppose that the social institutions and conventions of 1910-1940 were a platonic ideal and therefore ignore the myriad of new ways that people socialize and engage in their communities.
To pick just one relevant example, hackerspaces only existed in a few major cities when I became interested in them 10-15 years ago. Now there's at least one in every major city as well as many in smaller communities. But hackerspaces are just an example; there are thousands of other examples of the same phenomenon: popular and thriving community forums that didn't even exist in 1910-1940.
This form of community engagement is the sort of thing that Putnam and Murray completely miss in their analysis because, for them, "community engagement" means regular contact with one of ten or so institutions they happened to have statistics for when they wrote their book.
I spend less time at church potlucks and bowling nights than my grandparents. But then, my grandparents never met friends at coffee shops or hung out at hackerspaces.
2. Far more damning, Putnam and Murray weren't even correct for the tiny subset of community engagement metrics they chose to form their best-selling "darn kids born after 1940" thesis. See e.g., Everett Lad's critique of Bowling Alone.
So not only did new forms of community engagement pop up in response to changing times and interests, but traditional forms of community engagement continued to thrive!
However, I think the author's deeper point still stands, despite his poor support for the argument.
Can we not agree that the _je ne sais quoi_ of humanness is threatened, on some level, by modernity?
It is a very difficult empirical case to make, as you have made clear with your totally acceptable critique of _Bowling Alone_.
But, in my view, supporting the claim that our "humanness" is under assault is not really where we should be focusing our energies here... It is much more interesting to discuss how we can preserve the "old good" things from our past, while somehow enabling ourselves to take advantage of the "new good" things unlocked by technological progress without being undone in the process.
I'm tired of all these jeremiads bewailing the loss of all that we hold dear, ripped from our grasp by inhuman techno-corporate-behemoths.
Not sure what the roadmap for a more productive discussion is--but perhaps first we must define exactly what it is we valued from our pre-industrial, supposedly unsullied past.
I agree with you that we must be very critical any rose-tinted "back in my day it was better" line of inquiry, but I do believe that there are things worth preserving. Another important question to answer is, why are those things valuable to us? Is it because they titillate our neurons in just the right way? Or is there something more there?
Then we need to figure out how to implement our technological progress in a way that fosters these values, rather than undermining them.
PS: above-mentioned link to Ladd's critique of _Bowling Alone_: https://www.csmonitor.com/1999/0301/p9s1.html
The article discusses the fact that there are things beyond happiness that are important to humanity/humans. The author mentions self-determinism ("...a dystopian nightmare wherein humans are reduced to automatons") as well as seredipity and randomness ("...value of searching, browsing, being bored, being lost, failing, missing out, daydreaming, being surprised, going off script...")
My own opinion is that a liberal mindset of the form Wallace discusses in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Is_Water is important.
If we leave human rights in-tact and preserve the 40 hour work week (or less), there's no shortage of personal freedom, serendipity, randomness, and wonder to be found in this world. But if these things do not happen naturally, then we'll need to teach them.
Are the new ways the same though? Not all social experiences are equal.
I'd say bowling offers a much richer social experience than getting coffee or going to a hacker space. There is direct competition, there is teamwork, commitment and the comradery that comes with it, there are winner and losers, good days and bad days, etc. With bowling or church you will also be interacting with a much wider range of the community, it's a much less self selecting group.
I would go a step further and argue that happiness itself requires that friction, and can't be optimized or quantified. It's human nature to grow discontent and even depressed when given any kind of constancy for too long, no matter how "perfect". The idea that you can use social-engineering to perfect human happiness isn't just incomplete, it's fundamentally broken.
Neither of these is true in my experience. Happiness definitely can be optimized by changing your lifestyle (less stressful work, more free time, a healthy diet, regular exercise, adequate sleep, etc). To see it from the other direction, consider how events like onset of chronic pain and permanent disabilities negatively impact long-term happiness.