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Comment by Glennross | Hacker News Reader

(Please try to respect the netiquette when voting.)

Empty words by Sundar Pichai employed to achieve a desired effect in Google's benefit.

The airplane is an example of a technology that has brought us closer together and helped advance the ideal of an interconnected global "village" and which I'm contrasting with the promise made for Google's products -- but don't get hung up on my example, because my argument is directed at Google.

Maybe it's just Google's tech that has failed to deliver on its promise for a better world.

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These might be empty words in Sundar Pichai's mouth, but the underlying idea is not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmakon_(philosophy)

It's time for Silicon Valley (I actually mean supporter's of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism actually) to learn what Classical Greeks discovered a long time ago.

Could you elaborate on the Pharmakon in this context or point me at any resources to get a better understanding of it?

What makes a remedy a _good_ thing isn't the thing itself but the way it is used. That's therapeutics. A badly used remedy can easily become poisonous. It's the same with _any_ technology, e.g the Internet, smartphones, IA…

I'd recommend reading Bernard Stiegler, a French philosopher whose work has yet to been translated to English though (as I just discovered). I think this English interview might be a good introduction: http://krisis.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/krisis-2011-1-05....

Note that he often gets political but it's really worth it though if you're interested in the way technology is being designed and adopted by mankind (he's also focused on the Anthropocene but that's another topic). His annual conferences at Pompidou Centre / IRI (specially the ones about IA – https://enmi-conf.org/wp/enmi18/, in French unfortunately). I'd recommend his seminaries on philosophy (via his School of philosophy http://pharmakon.fr/wordpress/le-projet/the-school-of-philos... and via the Ars Industrialis non-profit) but they aren't yet translated. Again, sorry for that.

The airplane is what enabled delivery of both nuclear bombs, as well as atrocities against the population in Vietnam and Syria.

All technology has no inherent moral compass, and allows for both desirable and undesirable effects, often in tandem.

Google has done more to make information accessible than any other company, and by extension has also done more to make misinformation accessible.

It takes a moral compass to use technology morally and ethically. There simply isn't a substitute, and technology itself will not provide one.

>The airplane is what enabled delivery of both nuclear bombs, as well as atrocities against the population in Vietnam and Syria.

And if used long enough, will allow for rapid regional/global transmission of an epidemic/pandemic. The World of Warcraft 'Corrupted Blood incident' is actually a virtual example of this that shows just how quickly something highly contagious could spread in the real world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted_Blood_incident .

But at the same time it allows things like getting medical diagnostic agents that have a usable life of a day or less to get where they need to be, donor organs to be moved quickly to recipients, etc.

He is both implying that "Technology" === Google, and that Google shouldn't be held accountable for any human problems.

(Please respect netiquette.)

Sundar Pichai of Google must also have Google in his mind when he speaks about technology.

Google is responsible for its actions.

The aeroplane has also made the world a far more insecure place (e.g. the UK was protected from contintental Europe by the English channel and her navy before the advent of the air-age) and a far more dangerous place (e.g. look at WW2, the dropping the atom bombs, the Vietnam War).

It it also, ahem, playing a leading role in our environmental self-destruction.

You could say that about a lot of things, telephones, radio, cars, trains, etc. These, with the plane, have been used for great things for sure. But these tools have also been used for terrible destruction. So much so that Churchill lamented the existence of the airplane.

> global "village": the airplane.

That technology has also allowed for bad things like Guernica, Nagasaki&Hiroshima and the napalm fields of the Vietnam War.

Let me tell you about the time they wanted to put my software for commercial jets on a military plane... I bowed out and my software is purely safety related, but I’m sure it’s out there carrying around guns and bombs and military vehicles.

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