What Technology Values
al3x.net
al3x.net
Developing weapons technology is making killing easier. Developing communications technologies is making communications easier. Developing systems that collect personal data is making surveillance easier. All technology choices are value choices.
Not universally a bad thing, as it helps in self-defense.
> Developing communications technologies is making communications easier.
Not universally a good thing, as it aids in the commission of crimes and, as we've seen, makes it increasingly easy to commit crimes that are both very hard to prosecute and, due to that, very good excuses for taking down walls that on the whole protect liberty.
> Developing systems that collect personal data is making surveillance easier.
Not universally a bad thing, if it helps stop serious crimes.
I admit to guessing at which statements you expected me to go "Yay!" or "Boo!" at. My point isn't so much that the fault is not in our microchips but in ourselves, but that it's surprisingly difficult to imagine a technology, or even a use for a technology, that really has no potential to be genuinely positive.
I have to disagree with you about the fault being not in our technology. I'd say the faults are in both. The technology is an embodiment of our flawed judgement, but is real nonetheless. We make choices about what technology to create, but once we have created it we have to live in the new environment we have made. Technology reifies our ideas. That environment affects us. Some environments bring out more positive traits in us, and some bring out more negative ones. We do have the capacity to design for the positive.
I agree that we can imagine a potentially positive use for almost anything. But we can equally well imagine a world with unicorns and fairies. What matters is the effects technologies actually have in the real world.
Our technology can never be separated from ourselves.