Hacker News Reader

Comment by confoundcofound | Hacker News Reader

There is a pervasive hubris throughout tech that I’ve had trouble understanding: namely, that the mechanisms of human interaction between individuals and with the world are well understood, and are thus replicable.

Their reductive view of humans as manipulable minds in a mechanical sack of flesh has led us to nothing but isolation and disconnect.

But the truth is, we are integrated beings integrated in a world we do not and may never fully understand. Tech should thus help us deepen and enrich our sense of embodiment. Instead, it has done the exact opposite.

View on HN

The hubris in tech comes in a variety of forms, but you've definitely hit on one of them. It meshes well with the view of humans you see from the self driving companies - "Humans process the world with a couple crappy cameras and some neural network stuff, we have HD cameras, how hard can it be?" Well, a decade or so later, "Really Hard" seems to be the answer.

There's also a consistent trend of "We know code, and are as like gods in the synthetic world of 99.95% reliable APIs and networks, therefore we can do anything we want in reality!" Reality, of course, disagrees, often entertainingly.

But these are the mentalities driving a lot of what runs our world, and it's quite frankly terrifying to watch in implementation.

And the kicker (for me at least): let's endanger a bunch of humans today who get no say in the experiment to possibly save lots of them tomorrow, which in reality is just more tech bros enriching themselves at the ultimate expense to others. It's disgusting beyond belief.

This strikes so near & dear to my big feels. Tech sees itself as the reasoned expert intermediary. We have personas and product to guide us to the ideal solution.

But the truth is, tech is better when it's not so pretentious. We don't know what will come and planning for that is what we miss.

We should be optimizing for humility, for our limited capacity as techies to forsee & envision. Gibson's maxim to the highest wonder computing could deliver - to what soft wares should be associated with - is "The street finds it's own use for things."

Softness. Humble & open futures. Banking on human spirit. Instead, the tyranny of pre-designed interface, talking down to us forever.

Their reductive view of humans as manipulable minds in a mechanical sack of flesh has led us to nothing but isolation and disconnect.

I couldn't agree more with this, it's the most stupid way of looking at living beings possible. As a separate, disconnected piece of "hardware" running "software"

Walk outside without shoes on, in the grass, breathe the air and take a swim in the ocean and you'll soon realize that you might be made of "meat", but you're also made of everything around you and you're part of it, just like everything else.

When people describe themselves or others in that way, they're describing their value in the context of this horrible economic machine we have built and they're trying their best to understand how they fit into this system.

We did know and there are many experts who could do a good long exposition of “I told you so.” , but they were pushed aside by CEOs and business peeps. Or “bozos” as Guy Kawasaki would say: “The higher up you go, the less air there is.”

Some technology has done that, others have done as you would hope. Intent is everything.

If it comes from a shareholder-driven biz floated on the stock exchange, expect profits over innovation and people. If it's FOSS and driven by problem-solving, passion and grants, you might be in for something nice for a time.

At this point, we seem to be making worse versions of everything with the goal of just having something new and different to show. So few technologies reach the maturity of what came before it as it'll end up replaced before it reaches that point, thus they don't appeal to power users, and most are just figuring out ways to milk the largest market demographic possible.

Sad state of affairs. It doesn't have to be this way.

> Intent is everything.

No, outcomes are everything. Intent is second to that when it comes to society rather than to a case of law.

I think a lot of this is lack of self-awareness and how much neurotypical behaviour happens with these leaders in tech.

Instead of empathy and understanding others worldview, they think everyone shares their view and should be happy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com