The Coming Anti-Tech Counterculture
delw.in
delw.in
My girlfriend is adamant about keeping her old crusty flip phone with a broken hinge that doesn't have a real keyboard on it, or even the internet!
The majority of my friends almost refuse to own televisions.
I own a kindle, but almost never use it in favor of paper.
I also own several prosumer digital SLRs, but favor my old vivitar 35mm camera from high school.
etc. etc. The list goes on.
(For reference, my girlfriend and I are both programmers)
Look even here on HN, how many people are actually anti facebook, or how common "I'm staying off the internet for 6 months!" posts are.
The anti-tech counterculture is already here.
[1]: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/07/nobody-hates-softwa...
It's quite possible that smart phones, televisions, and kindles don't make your life any better. But MRI machines, efficient vehicles, green energy, plastic money, RFID toll booths, the GPS satellite constellation, and the internet probably do. Being anti technology means that you resist things that would improve your life for no other reason than that they are new. It's fine to use old things, as long as you keep an open mind.
Language is technology, clothing is technology, vegetables are technology, houses are technology.
The author is talking about people usurping modernity, not stretching the definition of technology to the point of absurdity.
That argument can be made, but not convincingly. Instead, why not define "technology" as something man-made that most people find incomprehensible?
Modernity is not Facebook. Facebook is pop culture, and we're already aware of the anti-pop-culture movement: they're called hipsters.
People dislike facebook for many reasons, and I can't say I've ever noticed an anti-tech vibe to them. Mostly it seems to be disgust with FB actions (privacy etc), with the shallowness of interactions there, or simply with the amount of time and mental energy it takes to "be involved" in FB.
I'm a LiveJournaler, and have been since like 2003, and while the community is less busy than it was, I've been having a much higher quality of interactions on there, long before facebook was around doing anything. For me, facebook is just the latest chapter in helping people around the world connect, with more cute pictures of cats however that what came before.
Clever use of AJAX isn't interesting. A decentralized and open network of self-bootstrapped 3d-printers suited for everything from making electronics to replacement kidneys? That's a different story.
Communication is not Facebook. Non-Facebook users have an equal interpersonal experience to that of a user. It is frustrating to see how much of the online English speaking world feels locked into Facebook. No one is locked in. We are free to spend our time seeking satisfaction any way we like, and it is nearly always more efficient to communicate using other tools.
I don't have a facebook page because of their policies and attitude toward privacy.
And that is 'anti-technology lite'. I know a guy who bought a goat and honey farm and literally lived in a hole in the ground for a few years until he could get his mud hut built.
But, ultimately, technology is useful and those that don't utilize it will be at a disadvantage.
I, for example, promised my wife I would go ahead and re-activate my facebook account soon so she could stop relaying messages to me. Utility conquers all.
Facebook is a tool designed and built to solve a set of problems. If that is not technology in a core sense, I don't know what is.
Facebook's purpose (sell social connections) and its method (networking) are distinct and separate. Facebook could accomplish its objectives in any number of ways -- networking is coincidental to the company's purpose.
A helicopter and an airplane both fly people through the sky in a controlled fashion but they use different methods. Does that make either one less of a technology than the other?
I just don't see how your argument makes any sense. It almost seems like a non sequitur.
Facebook isn't an application, it's a company that makes money by creating and maintaining a social forum. Facebook may use computer software "applications" to further this end, but one mustn't confuse the method with the goal, especially when one considers that the same goal could be achieved using different methods.
> I just don't see how your argument makes any sense.
Yes, I can see that. You also think Facebook is an application, like Excel. It isn't, it's a company.
Facebook is both. Which is to say that the word Facebook can be used in reference to a corporation or the application that kicked off that corporation (and still forms the core of that corporation's method).
I thought it was obvious from the context which we were discussing. I'll try to make it less ambiguous in the future.
Straw man. Facebook is a company whose purpose it is to make money by offering social connections. The fact that Facebook does this by having a network presence is coincidental -- the network aspect of Facebook's business is a means to an end, and the means could be something else with no change in the company's goals.
In principle, Facebook could accomplish its ends with two cans and a string across the back fence. Different technology, same goal.
> But the universe isn't a technology because...
Do try to think this through.
My point was just because something is built on top of a technology does not mean it's not a technology itself. If you follow that all the way back, you find yourself defining the universe.
So your plan is to refuse to draw a distinction between the company and a tool used by that company?
> It's certainly possible to have a company without a a product, but it certainly won't be a terribly successful company.
That's a different topic. We're discussing whether Facebook is a company or a software application. It's a company that uses applications -- software -- to accomplish its purposes.
> My point was just because something is built on top of a technology does not mean it's not a technology itself.
So, by your argument, Ford Motor Company is actually a car, not a company that builds cars? Corporations and technologies are distinct and operate by different rules.
> If you follow that all the way back, you find yourself defining the universe.
No, actually, if you follow that all the way back, you find yourself defining the universe in an absurd way. Companies and software applications aren't the same thing -- unless you think a chestnut horse is the same as a horse chestnut. And why not? They're described using the same words.
I don't think you're understanding my point. Maybe I've explained it wrong. Ford would be a car if Ford the company made a car called Ford the car. If I could drive around in a Ford Ford, for example. However, I drive around in a Ford Focus, where Ford is the company and the Focus is the product. With Facebook it's different, since the company and their product are named the same. If Facebook the company had a product called Bookface, Facebook would be the company and Bookface would be the product. In that situation, Facebook would not be a technology, but Bookface would be. I believe the misunderstanding we're having is coming from Facebook being both a company name as well as a product name.
Ford Motor Company is a company. They make a technology called the Duratec engine. They use this Duratec engine in a product called the Focus. When I use my Focus, I am using it as a technology (an application of science for practical purposes). I wouldn't say the Focus was not a technology just because it was built on the FF platform or on the Duratec engine. It is a technology that is leveraging other technologies. Facebook is difficult because both the company (ala Ford) and the product (ala Focus) are named the same thing. However, when I am using Facebook (Focus), I am using a technology created by Facebook (Ford).
Did I explain my point clearly enough? Let me know.
The problem is not that I don't understand your point, it's that you don't understand your point. Facebook is a corporation, not an application. Companies aren't software. Some of them use software to accomplish certain ends, but one mustn't confuse the carpenter with his hammer.
Your anti-technology example isn't really an anti-technology example.
> I don't have a facebook page because of their policies and attitude toward privacy.
But your not having a Facebook page isn't an objection to technology, it's an objection to Facebook's privacy policies, which isn't a technological issue.
> And that is 'anti-technology lite'.
Not really. If you were unwilling to have an airplane-style black box in your car that recorded your every move, would that choice be based on your attitude toward privacy, or your attitude toward technology?
If you were the leader of an Al-Qaeda cell in Pakistan, would you refuse to use a satellite telephone because (a) you didn't want to be blown up by a drone strike, or (b) you were against modern technology?
Not all rejections of technology are based on a rejection of the technology itself -- there are other equally valid reasons.
The author is a bit all over the map, but seems to say the counter-culture will reject, not any particular piece of technology because it is technology, but because of how it influences your life or because of how a particular company that controls that technology operates.
I love technology! A fungophobe is someone who fears all mushrooms, who assumes they're all deadly poisonous and isn't interested in learning about them. A fungophile is someone who is intensely interested in mushrooms, who reads about them, samples them, and learns which ones are poisonous, which ones taste good, which ones are medicinal and for what, which ones are allied to which trees or plants or animals. This is precisely my attitude toward technology. I am a technophile!
Now, what would you call someone who runs through the woods indiscriminately eating every mushroom, because they believe "mushrooms are neutral," so there are no bad ones and it's OK to use any of them as long as it's for good uses like eating and not bad uses like conking someone over the head? You would call this person dangerously stupid. But this is almost the modern attitude toward "technology." Actually it's even worse. Because of the core values of civilization, that conquest and control and forceful transformation are good, because civilization "grows" by dominating and exploiting and killing, and by numbing its members to the perspectives of their victims, it has been choosing and developing the most poisonous technologies, and ignoring or excluding tools allied to awareness, aliveness, and equal participation in power. It's as if we're in a world where the very definition of "mushroom" has been twisted to include little other than death caps and destroying angels and deadly galerinas, and we wonder why health care is so expensive.
Why this counterculture, apart from what the author would like to see develop? I mean, I'd personally like to see an anti-urban, anti-density counterculture enabled by technology, but I'm not under the illusion that that's going to happen just because it appeals to me.
...in little more than a single generation, this long relationship with nature has withered in a culture that finds Americans giving themselves up to the indoor ease of the technological way of life. Today’s average American spends most of the day indoors or inside an automobile traveling some hellish commuter road between workplace and home. Experience of his own natural habitat comes largely from watching beautifully photographed films on television. In Sterba’s word, he has become “denatured.”
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/feb/21/visitor...
In my view we would use technology to empower people to form stronger community bonds. The author mentions food industry tech, and that's a major part of my vision also. I think we need to move towards a locally grown seasonal food source instead of shipping food to all corners of the globe just because we can. That's just one piece to the puzzle though, there's obviously a lot more planning that would need to go into it.
However, the local food movement needs to talk more about yield. It doesn't appear that humanity can sustain itself this way - small communities perhaps, but it's a first world luxury.
Also, "food miles" is a BS metric, the biggest energy sink is fertilizer (by far!). Ammonium Nitrate is made by fossil fuel + air - you are mostly eating energy from natural gas, not the sun, it would seem.
Admittedly, it's too expensive to set up to be used commercially for anything except... well, high-margin cash crops, let us say. But those costs should go down.
Reading the article, the things should jump out to you: 1. all of the points are no secret! 2. All of those points are the mainstream. Frankly. Facebook was cool, I don't know, 5, 6 years ago? The crusade against Facebook started 2 years ago already, and the anti industrial food started at least a decade ago. All of these believes are now, surprised!, mainstream. 3. all of the listed end notes are common sense that every single fucking person will agree to.
So, what's so "coming" about those things? what's so "counter"-culture about those things?
Ah, the US-ian mind. What a wonderfully ignorant thing.
Er, of course, the same is true even without the "Lit Motors C1"...
Denser communities, walking, biking, and good public transit FTW.
I'd think for something to be labeled a next great counterculture it would have to go further, as in a neo neo-Luddite movement, possibly shunning consumerism altogether and having this weird duality of knowing a great deal about technology yet living with as few of it as possible. Though of course it would soon gobble up masses of hipsters following it, with no idea whatsoever of why they're doing so.
But things like Pebble, Google Glass, and Nest are fixing this. Tech will be less in-our-face, more useful, and less annoying than ever.
I would say this has been a trend since around the 50s when plastics were new and no one paid any attention to the consequences. Over time I think as a society we have become a little more cautious about unintended consequences, but there's a way to go.
I don't think anyone is (or should be) against new technology for counter-culture's sake. The issue is that the full consequences need to be taken into consideration, and I think that approach will certainly gain ground and eventually be considered common sense.
It's no coincidence that it's usually techies that protest stuff like voting-machines.
There's a difference between protecting your online identity and not wanting intrusive technology in your life and actually being a part of something which is "counter" to what is considered "mainstream".
I'm not sure what he's describing fits what I think of as counter cultures. The hippies in the 60's, graffiti artists, punks, and the beat culture are some of the most notable examples. Also, it this "anti-tech" culture really that big?
Also, read!
Technopoly: the Surrender of Culture to Technology by Neil Postman
And theorist Vilem Flusser was an amazing philosopher who forecasted the ways of the Internet before the Internet was mainstrem.
"Citizenville" author Gavin Newsom
Personally I view anti-technology, anti-progress, and anti-intellectualism as perhaps the greatest threats to our society. I want to get as close to a Ghost in the Shell-like world as possible in my lifetime, and those forces are directly in the way.
Maybe OP doesn't like sci-fi, and so no he hasn't read any of those books. I'm a nerd and I probably haven't read most of the books that you were bouncing around in your head when you made this comment.
And he never claimed to be Socrates. He simply had an insight and chose to share it.
Why so angry?
GITS is not exactly a ringing endorsement of its own universe. We're talking about a universe where indentured servitude is the norm, xenophobia runs rampant, entire people are hacked and puppeteered by blackhats, the class divide is wider than ever, and there are constant, violent clashes between the techno-elite and the have-nothings who rely literally on scrap cybernetic implants to survive. And in all of this, no one is safe - even the rich - everyone is subject to the whims of hackers on both sides of the law.
Moreover, if you like sci-fi, you may be interested to learn that the novel is in many ways the prototype version of _1984_ (Orwell himself wrote a book review; he had mixed feelings overall but had glowing praise for the dystopian aspects), just less modern. It's also the last dystopian sci-fi novel written before the atomic bomb (which permanently affected the genre.)
Orwell's book review is here: http://www.lewisiana.nl/orwell/