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Technology Is Making the World More Unequal; Only Technology Can Fix This (theguardian.com)
mspohr shares an excerpt from an article written by Cory Doctorow via The Guardian: The inequality of badly-run or corrupt states is boosted by the power of technology -- but it's also easier than ever to destabilize these states, thanks to technology. The question is: which future will prevail?" [The article discusses two sides to the issue:] Here's the bad news: technology -- specifically, surveillance technology -- makes it easier to police disaffected populations, and that gives badly run, corrupt states enough stability to get themselves into real trouble. Here's the good news: technology -- specifically, networked technology -- makes it easier for opposition movements to form and mobilize, even under conditions of surveillance, and to topple badly run, corrupt states. Long before the internet radically transformed the way we organize ourselves, theorists were predicting we'd use computers to achieve ambitious goals without traditional hierarchies -- but it was a rare pundit who predicted that the first really successful example of this would be an operating system (GNU/Linux), and then an encyclopedia (Wikipedia). [Cory also has a new novel, Walkaway , which explores these ideas further.] The future will see a monotonic increase in the ambitions that loose-knit groups can achieve. My new novel, Walkaway, tries to signpost a territory in our future in which the catastrophes of the super-rich are transformed into something like triumphs by bohemian, anti-authoritarian "walkaways" who build housing and space programs the way we make encyclopedias today: substituting (sometimes acrimonious) discussion and (sometimes vulnerable) networks for submission to the authority of the ruling elites.
Here's to technology: the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems.
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The lesson to be learned here is that tools empower people be they good or evil. The more you understand the tools the more powerful and dangerous you are to established systems of power.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
There is no escape from the human condition. Technology merely amplifies it.
The internet was supposed to break down barriers and make the world a global village. But instead, for better or worse, we now have virtual enclaves of like-minded people who would never have found each other without the internet and social media.
The future is uncertain. Will it turns out to be an utopia, or dystopia? Your answer reflects your own worldview.
Humanity was unequal for the vast majority of its history. The current fad for equality is, for the most part, a historical blip.
Catastrophes tend to improve equality, because the rich have lot more to lose than the poor. One of the biggest levelers in history was the Black Death of the 14th century. The elite had most of their wealth in land, which collapsed in value because there was no one left to till it, while the poor saw their incomes soar since labor was scarce and valued.
The 20th century had 3 catastrophes in row: WW1, the Great Depression, and WW2. These all served as levelers, and by 1945, Western society was more level than ever. So people that grew up during the decades that followed, came to view the prevailing equality as "normal". Things are now regressing to the mean.
The distinction between equality and equality of opportunity is a relatively false one, unfortunately. The idea is that inequality is okay, so long as it distinguishes between individuals on the basis of their merit.
That's fine, but how do we define merit, in a way that is not tautological or otherwise meaningless. If, for example, we leave in an environment where personal income is largely defined by your access to capital, rather than your labour, then this is a meritocracy, so long as you define "merit" as having lots of cash. This is largely the society we live in now. If you look back 200 years ago, then we leaved in a meritocracy, so long as you defined merit in terms of having lots of land (at least in Europe, it was less true in the US because there were fewer people and lots of land). If you go back 1000 years, then being good with hacking and slaying was more the thing.
We often see this problem when we look at CEOs with very large salaries. Well, it's said, we have to pay them that because its the market rate. Or, in short, they have merit because they get paid a lot, and we pay them a lot because they have merit.
At heart, we have to strive for some level of equality, and equality of opportunity just clouds the issue. The levels of inequality that we have now are, I think, not sustainable. In the past, the main mechanisms for solving this problem have been the union or other social movements. Or war. Let's hope it's not the latter again.