Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Has Technology Created A Monster? (codinghorror.com)
Stack Overflow co-founder Jeff Atwood posted a worried blog post on New Year's Eve.
Remember in 2011 when Marc Andreeseen said that "Software is eating the world?" That used to sound all hip and cool and inspirational, like "Wow! We software developers really are making a difference in the world!" and now for the life of me I can't read it as anything other than an ominous warning that we just weren't smart enough to translate properly at the time... What do you do when you wake up one day and software has kind of eaten the world, and it is no longer clear if software is in fact an unambiguously good thing, like we thought, like everyone told us... like we wanted it to be?
Slashdot reader theodp adds: "The year 2018 is the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein," provocatively notes Dr. Ainissa Ramirez, "in which a scientist neglects to ask about the consequences of his creation. I suspect (and hope) that there will be much debate on the impact of technology on our lives in the numerous lectures and events scheduled this year. It is a long-overdue discussion because scientists sometimes get so excited about their innovations that they forget to ask, 'Am I building a monster?' This anniversary offers a pause to see if society likes where it is headed."
That quote is from a "predictions for 2018" article on the Mach technology site (hosted by NBC News) in which Dr. Moshe Y. Vardi, a Professor of Computer Science at Rice University, also sees a looming debate. He remembers how Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan referred to tech's CEO's as "our country's real overlords" and described them as "moral Martians who operate on some weird new postmodern ethical wavelength."
Keep reading for some even more dire predictions...
Yale ethicist and author Wendell Wallach predicts that in 2018 "A serious tragedy will direct the attention of international leaders, under public pressure, to finally take on the difficult but incredibly necessary task of putting in place effective oversight and governance of emerging technologies... Industry leaders, fearful of more stringent restrictions on their activities, will lead the way for thoughtful oversight of digital technologies." He admits his prediction may be wrong, but argues that "reaping the benefits of innovation and managing risks must happen together."
And finally, long-time Slashdot reader gurps_npc notes that "the entire point of the book is that Dr. Frankenstein IS the monster, the flesh golem he created is just a victim of Dr. Frankenstein's arrogance and pride. The doctor created this life, then being scared of it, abandons it. Without food, money, or a basic education, the flesh golem turns to a life of crime and seeks revenge for the evil actions that Doctor Frankenstein committed. He doesn't know any better because no one educated him.
"The real lesson is not 'there are things man is not meant to know'. Instead it is 'Be responsible and take actions to ensure your creations are not used by uneducated shmucks.'"
Slashdot reader theodp adds: "The year 2018 is the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein," provocatively notes Dr. Ainissa Ramirez, "in which a scientist neglects to ask about the consequences of his creation. I suspect (and hope) that there will be much debate on the impact of technology on our lives in the numerous lectures and events scheduled this year. It is a long-overdue discussion because scientists sometimes get so excited about their innovations that they forget to ask, 'Am I building a monster?' This anniversary offers a pause to see if society likes where it is headed."
That quote is from a "predictions for 2018" article on the Mach technology site (hosted by NBC News) in which Dr. Moshe Y. Vardi, a Professor of Computer Science at Rice University, also sees a looming debate. He remembers how Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan referred to tech's CEO's as "our country's real overlords" and described them as "moral Martians who operate on some weird new postmodern ethical wavelength."
Keep reading for some even more dire predictions...
Yale ethicist and author Wendell Wallach predicts that in 2018 "A serious tragedy will direct the attention of international leaders, under public pressure, to finally take on the difficult but incredibly necessary task of putting in place effective oversight and governance of emerging technologies... Industry leaders, fearful of more stringent restrictions on their activities, will lead the way for thoughtful oversight of digital technologies." He admits his prediction may be wrong, but argues that "reaping the benefits of innovation and managing risks must happen together."
And finally, long-time Slashdot reader gurps_npc notes that "the entire point of the book is that Dr. Frankenstein IS the monster, the flesh golem he created is just a victim of Dr. Frankenstein's arrogance and pride. The doctor created this life, then being scared of it, abandons it. Without food, money, or a basic education, the flesh golem turns to a life of crime and seeks revenge for the evil actions that Doctor Frankenstein committed. He doesn't know any better because no one educated him.
"The real lesson is not 'there are things man is not meant to know'. Instead it is 'Be responsible and take actions to ensure your creations are not used by uneducated shmucks.'"
Technology has created a monster. It's true, the unabomber said so.
Also, Frankenstein comparisons are so 2017
CAPTCHA: taboos
Is that each generation cycles through a predictable set of attitudes:
child: OK, what we have is the way things always were
20's: Wow, some really cool things are happening now
30's: Some cool things and some not-so-cool things are happening
40's-50's: Things are starting to suck. They used to be sooo much better.
60's +: I'm worried about the future of humankind.
I helped create it. That fucker is indeed a monster.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
>letting yourself get fear mongered by a literal Moshe
It's been downhill ever since the written word. By the eye of Ra I swear that we never should have started using hieroglyphs it only led on to demotic and worse, English. MWGA.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
"Scientists study the world as it is, engineers create the world that never has been." Theodore von KÃrmÃn The world belongs to the makers. If you don't like what is being made, make it better.
Money is the root of all evil?
Technology has created an absolute life threatening monster. We're all boiling fucking frogs.
But software which OpenBSD uses and redistributes must be free to all (be they people or companies), for any purpose they wish to use it, including modification, use, peeing on, or even integration into baby mulching machines or atomic bombs to be dropped on Australia.
- cvs@openbsd.org mailing list, May 29, 2001
The only thing that needs to be pointed out, to make this whole yarn bunkum, is that, MySpace now equals DeadSpace. Fads today gone tomorrow. The noise of the proletariat is still driven by today's bright shiny, whether that be a fake egoist individual or object. Most of the rubbish about division is being driven by corporations so the psychopaths at the top can keep power and create chaos all to feed their ego. The false narratives of colour versus color (heh heh) or religion vs religion or make vs female, a fake narrative a false construct created by stink tanks and PR=B$ to keep workers divided because the workers united will hang the fucking corrupt bosses.
The tech companies have neglible power, look what happened to hasta la vista or the lotus eaters or all the other once dominating tech companies and their products that simply died. M$ is dying in slow motion, only assiduous lobbying and corruption keeping it on life support. Google tail is definitely going between it's legs to protect it's genitals, it's power a marketing illusion, the reality it lives or dies at the people's whim. The halls of power a cracked with panic seeking stuff to blame and refusing to accept, yep, your ego, greed and lusts are solely to be blamed and is your downfall, as in the past so in the future. Rise to the top on popularity and the rush of blood from your brain to your genitals basically cripples your thinking and you own ego becomes your undoing. Technology is totally reliant on everything working, the greater the failure that technology causes, the more rapid technologies demise.
A failing AI does not indulge in plots, it simply fails, stuck in loops, crashes, simply fails to work. A failing AI does not work 99% and only fail 1%, like all software typical failure is BSOD, done and finished.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Is database/surveillance tech ALONG with an authoritarian (yes, the US government is authoritarian compared to many other democracies) government in bed with the purveyors of the database/surveillance tech. Add to this a large population of lemmings who think that "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear", and it's a recipe for long-term disaster.
You should probably stop using all technology built with software (Slashdot included) now in protest!
Some of us having been saying this since the early aughts. Technology is a great tool, it is not a panacea, and ever since the dot-com bubble most of these companies have been utterly corrupt, increasingly so by the year.
Err...
Software and technology are developing fine.
That I suspect neither Atwood (or Slashdot) would have posted an article like this had Hillary won (Atwood “disgusted with American democracy”) when Facebook has been doing the crap with software for the entirety of the Obama administration and not one peep was ever made by slashdot and, instead was ENCOURAGED by Atwood and Slashdot as demonstrations of “software doing good” or how Facebook and Twitter were the reasons that the Eyptisn soring revolution worked. (Except it didn’t which is why nobody talks about it anymore)
Suddenly Trump uses twitter to win an election and not only is Twitter bad but so is American Democracy?
Yeah bullshit and with it I call into question his entire thesis and this article... on a so-called tech site no less...
As a technology-employed person myself as I get older I realize the growing importance of asking the question "just because we *can* do something, should we?" The cop out of "we scientists/engineers/programmers just create it, others decide how it gets used" died in Hiroshima or by tetraethyl lead poisoning.
This isn't bombs and lasers, you say? Fine. Take an easy example. "Self-driving vehicles will save lives! Carbon!" The transportation companies will be *first* in line to replace long-haul and regional drivers with bots. Those drivers are expensive (training, insurance, wages) and have a lot of downtime. A half-million dollar rig sitting for 8 hours while the driver *sleeps* eats a lot of money.
3.5 million Americans are employed as professional truck drivers and will be out of work when self-driving freight trucks hit the roads. Hire them to build the trucks? Fix them? Retraining them is expensive -- and historically this never happens. They may not even be able to be retrained for those jobs. When industries collapse, things get really bad really fast and politicians are poorly motivated to help.
What should a good technologist do? Keep working on vision systems and feedback controls?
Get off my lawn.
If I've said it once.... I've said it a hundred times.
Our technology is evolving faster than our species.
Suicides of teen girls in the USA are up due to cell phones and social media.
Cell phones are killing our necks.
In addition to carrying a personal tracking device, governments are using and abusing any and all technology to spy on citizens
The Sun could wipe out our power grid with a direct hit from a geomagnetic storm, and utilities aren't doing anything to mitigate the risks.
5 Countries are destroying the ocean with plastics and covering the earth with asbestos.
And let's not forget about the Doomsday clock and Nuclear Weapons. We still have a cold war posture that could end badly.
We have governments with cheap gene editing tools CRISPR/CAS9 working to make designer pets that glow in the dark and super biological weapons
Video Game Addiction is rampant
The Internet is a Pandora's box of garbage and porn, bad behavior are shaping your minds through YouTube and other video streaming sites.
The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. There will be a tipping point and this will lead to global unrest.
We can truly say it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. If we could all just grow up and use our technology for good, but we can't. Just like light and dark, yin and yang, the good of technology is always accompanied by the evil dark side.
My prediction for 2018 is that AI and machine learning are going to be applied to hacking. AI's will be trained to write code to exploit all things and the exploits will be endless. Humans won't even be able to understand the exploit code as the AI software churns them out. Further I predict human cloning will happen this year and that China/Russia/North Korea will test some pretty nasty hacks on Americas Banks, Stock Market, Telecommunications, and/or gas/electric/water. I also predict that US drug usage will continue to increase (opioids, weed, alcohol) and the life expectancy will continue to decrease and suicide rates will continue to increase. I also predict that based on an increased energy in the atmosphere that storms will continue to grow in intensity. I also predict there will be a war in North Korea due to an error in a rocket test hitting a US ally. Further I predict Russia will take over another ex-Russian republic and China will continue to flex it's military muscle.
7 billion people on the planet. Technology everywhere, and we still can't figure out to behave and share.
I was watching TV with a little child and she was horrified by the war videos on the news and she asked me, "Why is there war? Why are they fighting?"
My answer, "Because, Sharing is hard."
To all reading this, in 2018 do a better job of sharing, loving your neighbor, and using less plastic.
Happy New Year!
Nearly 30 years ago, I wrote my first line of code. I knew then that I had stumbled across the thing with which I would destroy the world of men.
In the intervening time I have flooded your inboxes, tracked your buying habits, sold you sub-prim adjustable rate mortgages, delivered you pornography, and helped states maintain your vital records. Now, I have stepped back and started teaching.
I feed younglings to the beast!
I am the penguin that codes in the night.
Software is a medium of expression. It's not responsible for your intent or your willingness to allow stupid things to be implemented.
This is like kings realizing that they no longer control all the grain after the thresher is already in use in the field.
Technology has never been good or evil. Just about any technology can be used for good or for evil. It depends on the motives of who is using it. Technology hasn't created any monsters. The monsters are the people, businesses, and governments that are using the technology for harmful motives that would have existed anyway.
We've seen this before, and I point to railroads as an example. They were used to ship all sorts of goods, for communication when transporting mail, and to move passengers. Railroads had an immense amount of power because of their impact on so many aspects of society, and engaged in many corrupt actions. Railroads provided great benefits to ordinary people, but the businesses operating the railroads used them for nefarious purposes. Part of the reason antitrust laws were created was to prohibit anticompetitive behavior by railroad companies. Railroads had at least as much influence as any large technology company has now, just because of all of the aspects of society they influenced. And today, we look at railroads as a technology that's largely been supplanted by newer technologies and somewhat a relic of the past. We may view them as slow and somewhat inept (see Amtrak), but not as particularly evil.
No matter how evil these companies decide to behave, their days are numbered. Because the cycle of new technology is much faster today than in the past, these companies probably won't be as powerful or influential for nearly as long as the railroads were.
I agree that big technology companies are working against us to increase their wealth and power. In the 19th century, this was addressed through laws like the Sherman Antitrust Act, which was used to rein in companies like railroads. In the short term, the solution is to educate people and demand that government work to actually serve the interests of the people. In the longer term, the real solution is developing the technology that will supplant present technologies and make these companies obsolete.
the magic has worn off. I prefer dumb devices that just work and are reliable. As soon as software becomes involved thing can get complicated. I long for the hardware DVD players of old that were instantly available and didnt have to boot up. Or software vendors which strip out features in "updates". Why does everything now try to collect telemetry? I just purposefully bought a mechanical micrometer and calipers over digital because their service lift is almost infinite. Electronics can just stop working for unknown reasons and become garbage. I dont want my car to have a cell modem in it or be able to remotely exploited or monitored. People have been in a mad rush to make all kinds of things "modern" and high tech...but the truth is they are making things overly complex and unreliable. Even things like roku in the world of constant updates...always changing subtle behaviors and the user interface. The world keeps changing behind the scenes and in ways out of the individuals control. Reliability is out the window. When that last apple ios came out I had an old iphone 5 that I was happy with. I was pissed that it became unbearable slow. I didnt know if they were throttling it to force an upgrade, or if the new ios was just so bloated it ran like crap...but it forced me to upgrade my hardware. I make my living with software and have made my own smart devices for around the house. Still I can say that in general I dont want any of this. Standard reliable things of old are becoming crapified. We are way to vulnerable to bad technology and integrating it into everything around us.
Back when the net did not have to worry about banning, reporting, removing reviews, news, deranking, that a site owner wanted to help one side of US politics.
The "monster" is new site owners, big brand owners trying to impose their elite party political ideology on all site users.
If people want to swap news, reports, movie reviews online why should a site owner need to ban links, ban accounts, derank news and report users to their respective governments?
The politics of a few big brands is the problem not their users who just want to communicate. The users just want to communicate about the world around them.
Local news, international news, the results of political parties and their changes to nations.
If people want to talk about the results of such political changes in their communities, why ban the accounts and report the users?
Censorship and deranking of news is never necessary.
Removing movie reviews is not a good practice.
The internet allows the bad local political news and what another nations considers blasphemy to be news globally. That is a good thing.
Telling truth to political leaders does not need oversight.
Its called freedom of speech.
Freedom after speech and the right right of the people to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Something boring people in some nations or who live under some faiths that might not understand but the USA supports online.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I annoy my wife because I leave my cell phone in my brief case most of the time. And don't hear it ring. To me it is a tool for me to use, when I have a need. ;)
;)
I also, don't have Facebook, Twitter or Netflix accounts. When people act surprised, I just say as a contract software developer I create Tech. I don't really have a use for it
But when I do get out and about, I can see exactly what the author is saying. A vast majority of individuals have their smart phone in their hand and seem obvious to the world around them. And most likely don't need to, beyond the physical need/addiction
Just my 2 cents
I think the big test for us is coming up shortly. Technology is shifting from being a labor-saving device to a labor-eliminating device. And unlike previous shifts, the employment losses are going to be at all levels of intelligence. How we respond to this is going to be the difference between having a peaceful transition to a lower level of work and a revolution.
Take an example of a doctor. Doctors have a regulated profession and are therefore likely immune, but assume they don't. Right now, the selection criteria for medical school are a photographic memory (to ace the MCAT) and near-perfect academic performance in college. The current reason for this is to limit the number of medical students, and it makes sense to only take the best since they're in for a multi-year academic hazing. But in the age of Google, do doctors really have to have the entire body of medical knowledge accessible in their brains on demand?
At the low end, almost every middleman and paper-processing job will be eliminated. No great loss? How about the millions of people working for companies that have jobs like this? All of a sudden, they have zero income and zero ability to contribute to the workforce.
What I find frustrating is that anyone discussing this seems to get characterized as the Unabomber or similar, ranting against technology. Technology is fine...what we do with it needs to be looked at.
we are the monster
Yes, modern engineering degrees involve ethics classes, and ethics is an important part of code of conduct of engineering and other professional organizations. That said, we want ask the question "what if" every now and then, and have some fun as well. Is fun and curiosity unethical? But that's why we have basic research. Or had.
WTH is a brief case?
Used to be people like creimer were the weird guy people avoided at the office. At night, the creimers would type furiously alone at their typewriters and no one would have to know about it.
Now, the creimers of the world can foist their unwanted presence upon the world in real time, for free.
Tools aren't inherently good or bad. An axe can be used to cut wood for a fireplace, or it can be used to kill someone. Or it can take the user's leg off at the knee if used carelessly. Technology and software are just tools. They make doing things more efficient. What they're applied to, however, isn't something the tool can control. It's what use the user makes of the tool that's good or bad.
And yes, that's independent of the tool. Take the atomic bomb. Supposedly good only for mass destruction, you'd think? Well yes, the bomb may be. But the exact same principles and science behind the bomb are also behind the manufacture of radioactive sources for medical imaging and the treatment of cancer. The two are inseparable, you can't make it so you can manufacture isotopes for medical uses but somehow make it so you can't manufacture a bomb. And no you can't somehow make the knowledge needed to make an atomic bomb unobtainable, because all it takes is the basic knowledge of nuclear physics and a lot of time to crunch the numbers and work through the equations.
Ethics classes are well and good, and a necessary part of any engineer's education. But in the end it comes down to this: anything capable of being useful is capable of being dangerous, and humans being humans there's always going to be someone who'll turn any tool to a bad use. The only solution I can see involves forcibly making every human being behave ethically, and I don't see any acceptable way of doing that. For one thing, even ignoring the truly evil and the criminal, we can't even agree on what "ethical" means in concrete terms. Is it ethical to ever use lethal force to defend yourself, and if so under what constraints? Is it ethical to demand that residents of a community follow the community's rules, and if so what should be the extent of the community's rule-making authority? Is it ethical to require your employees to work around potentially-dangerous equipment, and if so what are your obligations towards them when they're doing what you require of them? Given that we can't settle those sorts of disagreements I just don't see how we can define "ethical" in concrete enough terms to apply at the tool level while still allowing the tools to be useful to us.
Ah the good old "left my phone in the briefcase" line. Yeah I use that when I meet my side-girlfriend too.
Yes and no
The answer to the title of this article is yes and no, technology is or is not a monster that humans have created. Note that software is only part of the technology, which also includes hardware, like TPUs.
AlphaGo Zero and Alpha Zero have displayed the greatness of technology by extending the depths human knowledge, intuition, and creativity. Google has also contributed to this technology by demonstrating the power of their TPUs.
The specter of sharing a future with autonomous weapons points to the monster side of technology gone awry. That is my judgement, not the judgement of those who develop and plan to use them.
I do not share the views of prominent scientists and venture capitalists, who warn that AI will contribute to the end of human civilization. They may know something about technology and AI that I don't. I foster the view that human failing and greed will ultimately end human civilization as we know it.
Our current state of affairs isn't caused by technology, although technology makes the issue more efficient in some areas. It's cause by political decisions, firstly a refusal by government to do its job and regulate corporations and thereby fulfil its duty to protect its citizenry from them (pollution, civil rights abuses, and exploitation both in the US and overseas), and secondly by allowing a concentration of wealth and power into an ever smaller group of democratically unaccountable individuals who are turning democratic infrastructure into a plaything for their own petty personal political interests. Technology used to support these ends is a symptom, not a cause. Current ICT development is mostly aimed at further empowering the rich and disempowering the majority. That's not a mistake, that's by design.
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
"Yet here we are 20 years later with a full employment economy. "
How many of those jobs are sub-poverty level? Has the middle class been increasing or shrinking. There is evidence that we are looking at an economic crisis brewing. Looking at jobs alone is just as stupid as only looking at GDP.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
She's a moron.
Brought to you by assorted TLA institutions, various other agencies, Facebook, Amazon, Slashdot, twitter, Google, etc.
As well as history's greatest mis-information matrix.
SOmething to consider.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
It's all easily bypassed, including the tech giants.
At least not in the book. In the book he's a gifted young student who starts down the road of science but is corrupted by his juvenile fascination with the occult.
You can see that Frankenstein was no scientist by the one thing that was never present in any of his plans: publication. Because that's really the defining characteristic of what a scientist is: he is someone who submits his work for others to critique and build upon. Science is about expanding humanity's understanding. Frankenstein was something different. Here is what he himself says:
I had a contempt for the uses of modern natural philosophy. It was very different, when the masters of the science sought immortality and power; such views, although futile, were grand: but now the scene was changed. The ambition of the inquirer seemed to limit itself to the annihilation of those visions on which my interest in science was chiefly founded. I was required to exchange chimeras of boundless grandeur for realities of little worth.
So what Frankenstein wanted to be was something more like a wizard: not someone who advances knowledge through sharing, but someone whose possession of ancient and secret knowledge confers power on himself. And while he turns from studying occult books to science in his school career, he never stops thinking like or acting like an occultist.
I don't think that the novel is a cautionary tale about science; I think i'ts really a cautionary tale about romanticism. Frankenstein is pretty much undeniably a literary portrait of Percy Bysshe Shelley, a man she was madly in love with for his prodigious charisma and intellect but could be cold and heartless toward people who weren't useful to him in his self-aggrandizement.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Oh his name was Wendell Wallach, Wendell Wallach
Oh his name was Wendell Wallach, Wendell Wallach
Yes his name was Wendell Wallach,
And he only had one leg!
Yes his name was Wendell Wallach, Wendell Wallach.
(Burt Bacharach)
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
would think that anything is "an unambiguously good thing, like we thought"??? How could this kind of stupidity attract followers? What a moron.
How many of those jobs are sub-poverty level?
Very few. Most poor households have zero full time workers. Most people earning minimum wage are 2nd or 3rd earners in middle class households.
Has the middle class been increasing or shrinking.
Increasing. During 2016, 0.8% of households moved out of poverty and into the middle class. 2017 is expected to be even better.
Very few. Most poor households have zero full time workers. Most people earning minimum wage are 2nd or 3rd earners in middle class households.
That's a pretty bold claim. How about some evidence?
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
It started out with the Chiefs and Kings that controlled the people.
Then the people got fed up with that.
Then the people installed governments with politicians to have all the power.
Then the people got fed up with that.
Then the Banks and financial institutions wanted all the power, so they took that away from the government.
Then the people got fed up with that.
Then the Technology companies took all the power away from the banks and the governments.
And that is where we are today and where we will be for awhile, because that is where the power lies.
We are dependent on our technology and society can't function without it.
The next step will be for the technology to take the power away from the people.
The people won't like it, but they don't have a choice in the matter.
Go outside, look at some trees, smell some flowers
Everybody is beautiful! You ugly bastard!
Perce Shelley was not the usual poor poet. he had money. He also believed strongly and believed in reanimation . He funded some of the poorer Lake Poets, I believe including Wordsworth. So we have a poet who encourages reanimation and a wife who writes the Frankenstein novel and perhaps Wordsworth or even Coleridge involved in the real world experiments. All that living near other poets and providing funding as well as the Frankenstein novel by his wife is too much to be a simple coincidence. And just to thicken the soup a bit I believe it was Lord Byron's grand daughter who wrote the first computer program. Somehow i suspect that these folks did not spend a lot of time bass fishing.
Thanks for setting the tone for the new year. That’s the way policy and civil discourse are to be conducted from now on, isn’t it?
Person #1: “I have this idea/theory/observation. What do you guys think?”
Person #2 to everybody else: “Folks, move along, nothing to see here. That guy is an asshole and you all know it. Ignore him!”
When personal computing started, it was largely run by enthusiasts who envisioned how liberating it could be. Of course, it soon became a booming business run by the usual people, guided by the usual (lack of) ethics and entirely focused on profit (and therefore, consumer control). Later, people thought that Internet could render obsolete traditional tightly-controlled advertiser-directed media like television. Well, what do we now have? And is that the fault of software and programmers? Programmers are employees, and they do as they’re told. I doubt anyone grew up dreaming: “When I’m grown-up, I’ll be a DRM or spyware software developer!”
What is much more stunning is the herd mentality exhibited by the public, mindlessly embracing technology of really dubious benefit yet with very obvious drawbacks in terms of personal freedom. Are consumers ever stopping to wonder: “Wait a minute, what’d happen with this product if...?” No, instead, the mood is “Shut up and take my money!”
Is that the fault of software? Or is it our collective fault? And if children are trained to be dumb consumers, is it the fault of the device we place into their hands, the malicious applications that we let them use and the dumb content that we make available to them through those devices? Or is it the fault of their educators (that’s us) who deprive them from meaningful conversations about serious topics, and the chance to develop the ability to think deeply, have an educated, polite and fruitful conversation, cultivate intellectual curiosity and doubts, enhance their awareness of the real world around them, and treasure human values like charity?
Blaming software would be like blaming food, and the abundance of food. Yup, most of us are obese and sick. No, it’s not the fault of farmers or produce. We need to look in the mirror and begin to honestly appraise the fundamentals of how we live (and want to live) as individuals and operate as a society.
Earlier than that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
whoops! clicked on the wrong post...
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
Very few. Most poor households have zero full time workers. Most people earning minimum wage are 2nd or 3rd earners in middle class households.
That's a pretty bold claim. How about some evidence?
Citation #1: Income inequality by household demographics
The average household in the bottom quintile had 0.43 people earning income. The average household in the top quintile had 2.04 people earning income.
Citation #2: Key facts about the minimum wage
The average household income of a minimum wage earner is $53,000 per year.
Only 2 percent of full-time workers earn the minimum wage.
Two-thirds of minimum wage earners receive a raise within a year if they stick with the job.
Only 9 percent of adults living below the poverty line work full time.
it only enables them to become. Technology is neither good nor bad, it does nothing on its own, it just is. It is how people use that technology that decides if it is for good or for evil.
So the question shouldn't be has technology created a monster, but has technology made it easier for people (which needs to include governments and corporations) to become monsters? The answer there is definitely yes.
Facebook is eating the world.
Our old A/C unit finally gave up the ghost and so we had to replace it with a new compressor and air exchange unit. We bought a top of the line unit, which the installers were able to put into place in just a couple of hours. And of course the unit didn't work: when plugged in, the thermostat gave a '443' error, which the installers simply could not figure out.
The next day a technician came out to diagnose the problem. It turns out the software on the outside compressor unit was incorrectly configured, and the '443' error indicated a mismatch between the air exchange unit inside the house, and the compressor on the outside. A few minutes with a laptop and the software in the compressor was correctly configured, allowing the system to work.
In the old days, the compressor was simply a fan, pump and baffles which allowed the coolant to be heated or cooled, running to an inside comp, fan and baffles which then blew the heat or cold air off the coils and through the house.
Today's A/C unit has a microcontroller in the compressor to measure a bunch of diagnostic information, a microcontroller on the heat exchange unit, and the thermostat contains a microprocessor which monitors all this diagnostic equipment. It's great in that I was able to get into the diagnostic settings and change a few properties to allow our A/C unit not to blow so hard at night (when we're sleeping), and to favor using the heat pump at colder temperatures in order to save power--even though in the winter it may take longer to heat the house up. The thermostat shows us the outside temperature at the compressor on the main screen, and will give a five day weather forecast when hooked up to the WiFi network in the house. It can cooperate with other thermostats in a zoned house to optimize energy usage. It will even notify the installers (if we wish) with diagnostic problems if there is a problem with our unit, so they can more quickly diagnose and fix problems as they arise.
But there are a hell of a lot more moving parts than the older A/C units--and a hell of a lot more things that can go wrong.
When the first AI burger flippers are employed.
At that point, AI and automation will be at a level that will replace low income menial labor. It will be faster, cheaper, and work 24-7. It won't need health care. It won't need a 401k. It won't need maternity leave, or vacation days. Within the span of a couple of years millions will lose their jobs, with absolutely no prospects for getting a new one. How will that end I wonder?
Want to know what the businesses are going to be doing with all that lovely tax money they just got? Automation. "We're going to streamline our processes to bring the most value to the company!" Yeah, that's called automation. Increasing productivity while reducing the workforce overhead.
May you live in interesting times.
~X~
You only need a few things in life: shelter, food, water, clothing, and companionship. The last one is where the "monster" gets you. You can walk away from your computer or cell phone and be perfectly fine. "But what if...." That's the problem; that device in your pocket isn't predicting the future, it's creating it. We are not all a "part" of anything but being used as data cattle to be taken advantage of. Unfortunately, many people see their devices as an extension of themselves and social justice nut jobs make interacting with people of the opposite sex impossible. So, dating apps is now everyone's goto. Is it just because you "don't have the time?" No. It's because you're either a single parent not getting any younger, an introvert, a sexual deviant, peer pressured, an impatient ideologist, or all the above. GPS mapping because you think you get lost easily? Encrypted communication because you think big brother gives a flying fuck what you talk about with your best friend (your mom)? YOU are a convenience, not the other way around.
Humanity doesn't have the wisdom to deal with technology.
Do you know what life was like before the rise of technology? Nasty, brutish, and short! You ate what you could kill, and constantly faced the threat of a neighboring tribe rolling in and murdering you, and running off with your women. If that didn't kill you, then disease, starvation, or a predator would.
More people have access to clean water today than ever before in human history.
Tech has made things better.
Go back to Reddit, Comrade Wang.
Just because I *CAN* shoot somebody and get away with, should I?
Just because I *CAN* enact legislation that will restrict my fellow citizens lives more than it protects them, should I?
The first citation shows only that the majority of persons in the bottom fifth are unemployed. It makes no claim about full time or part time, only whether they earn or not.
I think the way you phrased the original assertion is a little misleading. It would tend to suggest that poor households are poor because they are only working part time, and not full time. At an average earnings of $30k per earner in these households, that is very much not the case. For a full time job, this equates to about $15 per hour. Since part time jobs pay less not more, it is unlikely that the typical scenario is someone earning $30 per hour for 20 hour weeks. The more likely answer is the $15 per hour full time i mentioned above. I was unable to find any information either way, as the BLS seems to not know or not care.
The data in the links you provided strongly suggests that the fundamental problem is unemployment in low income households, whether it is a result of unemployability, or more likely, child rearing / eldercare.
One other thing to note is that While the Adjusted household income ha remained flat since 1965, the number of earners needed to gain that income has increased from 1.25 in 1950 to 1.7 in 1990. This means that from 1965 until 1990 real wages dropped across the board, but the decline was masked because the workforce expanded to compensate. This is the reason for the economic boom of the 80s: More workers at cheaper wages means vastly increased economic output for the country. The fundamental problem with this is that from a societal point of view, all of those extra workers were not "unemployed" before, they were homemakers. They performed childcare and eldercare as well as housekeeping and other duties. Many families, especially those without social safety nets simply cannot provide the 2 full time workers that are required to continue earning the median household income, so they fall to the bottom, and since childcare / eldercare is essentially a lifetime commitment, they are basically screwed.
There are two fundamental components to the solution to basic poverty. The first is universal health care. A person can ignore or deal with just about any bad happening, and recover to a position where they can earn a living. The only real exception is health. If you loose your helath, you have nothing, so you must do whatever you are able in order to keep your health so that you can earn a living. Without universal health care, people do what they always do when faced with a problem they cannot handle. They ignore it until it bites them, and then they die, but not before costing our healthcare system far more than the cost of universal healthcare. A $500 medical problem can easily become a $50,000 medical problem if you ignore it long enough, and hospitals are not allowed to refuse life threatening emergencies. Someone pays the bill eventually, and you can bet it isn't the person who is on deaths door.
The second part is child/elder care. For obvious reasons this causes people to loose the ability to work in most cases. The only people for whom paying for childcare while continuing to work makes financial sense are those who are already in the upper middle class or better, and they are not the problem here. Universal childcare would go a very long way to leveling the playing field for the bottom 5th.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
System engineers don't write application software. They certainly don't use any.
Yeah, it’s just that software is way too clever. Governments and corporations preying on uneducated masses can rightfully wash their hands.
The more likely answer is the $15 per hour full time i mentioned above.
Unlikely, since the income cut off for the bottom quintile is $24k. A full time job at $15/hr would put that household into the 2nd quintile.
The chart doesn't make it clear, but I think they are extrapolating part time work into the full time equivalent.
It is also important to remember that the chart is about "income" and not "wealth". The people at the very bottom of the income pile tend to be extremely wealthy people that happened to have a bad year with their investments. For instance, in 2008, both Bill Gates and Warren Buffet lost BILLIONS in value, and had lower income for that year than almost any other Americans. It is not clear if these outliers are excluded (does "income" include only "earned" income?) but if not, they can skew the statistics.
Yes, technology has created a monster. It's called Mechagodzilla.
Unlikely, since the income cut off for the bottom quintile is $24k. A full time job at $15/hr would put that household into the 2nd quintile.
I see it now, I misread the household income per earner as earner income.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
It seems like the HR departments are growing in power more and more. With so much normal human behavior becoming criminalized and codified if it occurs in the workplace, HR departments (which write the codes and enforce them) seem to be getting more and more power. Given that they also control all hiring decision and many firing decisions, it's amazing anything gets done at all. HR now has more power over company's day-to-day business than sales. They have more power than lawyers. A simple question would be, if you had to ask an HR worker to put down rules creating a workable ethics framework, would they do a better job than an untrained CEO. My impression would be that most would not.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Funny thing - in most areas, minimum wage is not enough to eat and live indoors. Even McDonald's pays their floor moppers more than the state mandated cruel joke minimum wage.
So any statistics that use official minimum wage as a baseline are pretty bogus. Very little descriptive or explanatory value.
I had not thought of that point of view, But it is a relevant and humorous point ;) lol Nice!
Which monster?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
It is the monster that has created Technology.
The monster was within us all along.