A recent FB post of nbc PR for Bill Gates as Futurism Guru got me re-reading and thinking about "Progress" or technological development. I made a critical comment under the post and got two interesting responses from people I know, or used to in High School 37 or so years ago. One fascinating thing about the responses is they both started admitting that Gates might be wrong about the timeline. The background assumption is that "progress" or development in this direction is inevitable, and, maybe we can steer it to be a little better? I spent and inordinate amount of time thinking about this and came up with some pithy phrases to help with focus.
It's not the timeline, it's the intention, or
It's not the predictions it's the desires. These phrases were inspired by David Noble^4, Langdon Winner, Andreas Malm, and Brian Tokar^5 who's online article introduced me to Langdon Winner and Andreas Malm... My prediction: ff we can pay attention long enough the "free intelligence" phrase will be as derided as the "too cheap to meter" phrase for Nuclear energy. Do enough people pay attention enough to see how expensive nuclear reactors are and how society is duped by big-tech propaganda. I guess most people are paying attention to other things and we never get around to stopping ignorance or stupidity trends.. It's probably the results of propaganda, steering people thoughts away from the key areas to see the patterns and the destruction and the unaccountability...
- CNBC (Does he own it, like Bezos with WaPo?)
Over the next decade, advances in artificial intelligence will mean that humans will no longer be needed "for most things" in the world, says Bill Gates. ^1
- Creative Bloq?
... [Bill Gates] also says in another interview that he thinks humans could work "two or three days a week", which would leave time for non-work pursuits. Whether or not that would come with the same wage and living standards is, of course, yet to be seen. ^2
- Arundhati Roy
what it does is make the human population almost surplus: it makes it unnecessary. One argument is that it will be the end of work and the beginning of play; that people can be looked after. But people could be looked after now, as we know there’s enough surplus to do that, and it doesn’t happen. ^3
- Progress Without People, David Noble's book
... Is there anything in common between the age of automation now upon us and the first industrial revolution long ago (circa 1790-1840)? Yes. Both surged ahead with technical progress and production, and eliminated jobs without.. [alternatives] for the workers. Both claimed that technological progress was inevitable and would automatically put things right. In this respect, the age which first established factories and the age with automates them are alike. We know that the job-killing of the late 18th and early 19th centuries hurt both the cottage workers, and the communities in which men and women lived and which depended on them, and a system of production that extended far beyond people like handloom weavers.
- Langdon Winner (via Brian Tokar)
Langdon Winner’s research on agricultural mechanization, especially Cyrus McCormick’s famous reaper. Winner concluded that various innovations in the manufacture of McCormick’s reapers at first made them more costly and less reliable, but they helped concentrate economic power more firmly in the hands of production plant managers.
- David Noble (via Brian Tokar)
David Noble’s detailed examination of the origins of numerically controlled machine tools in the mid-twentieth century. His conclusion is similar to Winner’s: to implement this initial step toward industrial automation, manufacturers had to overlook widespread inefficiencies and a loss of much of the knowledge and flexibility that was shared among manual machine operators. The perceived overarching benefit, however, was to disempower shop floor labor and concentrate knowledge and control in the hands of engineers and managers.
- Andreas Malm (via Brian Tokar)
... the origins of “fossil capital,” i.e., why British textile manufacturers in the mid-eighteenth century transitioned from riverside watermills to coal-fired steam engines. As Malm has examined in detail, watermills remained far more efficient and reliable for several decades into the coal era, and there was never a shortage of potential sites for new water-powered textile mills. However, rural workers who lived along England’s riverbanks were far more independent-minded, and more likely to abandon the mills when working conditions became too onerous, than often-desperate urban workers.
It's a shame we keep falling into the Tech PR traps over and over. As a pubescent I used to read techtopia Futurist stuff like Alvin Toffler too. I think Neil Postman mentions how Toffler has been wrong about everything but is still invited to prestigious business events or things like that. I imagine it's because he's a cheerleader in the way he extrapolates current trends are about to provide benefits for all when the trends are just meant to profit or empower the current regime or elites. More recently I guess the Yuval guy(writer, resident genius I guess...) works in the same sort of role.
This is the part of the Gates Glam piece that got me thinking
too cheap to meter.
the world is entering a new era of what Gates called "free intelligence" in an interview last month with Harvard University professor and happiness expert Arthur Brooks. The result will be rapid advances in AI-powered technologies that are accessible and touch nearly every aspect of our lives, Gates has said, from improved medicines and diagnoses to widely available AI tutors and virtual assistants. ^1
Cheap Safe Nukes!! We are so happy we built them and are now enjoying free energy with no radiation (neither external nor internal) worries!! I can't wait to need medical care and be faced by a screen connected to a bot, It probably won't even be free...
#BrianTokar #DavidNoble #ProgressWithoutPeople #BillGates #LangdonWinner #AndreasMalm #ArundhatiRoy #RoyOnAI #FreeIntelligence #TooCheapToMeter
