tech solutionism
critically examining the belief that most problems can be solved by technology
tech solutionism
All technology is a mixed blessing. The printing press gave us all greater access to Chaucer, Shakespeare, and the Bible — but it also enabled revolutions and rebellions. The invention of the movies gave us a new medium of high art, but then a mass of trivial television. Phones and social media can be distracting and enraging, but they are also a c... See more
Molly Kingsley • Smartphones are not the source of all social ills | Henry Oliver
But what really blows my noodle is how rare AI skepticism still is in the media. One year ago, ChatGPT was opened to the public. The onslaught of overheated and careless rhetoric about our imminent ascent to a new plane of existence (or our imminent extermination) began then and has not slowed since. It’s inherent to the financial interests of jour... See more
Freddie deBoer • Where Are the AI Skepticism Stories?
despite the tech, “we’re still just living ordinary lives like we always have”
"I used to be much more of a technological determinist, where I believed that the course of history would play out according to what was technologically possible, and that technology shapes our world in a strong way. I've come to appreciate that culture actually plays such a large role in shaping our world. The ways in which people decide to use te... See more
Better tools are not the bottleneck to creating great work. A person focusing on one thing the antiquated way - pen and paper or whatever - will beat the tool optimizers any day. A new piece of technology isn’t going to magically hone your craft. The work to hone your craft feels hard because it’s supposed to be hard.
Most problems are people problems, not technology problems. I don’t believe we are about to surrender to a robotic new dawn, where an AI will replace McKinsey or your therapist. Why? Because a company doesn’t hire McKinsey because they are better than the AI. They hire McKinsey because if something goes wrong, nobody will blame you for hiring McKin... See more
Quite a lot of AGI doomerism comes from the same place as tech solutionism - the idea that the world is simple, everyone else’s jobs are easy, and everything can be changed by this this one set of brilliant engineers with this one brilliant piece of technology.
It was striking how many of Elon’s early tweets about Twitter’s issues seemed to pin Twitter’s underperformance on engineering problems. Response times, things of that nature. But Twitter’s appeal was never a pure feat of engineering, nor were its problems solely the fault of engineering malpractice. They were human in nature. Twitter isn’t, as man... See more