Good exegesis of our predicament: specialization (in technology) is a vulnerability, an Achilles' heel. Technologies are interdependent and if only one group of specialists is eliminated, civilization will collapse.

Technologies are interdependent and if only one group of specialists is eliminated, civilization will collapse. — Agent Smith

That seems a little bold. Is it so easy to determine the limits of adaptability?

Good exegesis of our predicament: specialization (in technology) is a vulnerability, an Achilles' heel. Technologies are interdependent and if only one group of specialists is eliminated, civilization will collapse. — Agent Smith

This may be..but I am looking at it from a core and auxiliary, where the core needs the auxiliary in a secondary sense (to sell, market, account for, service, etc. the stuff), the auxiliary needs the core people absolutely in a primary sense for the technology itself.

That seems a little bold. Is it so easy to determine the limits of adaptability? — Janus

Perhaps, but does it make sense?

This may be..but I am looking at it from a core and auxiliary, where the core needs the auxiliary in a secondary sense (to sell, market, account for, service, etc. the stuff), the auxiliary needs the core people absolutely in a primary sense for the technology itself. — schopenhauer1

Yup, we're looking at the whole chain from raw material to finished product - each link is a potential point of failure.

Perhaps, but does it make sense? — Agent Smith

Are you asking whether I understood what you were saying or whether I think what you said is plausible?

I'd agree that it seems plausible to think that eliminating one class of specialists would, depending on the importance of the specialist field in question to the economy, have a more or less disruptive effect.

Well, not all machines were created equal - some are more essential than others. This would mean losing our capability to produce one may not be as disruptive as that for another, but for sure our lives would be impoverished if we lose the knowhow to build any machine, small or big.

Technological (over)dependence! From optional tools to essential life-support.

I'll buy that!

:up:

I’m particularly talking about the aspect of human existence where we cannot understand the technology that we use and replicate it. If anything we can know and/or replicate a very very small portion of it. Rather, much larger forces are in charge of much bigger processes like mining and manufacturing, physics, chemistry, materials, engineering, and electronics and we just passively “use them”. This just leads to the fact that everything is set for us. We are disconnected from that which sustains us. — schopenhauer1

You are saying, in essence, that we are disconnected from our bodies? Because the human body uses much more chemical, biological processes than what we understand or know about. Yet we use them mindlessly. Which just leads to the fact that everything (or most things) in our bodies are set for us. We have no control over them.

We are disconnected from what sustains us, and we are disconnected from what the sustenance sustains-- we are disconnected from our very own selves.

We have no control over them. — god must be atheist

But in the case of technology, it is human made, so paradoxically..it sustains us, some are involved in specialists aspects of it, but most are not and are only involved in a secondary way far removed from its creation or any real understanding of the processes and principles involved.

We are estranged, but not everyone.

But in the case of technology, it is human made — schopenhauer1

You are saying humans are NOT human made???

You are saying humans are NOT human made??? — god must be atheist

As opposed to the chemical and biological processes of the human body you mentioned that we don't understand, yes.

We are estranged, but not everyone. — schopenhauer1

Alienation and technology

The technology that runs our lives is increasingly growing beyond the understanding of a single individual, with the disconnect increasing year by year.

A disconnect is of itself not a problem. As long as one can turn the lights on, potholes are filled in in the roads, the buses run on time and the citizen's life is angst-free, and where each citizen plays their part in the smooth running of the public services, then such a disconnect is not to be feared. As long as technology works to the benefit of the individual, the individual may pragmatically accept the benefits of a technology they may not understand. I don't need to know details of the crankcase to know that if I turn the key the car moves where I want it to move.

But as soon as the citizen begins to suffer at the hands of a technology that they are disconnected from, and are unable to either control or mitigate, then the situation becomes dire, and it is then we have become cogs in a blind machine with no real agency. A disconnect becomes problematic when technology no longer works for the benefit of the individual, and the individual is powerless to alter or control the technology they are suffering under. Typically, the increasing use of gaslighting being used by those who control the information that we depend on for our knowledge of a world that exists on the other side of our computer and phone screens.

Information technology, the electronic screen between us and the world, is turning us into Truman Burbanks. A world where information technology controls every aspect of our lives, where we live in a false reality, as an actor on a stage populated by other actors. We play a role, directed by unknown forces behind the images we see on the screens. We are perceiving a world that has already been interpreted by a media more concerned with advertising profits and its own financial benefits than the well-being of its consumers.

Information technology is leading us to a dystopian future where we are unknowingly trapped inside a simulated and virtual realist, a Matrix, where the individual is more a source of energy for the machine than a free person with independent hopes, desires and wishes.

Information technology, with its databases creating a synthetic world populated by all of us as electronic images is creating a world where we can all be be surveilled and regimented. As in Orwell's 1984, subjected to historical negationism and propaganda, facilitated by servants of the controllers in an omnipresent government, repressing and controlling the allowed behaviour of people in society.

Information technology works to minimise the power of the individual in order to gain more control. Individual European nation states are subsumed into a supranational political and economic European Union. Small countries of 5 million people intimately knowing their political leaders are bound into organisations run and controlled by unelected bureaucrats, responsible to a distant Commission rather than the population they are intended to serve. Where their oath of allegiance of the bureaucrats is to an amorphous group rather than their home country, where the individual becomes powerless and unrepresented amongst 400 million others, where the political leaders of the member countries are decided by the diktat of central bureaucrats and economists.

Alienation is not a new phenomenon. The masses have always been alienated. In the past it was powerlessness in the face of the forces of Mother Nature. Today, it is the increasing powerlessness in the face of the Big Brother computer algorithm.

Really insightful contribution, thanks!

But I would contest a point here:

A disconnect is of itself not a problem. As long as one can turn the lights on, potholes are filled in in the roads, the buses run on time and the citizen's life is angst-free, and where each citizen plays their part in the smooth running of the public services, then such a disconnect is not to be feared. — RussellA

I am not necessarily looking at it from a pragmatic/effect.. I realize that we can carry on pretty well not knowing how much of any technology works. Rather, I see the position of R&D in sciences/technologies/programming/manufacturing/mining/electric/electronic/engineering in general the whole system of symbiosis of all of them in STEM fields as being at the core of the understanding of the (modern) tools we use. They are usually placed in larger industries, though small and medium startups sometimes get in there too. Either way, it is what these people get to be a part of and the others passively just use, that I am referring to. Not everyone can be a part of this, but passively use and service the tools that the science/engineering/R&D get to invent/create/understand/are an integral part of..

You can argue that everyone has their place for the system to work, but this is not quite what I am getting at. The other laboring jobs are all in service to the tools that these people get to be a part of. There is a natural hierarchy going on.. where most people are cut off from the factors of industry/knowledge that they use.. but there are a small number of people who are at this position/level to understand.

To make an analogy (hear me out).. It's like the cave. The scientists/R&D/engineers at these strategic companies (many times used from previous governmental research) are sort of sitting with the forms, and we simply glean at it from a "use" side of it. And no, buying a book of "How stuff works" doesn't solve this disconnect of gnosis of the forms/tools/understanding as it is enacted in real life.

And oddly, at the same time, "knowing" the forms can be oh so tedious. My point with the post with all the images of the ways of the tedious complexities. We need to "mine" minutia.. It's like if the forms instead of being beautiful Platonic understanding, is just really a mining of complexities. It creates jobs, but it creates tedious monotony, minutia, etc.. Once you get to the forms, you realize it's just more tedium, all the way down to a sub-atomic level of understanding.

It's like if the forms instead of being beautiful Platonic understanding, is just really a mining of complexities. — schopenhauer1

Do you mean something like the following ?

The graduate engineer was given the task of designing a bridge. The engineer went away and came back three weeks later with 100 sheets of computer printout, having laboriously checked each line and ensured that each piece of data was consistent with all other pieces of data, that there were no arithmetic errors and each part built up logically into a whole.

The senior engineer in charge, just approaching retirement, tore off a scrap of paper, took out their pencil, and after an hour, told the graduate engineer that their design was correct.

The graduate engineer had mined the complexities logically joining each part together to create a whole. The senior engineer started by looking at the whole, excluded that which was secondary, and only concentrated on that which was essential.

The graduate engineer lived in the cave looking at shadows. The senior engineer lived outside the cave looking at the beautiful Forms.

Pessimism is one of the consequences of not knowing what is important and not knowing what can be excluded, of knowing what doesn't need to be known. Optimism is one of the consequences of knowing what is important and knowing what can be excluded, of not knowing what doesn't need to be known.

I think you could sing this song to yourself every day as the main anthem to your world view.
Sing it loud, be proud of who you are! Sing it proud!

Perhaps you would prefer this detailed, more self-referenced, slightly yodely, Scots version with accompanying lyrics!

Not quite but cool imagery.
Rather the graduate student got to do what was primary/essential/Forms (technology creation) and everything from the transportation, marketers, finance, tradesman servicing it are secondary, and not a actually getting to participate in the technology creation (essential/primary/the actual technology creation itself).

There are hopefully some who straight away understand the pessimism in this. I’d like to engage with them. There will be others who are confused as to it’s connection with pessimism. I’d like to engage with them as well. — schopenhauer1

If you actually are feeling sadness, hopelessness, or whatever it is that pessimism brings you due to the fact that the complexities that sustain us are too difficult for your to decipher, then you need some sort of counseling. Do you just seek the kinship from those who share your peculiar form of suffering or do you want some advice for how you can emerge from your pessimism?

It's just not clear why you're telling me that you're sad. Maybe it makes you happy to tell me you're sad, or maybe your despondence has grown so great you had the need to share. I really don't know what to do with the OP other than to tell you that you're letting something that isn't any big deal be a big deal, so figure out a way to deal with. I don't know, maybe telling us here of your sadness is helpful to you and we're part of your therapy.

So you are in the confused camp? So it is pessimistic in that unless you are of the elite who have these positions, you simply are a passive user of the technology.. The very thing used to maintain your lifestyle.

As far as pessimism in general, I do think there is some therapy to be had.. But I don't see that as "a-philosophical". Stoicism, Buddhism, and a whole host of philosophical systems are a kind of therapy. Philosophy itself can be seen as therapy of a self-aware creature thrown into a world where there are no certainties or (seemingly) inherent reasons for anything at all.

In fact, I see an interesting dichotomy between human-centered philosophical interests (ethics, aesthetics, values, etc.) and logic/math. It is the same thing.. The logic/math/science of the universe exist, but why should we care? Once you answer that, you get to human-centered reasons, so they are intertwined.

I already made the (human-centered) reason that technology/scientific understanding sustains us (our very physical existence in a modern social setting). Now I provide what this means when played out.. The elite who are involved in technology creation and the others that are not.

The optimist invents the airplane the pessimist the parachute.

Both ways of thinking are necessary.

So it is pessimistic in that unless you are of the elite who have these positions, you simply are a passive user of the technology. — schopenhauer1

I'm not following why having survival mechanisms that go beyond my understanding entail pessimism. I also don't know of anyone so elite that they fully comprehend every aspect of reality so much so that they understand why they continue to live and breathe.

The optimist invents the airplane the pessimist the parachute.

Both ways of thinking are necessary. — Deus

Cool observation, but still not quite what I'm getting at. Both the airplane and parachute creator are involved in the technology. The ones just using it are not.

Besides consumer and laborer, how close do you get to the understanding and actual resources that create the technology? Who has more agency and less agency? Hint, it isn't just the ones with the most money. Holding the money and spending it, isn't quite it. You have to have access to the finance but also the technology itself.. to some understanding and to groups of those who have understanding. To the mining, the manufacturing, the resources, the formulas, the engineering principles, etc.

You have to mine minutia.. It's minutia all the way down... to the sub-atomic level. It's so very tedious.. Don't let the romantics full you. In that, apokrisis is right, but in so replacing the tedium of the scientific formulas, he replaces it with the principle of triadic meta-formulas. — schopenhauer1

I'll look into that. But 100% agree about the gatekeeping. I am even more terrified of the malaise of minutia that comes out of the science.. These people can accept and deal with enormous amounts of minutia. The tedium of the practical and necessary. But yet "Life is good".

The paradox is that we are alienated from that which sustains us, but if we are not alienated we simply become mired in the minutia of 100110101, materials, equations, and the like..

One major con is giving a romantic vision to science and technology. The Edisons/Teslas, Einsteins/Heidenbergs, etc. Monger the minutia is more the gist of science of the daily.. Your computer screen, your processor, your electronics, your plastics.. :yawn:

You become a 01001100101 to make 0010100110.. So alienation or minutia mongerer? It all doesn't lead anywhere good.

But at the same time, there is an "innovative" / inventive element that is there for a very small amount of time. The "breakthroughs" of a few that get pulled apart and mongered to become more minutia. — schopenhauer1

I'm not following why having survival mechanisms that go beyond my understanding entail pessimism. — Hanover

Because you are simply a passive user who does not get to be involved in that which you use for various utility.

So it's a bit different even than that. Rather, it's not the pretty common trope of using modern technology which causes alienation, but not being able to be "really" apart of the core members who actually created and fully understand the technology. That can be said on two levels:

1) Those who understand a very specialized field of technology really well (like someone on R&D for X chemicals, circuit board design, machine code, materials science, electronic engineering, etc. Not everyone gets to be a part of this.. only a select few and their entrepreneurial/financial backers. Everyone else just uses the final products passively, or labors in some auxilliary fields tangential to the true inventors and creators.

OR

2) Even the specialized experts only know their technology well and thus can't know ALL the technology that is used, and so even they are passive users who can never really know that which creates the technology they rely on.

it is an obfuscation.. Others were alluding to a more fundamental estrangement from existence, but this one is interesting because there are degrees where at least a few people get a bit closer to some of the core technology that "sustains" our (modern) existence.. and since we only live out modern existences in 90% of the world (I'll argue even third world countries), that is indeed what matters.

The engineers at places like IBM, Samsung, Apple, Huawei, Intel, Dow Chemicals, General Electric, Texas Instruments, Canon, and so on. — schopenhauer1

It's about being excluded.. In the cave.. But it's also about even once you find the Forms (technological understanding) you realize it's just tedium all the way down. Perhaps it's hard to explain.. That's why I am fleshing this out and seeing how others can contribute perhaps. A dialectic.

I know.

I do sometimes feel like that in my ability to comprehend the wave particle duality of light.

This is purely from a conceptual point at this time but I do not feel discouraged.

The optimist invents the airplane the pessimist the parachute.

Both ways of thinking are necessary. — Deus

Mashallah! Mashallah!

Because you are simply a passive user who does not get to be involved in that which you use for various utility. — schopenhauer1

That has very little to do with technology, but is just part of being part of a complex world with all sorts of specialized roles. Even if I were able to eat only what I killed, cleaned, and cooked, I still would have to accept I had nothing to do with creating the animal I was eating. On a simpler note, I woke up this morning when the sun came through my window, but I had nothing to do with the sun shining. That doesn't cause me great pessimism.

The awe one feels at the complexity of the world usually yields inspiration as opposed to the despair it yields in you.

You’ve seemed to ignore other posts I wrote about natural vs human processes so I’ll invite you to read some of those if you want.