Technologies are interdependent and if only one group of specialists is eliminated, civilization will collapse. — Agent Smith
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
That seems a little bold. Is it so easy to determine the limits of adaptability? — Janus
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
Perhaps, but does it make sense? — Agent Smith
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
We have no control over them. — god must be atheist
But in the case of technology, it is human made — schopenhauer1
You are saying humans are NOT human made??? — god must be atheist
We are estranged, but not everyone. — schopenhauer1
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
It's like if the forms instead of being beautiful Platonic understanding, is just really a mining of complexities. — schopenhauer1
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
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
The optimist invents the airplane the pessimist the parachute.
Both ways of thinking are necessary. — Deus
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
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
The optimist invents the airplane the pessimist the parachute.
Both ways of thinking are necessary. — Deus
Because you are simply a passive user who does not get to be involved in that which you use for various utility. — schopenhauer1
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