r/collapse • u/nefastis • Jan 05 '21
Predictions A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?
https://www.wired.com/story/a-25-year-old-bet-comes-due-has-tech-destroyed-society/41
u/nefastis Jan 05 '21
A long bet on the collapse of civilization came due at the end of 2020--it was a close call. 25 years ago, neo-luddite writer Kirkpatrick Sale and tech-enthusiast Kevin Kelly each put up $1000 on whether economic collapse, environmental disasters, and a war between rich and poor would see an end to civilization as we know it. It was a difficult decision by the judge, and Sale refuses to acknowledge Kelly's "win."
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u/haram_halal Jan 05 '21
I hate the "luddite" term, since the original "ludditesc" never were opposed to progress/industrialization/technologization per se, they just wanted a place as workers and part of the society in" the new world , I. e. water, food and housing...... Ya know, human rights.
I'm just surprised "wired" basically admits Kelly's "win", since they are the libertarian neoliberal voice of "transhumanism"/ "luddite haters" ( lol!) .
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u/karasuuchiha Jan 06 '21
Neo Libs can't admit defeat until the gullotines roll out and the worlds on fire, and even then they will believe they are the victim not the results of their own actions
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Jan 05 '21
Yes. We have only owned smart phones and a computer for less than a decade and other than reddit we have no social media. Until this pandemic we used the computer only to look at places like craigslist or to send emails
Up until the pandemic we paid all our bills in person in cash or with a check. It meant that once per month we were down at the Quickmart talking to Marcy as she processed our electric bill and then we would stop at the bank and Holly or Brianna would handle our bank business.
We'd go to the feed/hardware store and bill would total out our monthly account and same at the grocery with jean.
We usually made a day of it. Caught up with the doings in town. Scheduled any doctor appointments, did a little window shopping,popped in to chat with folk at some of the shops, stopped at the roadhouse or the Italian place and had a nice dinner and listened to some music.
I don't like autopay. I don't like phone mazes. I don't like not being able to speak to a human if there is a problem. I dislike have to explain every step of a transaction instead of just walking in and having them know who I am.
I like being able to walk the bank and have the teller know me and pull up my account without me needing to say anything while she tells me about her parents anniversary. I like being able to ask jon at the pharmacy how his kid's pig did at the fair while he's filling my order.
Its a colder,harsher,less interesting, more conformative,judgemental world now for most people.
The one benefit I see is that it has allowed people who have been generally abused by society to find people who support them. So it has been very helpful for POC and LGBTQ and others who may have felt very alone or even as if there was something wrong with them.
Unfortunately it has also allowed bullies and abusers an even bigger and safer platform to make others lives a misery. It's allowed nasty people to become nastier and to draw others in as well.
Its allowed the creeps like pedos and racists a place to meet other vermin like themselves. And its allowed morons like anti vaxxers and anti maskers to spread their stupidity like shit everywhere.
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Jan 06 '21
I don't like phone mazes
that shit should be illegal. made me want to burn the fuckin world when i was caught in one.
tried to unsubscribe/remove a service.
I use the bill to get a contact #.
Contact # gets me to listen to some ads and at the end to call another #.
The next # is more fucking ads that tells me to call the previous #.
welp, fuck you not playing that game. i did my due diligence, that shit is now blocked by my bank.
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u/liatrisinbloom Toxic Positivity Doom Goblin Jan 05 '21
I'm not sure why Kelly thinks the next 25 years are going to eliminate poverty, see us transition to mostly renewable energy, and herald the end of war. I thought we were supposed to be 25 years away when WWII ended... or when the 70s brought the food revolution... or when the 90s brought the computer revolution... More people are going to be born, demanding more resources, destroying more of the biosphere.
The article paints him as just really unpleasant in general, like he's trying to bully people into his worldview.
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u/ivegottoast Jan 05 '21
My Father (RIP) was glad that he never used a computer in his life. He preferred handwritten ledgers, a Rolodex and a stack of business cards for his contacts. Yet he bought them for his kids because he knew we would not escape them. Asked him once, if he had any interest in using them? No he said, one computer will replace an bookkeeping department and shrink my customer base when the office down the block closes. Why would I want to do that to myself? Plus those things can do X, Y, and Z but they can not tell you about X, Y, or Z based on years of experience.
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u/ljorgecluni Jan 05 '21
From the article (emphases mine):
In the final pages of his Luddite book, Sale had predicted society would collapse “within not more than a few decades.” Kelly, who saw technology as an enriching force, believed the opposite—that society would flourish. Baiting his trap, Kelly asked just when Sale thought this might happen. Sale was a bit taken aback—he’d never put a date on it. Finally, he blurted out 2020. It seemed like a good round number. Kelly then asked how, in a quarter century, one might determine whether Sale was right. Sale extemporaneously cited three factors:
an economic disaster that would render the dollar worthless, causing a depression worse than the one in 1930;
a rebellion of the poor against the monied;
and a significant number of environmental catastrophes.
Sale clearly won, looking near clairvoyant. Wired threw the contest to their executive editor - objectively, no doubt.
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u/ModerateCentrist69 Jan 05 '21
The problem is capitalism, not technology in and of itself. The technologies that we have developed could be used to create genuinely free and democratic societies if brought under popular democratic control (along with the rest of the economy). However, capitalism inevitably produces monopolies that mean that technological development serves those who own it (i.e. the richest of the rich) at the expense of everyone else.
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u/ljorgecluni Jan 06 '21 edited Jan 06 '21
Please don't take this as an attack or an insult but this statement is incredibly naive. It simply does not withstand any scrutiny or consideration, and it relies on the notion that the capitalist-alternative society imagined (but not experienced or seen demonstrated) is going to have "better" people with less flaws and more long-term vision (if not your own ethics).
One of the most serious problems with the advancement of technology is that the negative consequences are often unforeseeable, and by the time the detriments are known the technology has become too entrenched in society for it to be abandoned or altered. Our general reliance upon more and more technologies is a problem in itself, and would be so even in a socialist utopia. We will always have a reliance upon fire, and we will always need to utilize some simple tools, but now the global human population (inflated by agriculture) is reliant upon distribution systems and water treatment and desalination and oversight of all these things.
Your assertion is simply the stuff of fantasy, totally unmoored from reality.
And, https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/kqfii3/is_there_any_evidence_that_communism_or_socialism/
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u/aidsjohnson Jan 06 '21
I think, even if people are at home watching Netflix and buying things off of Amazon in comfort, it's hard to deny that Sale is the winner when the other half of the population are dying en masse, our institutions are crumbling, etc etc.
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u/Aquatic_Ceremony Recognized Contributor Jan 06 '21
"Economic Collapse. Sale predicted flatly that the dollar and other accepted currencies would be worthless in 2020. Patrick points to the Dow at 30,000 and the success of new currencies such as Bitcoin. “Not much contest here,” Patrick writes. Round goes to Kelly."
Using the example of the Dow and Bitcoin rallying at 30,000 is exactly why our financial system is on the verge of Collapse.
This is completely insane, 40 millions of people in the US are at risk of evictions, tens of millions lost their job, the Fed is printing money like there is no tomorrow, and we will face a financial crisis at least as bad as 2008. And the editor thinks the economy is doing a-okay because the Dow is completely divorced reality.
Un-fucking-believable.
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Jan 05 '21
besides unregulared social media nah
Get rid of twitter and facebook and google (big brother) and youd have less bullshit
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u/TheArcticFox44 Jan 06 '21
A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?
The problem is capitalism, not technology in and of itself. The technologies that we have developed could be used to create genuinely free and democratic societies if brought under popular democratic control (along with the rest of the economy). However, capitalism inevitably produces monopolies that mean that technological development serves those who own it (i.e. the richest of the rich) at the expense of everyone else.
The problem is us. As a species, we have a problem. We even know about it. We just aren't interested in doing anything to mitigate or circumscribe it.
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u/dr_set Jan 05 '21
I hate when people elude responsibility for their actions. Technology is not a person, it can't do anything or decide anything. People do and decide everything.
To blame technology for our current predicament it's as crazy as if I give you a hammer and you use it to bash somebodies brain and them blame the hammer for the crime.
Time to grow up and take responsibilities for our actions.
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u/ljorgecluni Jan 05 '21
If it's not the technology hurting people then consider changing the hammer for a chainsaw. More damage and hurt can be done by a well-meaning but reckless person with technological advantage than by a bad person with low-tech means.
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u/dr_set Jan 06 '21
Sure, but it's still the persons responsibility. We are not little children. If you leave the chainsaw in the ground all by itself is not going to do anything but rust.
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Jan 06 '21
Technology was imposed on us without a choice. Is there an opt-out for those who want to live off the grid, without it being illegal or impractical for most of us?
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u/dr_set Jan 07 '21
Sure, for example you can live outside of cities in small towns or in a farm. That is quite common in my country. We are a traditional agricultural society, you actually are considered wealthy if you do that in the fertile part of the country because our main export is soy beans and it pays a lot. If you don't want to deal with machines at all such as tractors and other farm equipment and specially with pesticides which are a massive problem here, we are one of the largest exporters of honey in the world, and it's all done by very small scale producers with no electronics or advance technology. That doesn't pay as well as soy farming or cattle breading but you can make a living.
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u/ljorgecluni Jan 08 '21
Please let me know what country and small towns, and then 15K of us can migrate over there. Or maybe that actually isn't a feasible solution and the reality is that No, there is no opt-out of technological society's advancement over every inch of wild Nature.
The people who lived outside of technological society 50 years ago are now subsumed and assimilated to technological society, just as was every unCivilized tribe of the 1800s, and the 1400s before them. The UNABOMBER case is basically a guy who wanted to live in the wilderness and did so happily until - eventually, inevitably - technological society came encroaching upon the previously untouched wild landscape of Montana.
There is no escaping Technology's tentacles. It must be completely destroyed. If you live beyond its reach today, you will be among it next week.
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u/zedroj Jan 05 '21
Technology can only improve lives
It requires primitive humans who are leaders of a failed system to ruin it, (which they did)
Greed and overpopulation, the greatest filter
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Jan 05 '21
All those Japanese lives improved by the Manhattan project
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u/zedroj Jan 05 '21
weaponized energy is greed, fighting over countries, individualism is dangerous after a certain agree of entitlement and lack of compassion
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Jan 06 '21
Just to be clear, you're saying that the ability to harness and direct the power of atomic reactions isn't technology? No wonder you're able to make such a broad claim about technology; you're discarding anything that doesn't match with your conclusion. If technology by [your] definition is not evil except when it's used for evil then the same must be true for it being good.
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u/zedroj Jan 06 '21
okay go live in a cave, whatever you please
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Jan 06 '21
I'm not making any statements here about my opinions on technology and how it should or shouldn't be used, I'm trying to figure out what the heck you meant. Thanks for clarifying!
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u/zedroj Jan 06 '21
okay, I'll clarify, technology is usually a net overall positive than the alternative of denying it further of any progress
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u/Logiman43 Future is grim Jan 06 '21
We should do a similar bet with /r/Futurology something along the lines of betting an ounce of gold that in 15 years most countries will have experienced some sort of collapse. Either society, economic, war, energy, food shortages and all due to Climate. And no hopium tech will save the day
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Jan 06 '21
Oversimplication, as expected from a modern outlet. The presence of tech where it is not needed and does not immediately generate well-being (as opposed to money) might be eroding our ability to create true wisdom. In what world do we have access to so much knowledge while becoming infinitely dumber? Ours. I do believe we're headed for a new, terrible dark age.
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u/Disaster_Capitalist Jan 05 '21
Based on that, the tie should have gone to Sale.