What motivates the neo-Luddite worldview?
I am a happy practitioner of OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) gathering. And from these activities, I've observed a rather stark increase in the total volume of voices that are in support of the neo-Luddite worldview; especially on YouTube, Twitter and Reddit. Ironies aside, I am curious about what genuinely motivates the neo-Luddite perspective. And I would like to hear from the thoughtful minds on this Internet forum, as to what they think are the motivating forces underpinning "it".
So my inquiry in, "What motivates the neo-Luddite worldview?"
But before we go any further, let's set some definitions:
It should also be mentioned that among many of the social media and other multimedia objects that I encounter every day, one of the more notable philosophers mentioned among these neo-Luddites is Ted Kaczynski; whose manifesto can be purchased on Amazon, which has a star rating of 4.8 out of 5. This both perplexes and worries me.
If you would like to explore the kinds of Twitter activity commonly associated with Ted Kaczynski, here is a useful link.
All of this is quite concerning, obviously. And shouldn't be ignored, especially as extremist fundamentalism is rising (in my opinion, inescapably) around the planet, throughout most arenas of society. But before the neo-Luddite worldview can be addressed, the paradigm needs to be understood; starting with its roots.
So my inquiry in, "What motivates the neo-Luddite worldview?"
But before we go any further, let's set some definitions:
- Neo-Luddite - "An individual who opposes the use of technology for ethical, moral or philosophical reasons." - Source
- OSINT - "...is derived from data and information that is available to the general public. Its not limited to what can be found using Google, although the so-called surface web is an important component." - Source
- Worldview - "a comprehensive conception or apprehension of the world especially from a specific standpoint" - Source
It should also be mentioned that among many of the social media and other multimedia objects that I encounter every day, one of the more notable philosophers mentioned among these neo-Luddites is Ted Kaczynski; whose manifesto can be purchased on Amazon, which has a star rating of 4.8 out of 5. This both perplexes and worries me.
If you would like to explore the kinds of Twitter activity commonly associated with Ted Kaczynski, here is a useful link.
All of this is quite concerning, obviously. And shouldn't be ignored, especially as extremist fundamentalism is rising (in my opinion, inescapably) around the planet, throughout most arenas of society. But before the neo-Luddite worldview can be addressed, the paradigm needs to be understood; starting with its roots.
Comments (71)
Technology as a symbol of evil and its role in the total destruction of our world is a fairly appealing narrative. And Back to Eden solutions have long been popular. Technology seems to magnify all that is terrible about humans - from pesticides to nuclear bombs, chemical weapons to plastic bags and climate change. It can be argued that technology has robbed the world of its charm, displaced people of their jobs and suggested an apocalyptic future for us that is even more horrifying than religious end times. We don't need a theorised position to understand this.
I'm sure there are bad ideas out there about how technology is bad, but there are also legitimate concerns about how technology can hurt us. Social media and global trade are great things, but there are downsides. There's good reason to think social media can cause or exacerbate mental health problems, and there are plenty of unhappy workers caught on the short-side of the global market.
This probably isn't exactly what you are referring to but I think there are lots of good reasons to hesitate before we embrace something new.
"What motivates the neo-Luddite worldview?"
Staying out of the masses. If you really want to be yourself you need to prevent the use of big social media apps (Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, YouTube, etc...) where the critical thinking doesn't exist and those are filled by fake news or hate speech.
To be honest, I never heard of neo-Luddite until today. It looks so interesting. I will look forward on this topic.
Yes, all of this.
If you think of knowledge from a holistic perspective, it seems self-evident that our economically-driven societies have over-emphasized technical knowledge at the expense of moral and social. Until we are able to catch up in these other dimensions of knowledge, technology may indeed pose more dangers than it offers benefits. This I would say is the underlying motive.
Technology has, by and large, been about one or all of the following.
1. Speed (doing stuff faster)
2. Accuracy (better measurement)
3. Power (machines are, pound-for-pound, stronger)
4. Error reduction (computers don't make mistakes in calculations)
5. Risk (bomb disposal robots)
6. Biologically impossible (Planetary rovers like Curiosity)
I don't see why neo-Luddites have a problem with with 5 (risk) and 6 (biologically impossible).
The heart of the matter - our beef with technology - is the last of the 4 Ds robots are used for (Dirty, Dull, Dangerous, Dear jobs). Slavery is making a comeback and in a big way!
The reality: it is no longer possible for a family to survive on a single wage, and it is becoming impossible to survive on a dual wage. Reliance on food banks and homelessness are increasing, work hours are increasing and conditions worsening.
Once one realises that promised progress is reversed, one naturally wants to reverse the reversal and return to the good old days.
The luddite was the product of exploitation, and the neo-luddite is no different. It is the culture of ruthless exploitation that is dangerous.
Calling it "neo-Luddite" gives a pejorative tint to reasonable skepticism. I think humanity is at a very dangerous stage. Our science has developed technologies that can change the very nature of our world and all of humanity. Examples - genetic modification of organisms including people, cloning, artificial intelligence, nuclear weapons, virtual reality, nanotechnologies, pandemics. People who develop technologies have never shown any particular social conscience. Science generally works for whomever pays, which means that profit may be more important than human well-being. Scientists will often lie and cheat when it suits their purposes.
Suspicion of science and technology and its effects is not necessarily unreasonable.
I have much to think about, and look forward to additional dialogue.
I agree with T Clark on the importance of recognizing the danger of the new means of production. I also stand with those who point to the dynamics of exploitation which is readily evident to any that care to look. With that confluence of concerns, the arguments between communitarians and global unity should be seen as necessarily linked to your question.
Ivan Illich spoke of how technology can disempower individuals, not only as a participant in a system of exchange but as a shrinking scope of freedom for the homo faber. Perhaps he was naive in how society could be different, but it is interesting how he thought Marx was naive.
Quoting Banno
Alienation, comrade compunded by anthropogenic climate change, technocapitalist "progress" (re: automation) is politically incompatible with global population growth (re: maximizing surplus labor). It seems to me that various anti-modern, anti-tech movements such as Greens & Neo-Luddites for at least the last half-century or so have mostly ignored the other driver of (mass) alienation which is overpopulation.
Always the bald-headed stepchild of eternally expanding systems.
I am sorry, I don't understand that emoticon as an expression of thought.
The various models of capitalism involve ever expanding markets for the process to establish an expectation of future returns. That limit provides no model for the problem of Malthusian limits to what can support a population. That problem persists regardless of how resources are directed toward sustainability if those models do not include population growth itself.
Quoting 180 Proof
Rather than argue that such a problem is strictly about investment in a particular theory, I think that the 'technological' is not something that happens by itself.
Workers could select the technology they wanted were they in charge, but that's just not the case in this world. Therefore:
Quoting 180 Proof
Quoting Paine
Quoting unenlightened
Quoting Banno
Anomie, unemployment, poverty, etc.
This presupposes the alienation of concern to the neo-ludites is limited to or primarily from the technology encountered in the workplace.
My personal ludite sympathies are from what I see as a deterioration in personal relationships and interaction, which presumably would exist in a technologically advanced Marxist economy as much as a capitalist one.
This interaction is a case in point. I interact with you and many others on this Board as much as anyone, yet know very little about you, certainly never havi g seen you or heard you.
That alienation where I can't even see my cellmates, so to speak, but can only see their occasional scribblings is as real an alienation as there can be, far beyond what Marx could have imagined.
So I get it. People want to unplug and re-engage into the actual world.
I'd also have preferred the OP would have referenced the Amish as an example of the intentional ludite as opposed to Ted Kaczynski. It's not necessary that every radical be malevolent.
That is why I brought up communitarians as wanting to preserve something they already had rather than making it all about breaking the system.
The point I was aiming for was that "better" or "different" technology would have to be self-selected, or it would just be another imposition.
The technology we are submerged in is atomizing, isolating, and alienating. I guess I agree that submerging the workers' paradise in cell phones, tablets, facebook, Google, et al would have pretty much the same effect it has had on workers in this society.
The medium is the message, per McLuhan. Cell phones do something that landlines just didn't do--they intrude into every moment indiscriminately. Using the product is the priority. The internet isn't the same thing as a library. Google search is a mixed blessing, undermining memory (you can always look it up) and, of course, serving up results according to a formula. Social media is a battering ram.
Technology and social media are products which must be sold, bought, and consumed in order for profit to be made. it is, obviously, profit that matters, not the effect of the technology. Business is business, and the tech and social media business is not radically different than gadget and publication business of the past, but their products are in a different class.
Back in the days of Walkman, people lamented that walking around listening to music on earphones was anti-social. They were cutting themselves off from everyone else. (Well, yes. I find earphones and MP3 players to be salvation on public transit.)
Tech didn't inaugurate alienation, but it certainly amplifies it.
Nice.
You've triggered me now! I've never used a walkman or listened to music on a device/phone. It can seem antisocial however it is often a mercy that people are preoccupied and listening to their music instead of talking or interacting. I just bought a car which has electronic everything. I hate it. I really should have bought a good 20 year-old car with none of the tech nonsense. I don't need to make calls in my car or use a camera to park it, nor do I need a screen to help me navigate. I just don't get the point of these banal features and they seem to have become compulsory. Another aspect of technology which I personally resent is that it is often imposed upon us. I can see how this might breed resentment and a desire to push back. :angry:
I hope readers are aware that I'm making a Terminator - Dark Fate reference.
So, it seems to me there is a broad range of positions that some will call neo-luddite, which nevertheless are not against all technology. Sometimes people will get labelled luddites, sometimes they will even name themselves that way. But likely most of them lie on a spectrum.
It would be interesting to map this spectrum out, and to see where, how and why certain ideologies exist within it. I had never really considered the neo-Luddite label to be much of a spectrum; but I guess most of reality isn't so black and white.
And note, ideas like the precautionary principle entail that new tech could be used, if one was cautious about the introduction of it and how widespread and how it is monitored. Also that it tends to be some technologies and also can be very individualistic: the simplicity people who tend to remove themselves.
Others have different approaches and the extent of their goals is rather wide.
[quote=Wikipedia]Ishin-denshin is traditionally perceived by the Japanese as sincere, silent communication via the heart or belly (i.e. symbolically from the inside, uchi), as distinct from overt communication via the face and mouth (the outside, soto), which is seen as being more susceptible to insincerities.[/quote]
All of the 19th century technologies--photography, telegraph, telephone, electricity, radio, recorded sound, and automobiles became products or services delivered by corporations eager to maximize its profitability. New technologies are consequently not merely offered, they are pushed--maybe 'rammed' is a more accurate verb--into the market. Cell phones are a good example but hardly unique.
Extracting maximum profit is the name of the game. That's what the industrial revolution has ben about.
On the one hand, capitalism and industrialism are dehumanizing because they reduce people to productive and consuming cogs, else they are deemed irrelevant. [chicken - egg aside: It doesn't matter much whether capitalism begat industrialism or visa versa.]. On the other hand, the capitalist's drive to find new things to sell leads to new products, some of which are actually good things. But good or bad isn't the issue. The important question is "Will it sell?"
Capitalists and industrialists are short-term operators. Long-term consequences are external issues for somebody else to worry about. A good, current, example of this is electric cars. There are about one billion gas-guzzling cars in the world. That's a problem. Solution? Replace them with one billion battery guzzling cars. That's the obvious profit-maximizing solution. Screw mass transit! Can't make much money on that.
Then a few years ago the elscooters came. The city had laid out a huge network of bike rentals that were fairly cheap. Then for some reason allowed the elscooter companies to come in, leave their vehicles everywhere and did not charge a fee for us of public areas for their business. Direct competition for the very bike rental set up they'd put a lot of money and effort into. Competition that does not help the health of its users, is actually dangerous, using space on bike paths despite being much faster, and using eletrical energy sources. Over time the city has started charging fees and charging for any elscooter they have to move, which is many. We've been moving backwards. More people use electrically driven things (including now these bikes that look like bikes and people often pedal in a lackluster fashion because there a battery el-driven motor in there). So, people propel themselves less
There are worse things going on in the world, but it's rather amazing to see the government encouraging less beneficial transport again to help the companies or worse.
If the workers controlled all production in a Marxist utopia, why should we expect they would choose to advance mass transit over personal cars?
It seems the real problem is that people when left to their own devices will tend toward satisfying their immediate desires with less regard for long range consequences. The solution isn't one economic system over another, but just a more reasoned and deliberate populace. I'd agree with that, but not just so that I could have better transportation solutions, but so I can also have less crime, less unwanted pregnancy, less drug usage, and less of pretty much every other problem in our society.
We just need smarter and more tempered people. It's my Swedish Theory, which basically holds that it doesn't matter what system you have in place as long as Swedes are running it, at which time crime will drop, happiness will increase, and everyone will be beautiful.
This is true, and in some non-existing workers utopia, people would also satisfy their immediate desires.
Quoting Hanover
Absolutely. One way a more reasoned and deliberate populace effects its will is by electing people who form a reasoned and deliberate government which is capable of making reasonably enlightened decisions. (There aren't many of these around -- not even in Sweden, though they have been less crazy than some other governments.)
Maybe some money was paid under the table? It's depressing.
An option is symbiosis - a mutually beneficial partnership between man and machine - where the two potential rivals can team up; the combo a being more powerful than either alone - cyborg territory? A complementary yin-yang kinda deal! Luddites would have no reason to complain and the machines would probably approve.
Wow! No, I don't so. Humans will always be one of the most intelligent species on planet. We always survived to all catastrophes and even evolved thanks to that. I don't give any chance to machines. Just for the fact that they depend on our technology.
I can't imagine a machine using their own "technology" or programming because all of these tools come from us.
Leaders of nations would excel if they were educated professional scientists who could weigh the risks against the benefits by understanding what experts were saying and taking any accountability out of their hands. The whole covid situation was badly mismanaged due to appointing experts and essentially backing them into a political corner where they will er on the side of caution when it comes to mortality rates.
Other instances are genetically modified foods and livestock it is utterly ridiculous the safety measures that are put in place because they end up causing more damage and creating a food industry based on public opinion over public safety. It is quite shocking how wilfully ignorant some people are.
It seems today people are more inclined to source their information from sci-fi movies/series that basically suffer from poor writing, ideological gibberish and barely resemble art as they are there merely to fill heads with garbage (act as filler for commercials and empty opinions).
I do have a feeling the next few generations are actually looking better. Probably because they have seen firsthand mass stupidity and are actively trying to avoid being sucked into the madness created by greedy people and the ideologically possessed.
I'm not sure if you are pro or con by this short description, but I am guessing you are pro-gm. In the current system, in the US, the regulators are often in a revolving door with industry. They work in the industry, then for the government regulator and vie versa. There is also lobbying, industry control of research, advertising revenue influence on media and campaign finance influence on politicians. When issues like this are discussed it is often as if there was research done and industry wants to do it, then this is science. But apart from lay people influencing policy, we have monied interests influencing policy and their sense of safety
Or even just the sense that it is good for business, without any money exchanging hands. I was stunned by how naive even journalists were about the issue.
Though we don't owe future potential machine consciousnesses anything (yet). Once they are here and if they actually experience life, well, I suppose we should take into account their opinions. But we could, of course, choose tech that benefits a wide range or people, be cautious about certain kinds of tech. And keep ourselves or at least the animal kingdom as the only experiencers, and take into account what is best for us. We don't have to create things more intelligent than us. At least, I see no moral obligation to do this. And, given what you call our stupidity, what we create could yes, well be monstrous and not just for us.
Skepticism of the potential of technology to improve our lives rather than the opposite, based on historical trends and on emerging scientific research into the interaction between technology and power.
That's a great question. Perhaps it means to "remain relevant"?
Well, we know from the pejorative expression, 'keeping up with the Joneses' that there is something problematic and to be resisted in this superimposed values system of keeping up. It is ultimately about conforming to a worldview you did not participate in creating and may have no interest in sustaining. A system generally implemented and choreographed by marketing and technocracy.
Essentially, yes; alongside another purpose.
The quote/story that I shared was generated by a GTP-3 AI-powered tool that has a public facing UI. It's can be found here.
You define Neo Luddism as "An individual who opposes the use of technology for ethical, moral or philosophical reasons", and ask "Is the neo-Luddite world-view dangerous?".
The Wikipedia article on Neo Luddism concludes "Neo-Luddism distinguishes itself from the philosophy originally associated with Luddism in that Luddism opposes all forms of technology, whereas neo-Luddism only opposes technology deemed destructive or otherwise detrimental to society."
In what way is the view that opposes technology deemed destructive or otherwise detrimental to society dangerous ?
Is overpopulation really an issue or is it something that is to thought to be an issue? I could be wrong but there are some people that claim that in the developed world there is actually an issue with negative population growth and the lack of young people entering the work force may become a real issue in the coming years. Of course these people could be wrong but it seems there is a disagreement as to whether the problem is either with either overpopulation or with negative population growth.
I think there are very few neo-luddites who are against all technology and the original ones were not against all technology. Nor would many disagree with the idea that technology can enable humans. So, coming up with an example of when someone might need to reluctantly or not start using new tech doesn't really address the concerns of people who identify as NLs. And I would be on that spectrum.
I could be wrong but I don't know of a any culture or society in history being really anti-science/anti-technology. Part of the issue is if any large group within a society is too against technology they run the risk of being marginalized by others that are not opposed to technology. Look back at history when there has been contact between two societies when one was more advanced then the other such as when the Europeans came to America. While the Indians may have frowned on some of the ways of the Europeans, they also understood that if they didn't adapt and start using the more advanced weapons of the Europeans they would be at a great disadvantage whenever there was conflict.
I will admit that I'm not quite as informed about the issues around Luddism or neo-Luddism, but I'm guessing that it is partly motivated by those that use technology to marginalize or disenfranchise certain people/groups in society and make their lives worse than it already is. If this is even partly correct then it may be partly about political/social issues about how technology is being used to undermine those less fortunate in society than the fact that such technology exist and is being used.
I believe history of the last few hundreds of years is littered with examples of those that have profited in exploiting new technology but at the same time have twisted the arms of others in their attempts to increase profit.
Like the old saying goes "Power corrupts, but absolute power corrupts absolutely".
Follow me down the rabbit hole, Alice. :mask:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/741865
Sounds like a contradiction in terms to me. Technology creates new options and possibilities. One can use those new options (including weapons) for constructive or destructive ends, but the technology itself is by its nature an application of new ideas , and as such provides us with capabilities , neutral in themselves, not previously available. If one were to label any technology as inherently destructive one would be ignoring its neutral basis and treating its potential detrimental use as the only possible use. One could argue that such a one-sided attitude is dangerous to new ideas.
So, a neo-luddite might see a certain technology that is being widely and think it should be limited in some or more of the ways listed above and others that did occur to me at the moment. They might notice that government regulators are in revolving door relationships with the industry they are supposed to regulate. They might think that more research should be done before the tech is used as widely or even out of the lab at all.
They also might notice a pattern where this kind of thing is happening with some regularity. Or that it is getting worse.
So, yes, perhaps there is nothing inherently wrong with a small neutron bomb. But we wouldn't want teenagers to have them. OK, no one is making a mistake about those and I don't think we have small ones yet. But perhaps certain kinds of tech are dangerous because humans are the way they are. That both communist and capitalist countries cannot be trusted to regulate them well, if for differing and pehraps overlapping reasons.
GIVEN that humans are the way they are, certain technologies are dangerous.
We can see this with children. Children are not neutral. They are impulsive and ignorant (not in any pejorative sense of the latter term). So, a gun is not a neutral tech on the floor of an apartment with kids.
Any tech becomes an extension of humans. If humans will have some tendency to do X with tech, then we can call certain tech dangerous. If we can say that about some tech being around children. We can then say that about some tech being around homo sapian adults.
Some of the problems and potential problems with tech and non-neutral humans is not easy to track and predict like loaded guns on the floor of apartments with kids or teenagers being able to order neutron bombs online, say.
And we know industry is often happy to take long term risks that they (certainly at the individual human level) are unlikely to be held responsible for. Generally the worst is they get sued.
So a neo-luddite might think that there is a general problem with the way tech gets introduced. A lack of care, sometimes with very bad consequences..
Nicely put.
I'm not against technology per say. But it does have a significant shadow side and many negative, often unforeseen consequences and tech should not be seen as the solution to all of human challenges. For instance, people in Australia who are from an Aboriginal background and or who are disadvantaged are asked to conduct much of their lives via websites or call centers to access vital community, health and government services.
Many disadvantaged people over 50 do not own a computer and cannot use them. Many don't have cell phones. They are unable to access basic services because they can't access the technology which is the gateway to access. In many instances, there are no viable work arounds to this. A presumption of digital literacy and access to technology is arrogant and should be challenged . I do not own a phone or computer myself. I have access to them because they were supplied by my work. I am probably hooked now. It's impossible to conduct a life without them. :angry:
And , more importantly, whether a tech is dangerous, and what makes it so, is far from obvious when it comes to the concerns of many neo-luddites. Were not just taking small neutron bombs here.
From Wiki:
In 1990, attempting to reclaim the term 'Luddite' and found a unified movement, Chellis Glendinning published her "Notes towards a Neo-Luddite manifesto". In this paper, Glendinning proposes destroying the following technologies: electromagnetic technologies (this includes communications, computers, appliances, and refrigeration), chemical technologies (this includes synthetic materials and medicine), nuclear technologies (this includes weapons and power as well as cancer treatment, sterilization, and smoke detection), genetic engineering (this includes crops as well as insulin production).
I think for many neo-Luddites, anything that destabilizes and transforms the long-standing social, economic and moral order is dangerous. Tech serves the role of scapegoat for them.
Quoting Bylaw referring to the neutron bombs. and I also pointed out that they didn't exist. I also mentioned that we are generally dealing with tech less immediately easy to track effects.
Further, it was part of a response to your argument which was that technology is neutral, not destructive in an of itself. So, I chose extreme examples small neutron bombs and guns on the floor of apartments to counter a categorical argument that we shouldn't view tech as dangerous. For two reasons, one, we already do, non-neoluddites and neoluddites alike, consider some tech dangerous and restrict or even ban it in a variety of ways; two, as part of an argument trying to show that thinking of tech as neutral is midguided because we humans are not neutral. We already, neo-luddites and non-neoluddites, recognize this with some tech GIVEN human nature and sometimes even corporate or governmental nature (non-proliferation treaties I can add as an example for the last).
So, what do you do. You pull a quote out of its context and respond as if I did not write what I wrote directly after, then left out any response to the argument I made - iow the context and intentions of that example.
You ignore, conveniently the other example, the one with guns. Where human + neutral tech is not considered a neutral combination by many non-neoluddites.
And then throw a cherry picked example of a neo-luddite at me.
Your finale is a generalized ad hom, your psychic claim about what is really going on in neo-luddite minds.
You'll pardon me if I ignore your posts from here on out and also please pardon me for hoping you never end up on any important regulatory body.
Quoting Bylaw
Quoting Bylaw
How easy it is to track an effect is a different issue from whether we agree on the fact that there is such an effect(harm) in the first place. That was my point. Those wary of the potentially harmful effect of a particular technology on society are already predisposed to see a cause-effect relation where others would not. This is not unlike disagreements among scientific approaches as to what constitutes evidence. Neo-Luddites may see all kinds of detrimental cause-effect relations between the use of cell phones and computers ( and e-scooters) and social functioning. I am much more inclined to see there effects of technology as dependent on an enormous range of factors. You say humans are not neutral, but neither are they predisposed as a whole in any particular direction. Are guns and children an inherently dangerous mix? It depends on the age of the child and their gun training. It seems to me the greatest concern of neo-luddites isn't immediate physical harm caused by something like a weapon , but the psychological effects of tech. Here I reject the idea of any simplistic shaping effects of our machines on our behavior.
Quoting Joshs
Are there neo-luddite thinkers in philosophy? Or are we talking about a more reactive, folk philosophy/response?
I'm often overly cranky. I did not take it as an attack per se, but on one level a very poor response, philosophically/discussion-wise. On another rude. It's as if I didn't write other things which I did write. It took a position and instead of responding to it, plucking one quote out of context as if one is responding to the post. He may be a lovely guy and this was an exception. I just find more and more online that people seem - I stress that word 'seem' - to pick a team, often seeing the possible positions as two. And so the goal is to tear down the other team, not acknowledge nuance or complexity, and not be too concerned with the totality of what some 'on the other team' is actually saying. So, my impatience is built in large part on others. Quite possibly not fair, but I do think it was a disrespectful and facile response on his part:
If he meant to point out assumptions on my part, he probably shouldn't have made it seem like my argument hinged on neutron bombs, which I had said do not exist and also contrasted with the types of tech that neo-luddites do have issues with. He attacked an assumption I did not make. And it's pretty clear I didn't make it. And he couldn't possibly have missed my reference to guns as an example. Tech that does exist and most people are in favor or restrictions on (I mean even the NRA would, for the most part, think parents who left loaded guns on the floor ought to be punished).
Provocative would be responding to the argument I made. I might find that frustrating, if he mounted a nice counterargument, one that supported his notion that it's best to think of all tech as neutral. The provocation coming from unique arguments or examples or an innovative angle on the debate.
I responded to his earlier post with what I thought was a take that was less common at least. I didn't pull out pieces or assume things about his position, as far as I know. I certainly would have looked at that, if he'd mentioned it. I think responding to the tech is neutral argument by saying (to oversimplify) that tech ´+ homo sapian tendencies is not neutral. Or not necessarily at all neutral is a provocative line. I don't think he is wrong - I think I even said that - but that that argument has a misleading narrow focus. Tech in a storage unit is generally neutral. Tech that will be used by homo sapians, or will influence affect them cannot be simply called neutral as a rule. I suppose guns don't kill people, people do has been misused, I think, in similar ways, his argument is just at a more generalized version of that. There are ways that argument makes sense. I think there are ways that it does not.
I also tried to work on the notion that non-Neo-luddites at a practical level also treat many technologies as not neutral. And also have issues with how widespread something is used, by whom, under what conditions and so on. IOW bridging. This was completely ignored. I experienced it as a rush to a binary position. It's all or nothing. I am sure there are some neo-luddites who are like this. I don't know how powerful they are, but I doubt they are as powerful as industry advocates who want to rush products and solutions to market or use and see regulatory bodies and suggestions of caution as things to be PRed and lobbied and revolving doored out of the way. I am sure there are many people in industry with other more nuanced reactions to regulatory bodies and concerns. That they are on a spectrum of reactions.
I am surprised that 36% of those Forum members who responded believe that the world-view of an individual who opposes the use of technology for ethical, moral or philosophical reasons is dangerous.
I could understand 36% finding the world-view of an individual dangerous if the world-view was based on dogmatism, prejudice or fanaticism.
But what better reasons are there to have a position on a topic than ethical, moral or philosophical ?
Simon Fraser's article What is a Neo-Luddite expands on the topic.
I quickly slapped together a set of fuzzily articulated thoughts, not being sure how interested I was in actually getting into this topic , and you interpreted it as a deliberate attempt to demean you. One can only be rude if one intends to be rude, and my interest was not in punishing or slighting you. Let people be inarticulate, disorganized or poor readers without personalizing it. It may save you some unnecessary angst in your life.
And it may also give others an opportunity to sharpen their argument, which I will do now. In my second post, I meant to include guns alongside portable neutron bombs
to indicate that my concern was with the distinction between the need to control weapons technology and the need expressed in various forms and to various extents by self described neo-Luddites to control all sorts of other technologies , motivated not by the perceived threat of physical harm but the concern over the psycho-social effects that technologies can have.
This leads me to my depiction of technologies as neutral in themselves. Im not sure why I used that word. My philosophical sympathies lie with postmodern relativistic approaches to culture and science, and the word neutral almost never comes up in these discourses. On the contrary, technologies are considered forms of practical interaction , inseparably linked with other forms of practice. Technologies are essentially ideas, ideas are forms of cultural practices , and all practices change culture in specific ways. But in postmodern thinking , there is no overarching normative framework outside of specific social arrangement from which we can say that one set of ideas or technological structures is good or bad. For one thing , since technological knowledge intervenes in and changes social structures, even when it isnt being used, one cannot put the genie back in the bottle. Instead one can only regulate and clarify the ways we choose to use them, and this invariable involves the development of further technologies to regulate the previous ones. I think the issue comes down to whether and which uses of a technology are inherently bad, and this may be closely linked to the question which whether there are ideas which are inherently dangerous. The authors I follow suggest that all technologies are both inherently dangerous and inherently beneficial, sometimes at the same time.( I suppose it is in this sense that I called them neutral). The regulation of thought and technology both should be aimed at the avoidance of monopolization and dominant control of use, and the encouragement of differentiated and democratized proliferation of technologies. This seems to run counter to the desires of certain neo-Luddites who dont see the accelerated creation of new technology as the antidote to the negative social consequences of current technology , but instead want to eliminate specific domains of techno-social structures.
Many are included to blame todays gadgets for everything from obesity , lack of empathy , short attention span and incivility to a decline in sexual activity. But is the relationship directly causal, or is it that by opening up new options and possibilities , technologies make possible brand new challenges athat dont necessitate throwing out the baby with the bath water?
For me the only way to protect society against the monopolizing and dominating uses of current technology is to move ever more boldly into new socio-political-technological terrain.