A techno-pessimist of a different sort

I embrace science and much of the technology that emerges from it. No Luddite, I was quick to buy a personal computer and learned to program for fun when PCs hit the market. Same for the Internet, whose arrival quickly got me thinking of, and building, all kinds of hobby websites.   

These days, I am grateful for renewable energy tech, scientific research tech (amazing telescopes!), and medical tech. When it’s used ethically, I’m fine with AI.

Yet in these middle years of the century’s third decade, technology, and the political and cultural dynamics around it, have me feeling cynical, annoyed, even alarmed at times.

It’s not the technology itself. It’s the people who abuse it for nefarious purposes, leverage it for power and profit, and glorify it as the solution to every problem while blind to the new problems that technology creates when pursued uncritically (as it often seems to be).

I guess that makes me a techno-pessimist of a different sort.

Tech-ing ourselves into corners

Techno-pessimism, by the standard definition, regards technology as more likely to harm than benefit the human condition.

That’s not how it has to be. The penchant for harm is not inherent to technology. It’s how we use it and what we expect from it that can make technology harmful.

Because of our laziness and short-sightedness, we tend to respond to societal threats (like climate degradation) by reaching for technological get-out-of-jail-free cards rather than doing the harder work of changing our ways.

This over-reliance is on vivid display with carbon capture, which society has apparently decided to bet on as the solution to our climate problem. Dale McGowan calls it the stupid pill. "It's like dealing with gun violence in schools by putting every student in a Kevlar vest," he writes. "It's bailing water out of the boat instead of fixing the hole, guzzling painkillers instead of setting your broken arm.” 

It's true that technology can work wonders. The revolution in agricultural technology led to huge advances in food production and fed a population whose rapid growth had thinkers like Paul Ehrlich predicting doom a half-century ago.

Now the predictable chickens have come home to roost. Soils are degraded, less responsive to the fertilizers that powered the agricultural bonanza that began in the 1970s. And so we return to the original problem: How to feed all the people? Through another technological “miracle”? Or through the work we should have done decades ago to achieve population stability and develop agricultural practices able to increase food production for the long term without damaging the environment and threatening the health of soils?

Whether it’s climate change or food production or the new medium that was supposed to democratize communication (more on that in a minute), it’s an endless cycle: We tech ourselves into corners and then count on tech to get us out.

Enshittifying the internet

Society tends to rush to embrace exciting new technologies without giving much thought to the fallout. I was no wiser than anyone else in my excitement about personal computers and, not long after, the advent of the Internet. I was a newspaper reporter when I bought my first PC, oblivious to the cultural import of that fascinating new machine in my living room and what it would lead to: the web, social media, the demise of newspapers, the rise of disinformation, the undermining of democracy.

In the initial excitement, I resonated with the optimistic claims about the Internet democratizing communication, providing a platform for voices outside the locked gates of mainstream media. Little did we know.

It’s a great example of why we can’t have nice things. People eyed the profit-making possibilities and took over the web. Loudmouths with nothing helpful to say got hold of microphones and started filling heads with toxic nonsense. Scammers eyed rich opportunities for criminal mischief and devised ever-craftier ways to trick you into giving up your money and identity. So it goes as the enshittification of the Internet (or “craptification,” if you prefer) continues on its disillusioning course.    

Untrustworthy techno-gods

Because of the way we relate to technology, society tends to invest our trust in techno-gods who are not worthy of said trust. Musk, Andreessen, Bezos, et al—even as they promise their fans they’re out to solve our existential problems and create a brilliant future, it’s clear their motivations are not humanitarian so much as profit, power, self-aggrandizement, and the like—not to mention, in Andreessen’s case, the endorsement of fascism via his canonization of the coauthor of the Fascist Manifesto, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti.

Over-reliance on tech tends to cede power to those who will not wield it well. Often, they behave like drunk-on-hubris egomaniacs with delusions of grandeur and no regard for the plebian public. They tend to resist government regulation and exhibit a fondness for currencies outside the purview of public regulation and banking institutions. When you’re “saving” the world, you must be unshackled, free to do whatever you want.

The rest of us? As science fiction writer and cultural commentator Ted Chiang observes, big tech regards us not as human beings with all the rights and dignity accruing thereto, but “as a resource to be exploited.”

Over the past few years, the tech-god squad has, for the most part, abandoned its somewhat liberal political orientation of old and cozied up to Trump. Gone is the Musk who was fighting climate change. In our face today is the Musk who scoffs at the climate threat and obsesses over what he calls the “woke mind virus.”

Musk claims this supposed virus, and the prospect of it being woven into artificial intelligence, will be the downfall of civilization. What a joke. The greater threat is Musk himself and the humanity-at-its-worst ethos and behavior patterns he personifies.

Imposing its will, having its way

What fuels my tech pessimism most is the incredibly strong political position now enjoyed by tech moguls. Musk has infiltrated the government by invitation and, with an appalling over-confidence and lack of expertise, has wreaked havoc—while, likely, setting himself up for billions more in contracts and profits. Musk now appears to be on his way out, but the damage is done.

A.I. that’s driven by full-throttle pursuit of profit and placed under no restraints. Federal assaults on “wokeism.” A dictatorial presidency that takes it cues from techno-fascism’s clenched fist. In these ways and others, the tech of humanitarians’ nightmares seems to have an unstoppable momentum and every tool at its disposal to impose its will and have its way.

This, when the exact opposite values are so desperately needed: commitment to human well-being, to the health of the natural world, to equality, peace, and wisdom.

“We are conquerors,” Andreessen declares in his Techo-Optimist Manifesto. “We believe in nature, but we also believe in overcoming nature. We are not primitives, cowering in fear of the lightning bolt. We are the apex predator; the lightning works for us. We believe in greatness.”

If that’s the face of techno-optimism, count me in with the pessimists.