What a sad view of humanity to think that our one defining characteristic should be pursuit of technology rather than the ability to intelligently collaborate and thereby form communities with a shared purpose.
I can assure you that the success of human survival throughout the history of our species has had far more to do with community and resourcefulness than with technological advancement. In fact it should be clear by now technological advancement devoid of communal spirit will be the very thing that brings an untimely end to our entire species. Our technology is destroying the climate we depend on and depleting the soil that we need for growing food, to say nothing of the nuclear bombs that could wipe us out with the wrong individuals in positions of power.
You’ve kind of whiffed what I said, at no point did I talk about tech over all else like some kind of Adeptus Mechanicus :D
My take here is that our grasp of tech is what allowed us to surpass other animals. Again, looking at “technology” in some really shallow one dimensional way. There are tons of environmental and communal benefits we’ve gained through our technological pursuits, the sad view is maybe thinking all tech things are bad and viewing that part of our world only in its moral inferiorities. Our domestication of fire being a prime example of a technology benefitting our social and communal enrichment.
Good job moving the conversation further away from the post
I’m directing my criticism specifically on the technological advancement which is devoid of communal spirit, not on all technological advancement categorically.
Crediting human achievement to technological advancement is a mistake in my opinion. Technological advancement is not inherently good or bad. Communal spirit is what determines whether technology yields positive or negative outcomes. That’s the real ingredient behind everything humans have achieved throughout history.
Sadly techno-optimism has become a prevailing mindset in today’s world where people and institutions don’t want to take responsibility for the consequences of their actions because of belief that as-yet-unknown technological advancement will bail us out in the future, even when there’s no evidence that it will even be physically possible.
But what I said is that your view is a sad one, not an incorrect one. The truth is, technological advancement may truly end up being the defining characteristic of humanity. After all, when we think about extinct species, we tend to associate them most strongly with what made them extinct. Just as we associate the dinosaurs most strongly with a meteor, maybe an outside observer will some day associate humanity most strongly with the technology that sent us out in a blaze of glory.
The Voyager 1 is still (mostly) ticking after almost 50 years with basically ancient technology by today’s standards, and it’s been through the hell of deep space, radiation and shit all that time.
What’s wrong with old technology if it still works? I don’t care what all magical computations a quantum computer can do, a mere hour of data retention just sounds pathetic in comparison.
You know we’re going to lose contact with V1 this decade, and as of last year the data stopped making sense? Which tied into my criticism of your other comment, we’re getting close (in the grand scheme) to how small we can make a transistor so we just make clusters of electron based compute models each running its own resources or do we invest in finding a better more efficient way?
