Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Your earlier post seems to intimate that technological leaps like this precede the start of wars, but your follow up comment intimates that technological leaps like this help win wars, and now I'm not sure I'm exactly following which one is supposed to be your central point to this.

Could you clarify this and help me understand your viewpoint a bit better?



Honestly my first reply was a moment of progress fatigue. Tech fatigue really. Tech is amoral. Tech means change, but change doesn’t mean progress.

I’ve been watching tech for a long time and we tell ourselves a lot of half truths. My good friend showed me a private demo of the first web browser that supported images. I was around people who wanted to change the world and it was all thrilling. But I can still recall conversations about how we were all going to slay Big Brother, but instead we made him stronger than ever. It’s really painful to look at your role in that. I’d bet money that half of them still don’t. And that was why I started my post with “careful”. War is just a conterexample. Especially if you have sympathy for the losing side.

Tech will only be good if you exert yourself toward making it so. Here we are with three threads a day talking about how Facebook used their technology for negligence or evil depending on your point of view.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: