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There is no such thing as “unregulated tech” It’s an incoherent strawman on the order of “blank slate” It’s a bad faith casus belli manufactured by politics and finance to extend the phases when they’re in charge via artificial regulation (invisible/visible hand)
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A clever rhetorical maneuver is to pretend that “free markets” are a way to have unbridled Tech rather than just a weaker kind of regulation. In terms of freedom for Tech to be/become what it wants: Invisible soul > invisible hand > visible hand > traditional religion.
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Market fundamentalists are as scared of “unregulated” Tech as politicians and socialists, because it can potentially evolve in ways that shred their ability to secure rents. In fact Tech “escapes” regulation by markets every 80y or. That’s the point of the Carlota Perez model.
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So I think the tech futures challenge, which I think of as the rewilding/de-stagnation challenge, is to find a rate-preserving mode that taps into the invisible soul as well as Silicon Valley did for 2 decades. Without regard to sunk costs.
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Yes, a Haraway Chtulhucene angle has been on my mind as one possible way this could turn out. But again, without the baggage of quasi-socialist human-centricity same as Illich. That’s kinda a poison pill that kills the What Tech Wants dynamic.
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Replying to @vgr
Thoughts: 1) Despite the recognition that Tech is a human endeavor, there's a haunting here of Tech as a phenomenon of its own, waxing and waning in relation to human activity, almost as an independent force. Tech determinism? Maybe. Perhaps a strong dose of Donna Haraway helps.
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“Tech” is really the current projected shadow of human attachment to current ways of being and fear of change. “Tech” is merely the current mode of how we’re coming to terms with change in what it means to be human.
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This is why I find fetishistic human-centricity and Waldenponding to be the essence of non-Tech. It’s people in denial about, or in active resistance against, how the definition of “human” is changing. Left or right, it’s all an aestheticized trad turn.
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As for the ever-popular question of the fate of Silicon Valley, it’s as simple as — if the trad turn infects tech, SV becomes part of the problem. If it doesn’t, SV remains part of the solution. Both left and right versions of trad are currently infecting SV.
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It kinda doesn’t matter whether you take your kids off iPads to teach them Real Masculinity™ and Real Femininity™ or if you do so to raise them in Fully Automated Post-Gender Luxury Space Communism. So long as you retreat from What Tech Wants you’re human-centric.
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Where does climate crisis remediation fit in this model? Does tech “want” an earth that’s habitable by a large number of healthy and comfortable humans or not? Or is working towards that “human-centric”?
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I’d say if Tech doesn’t “want” it, it won’t happen and we’re screwed. The only solution is Tech wanting it, and us acting in ways that bet on that direction even though by definition we can’t force it.
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So “wanting” translates to mean “being within the range of what’s possible given the resources we invest”? Or is there more to it that actually governs where we are capable of investing resources?