That’s the sad situation.
Technology, in the most abstract of conceptions, might be capable of being regarded as ethically neutral.
But, in the real world, It is built on the destruction of a large proportion of the natural landscape and it is put into the hands of anti-human psychopaths. Optimism about technology seems like it requires a corequisite malfunction of cognition.
It’s one of those things where I don’t know what the outcome will be. Going back to Alkul’s article on Entropy—all of our technology uses layers of dense matter to break apart coherent systems in order to exploit them in some way. It is all unavoidably entropic.
And yet, they can break into some of the same layers that people can access through genuinely harmonious, negentropic means. It is like a conquering of the lesser heavens by a faction of demons who depend on external means of manipulation and exploitation rather than turning internally (and refining themselves) to get to a different state.
That’s the entire deal with technology. People could do literally anything and everything through empathy, specifically directed will, and a desire for harmony. But, instead, humanity has become the mindless tool-using brutes of Heidegger’s analysis. Never genuinely turning inwards, and always taking from elsewhere.
But, again, who knows the future? There have been grand designs with technology—presumably to organically grow new layers of “life” around the earth. The technosphere and the noosphere… But, going back to the discussion of entropy, they are more like an ingrown toenail or a cancer rather than a new layer for evolution. It could never succeed to become something self-sustaining and stable, it can only develop at the expense of it’s host and only as long as its host will support it.
However, I’ve noticed even back in the early elementary school years that most people are mindless. Attuned to a group-think that matches the lowest common denominator. I fear that they will be a ball and chain that causes everyone to drown. —The types who will go “technology is awesome because it let’s me do all kinds of fun stuff!” but they ignore that it’s already being used for genocide in parts of the world lol.
Hopefully we’ll wisen up, though lol
