{"id":90801,"date":"2023-03-14T22:51:34","date_gmt":"2023-03-15T03:51:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=90801"},"modified":"2023-03-14T22:51:34","modified_gmt":"2023-03-15T03:51:34","slug":"90801","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=90801","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Losing My Religion?<\/a>
\nReflections on falling away from unbridled tech-optimism.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019ve installed an all-new sound system in my study and the other day I was calibrating my subwoofer, as one does.\u00a0 The way I like to fine tune things is by listening to music I know intimately, and adjusting the levels until it sounds the way it should.<\/p>\n

In this case I used my own 2001 album, which I released under the name Mobius Dick,\u00a0Embrace the Machine.<\/em>\u00a0 \u201cDo not rage against the machine,\u201d say the lyrics to the title cut.\u00a0 \u201cEmbrace the machine.\u201d\u00a0 (Sorry, I don\u2019t have this online anywhere at present; I should really do something about that.\u00a0 I was too sad about the\u00a0demise<\/a> of MP3.com in to put it up elsewhere at the time.)<\/p>\n

Listening to that song reminded me of how much more overtly optimistic I was about technology and the future at the turn of the millennium.\u00a0 I realized that I\u2019m somewhat less so now.\u00a0 But why?\u00a0 In truth, I think my more negative attitude has to do with people more than with the machines that Embrace the Machine<\/em>\u00a0characterizes as \u201cchildren of our minds.\u201d\u00a0 (I stole that line from Hans Moravec.\u00a0 Er, I mean it\u2019s \u00a0a \u201chomage.\u201d)\u00a0 But maybe there\u2019s a connection there, between creators and creations.<\/p>\n

It was easy to be optimistic in the 90s and at the turn of the millennium.\u00a0 The Soviet Union lost the Cold War, the Berlin Wall fell, and freedom and democracy and prosperity were on the march almost everywhere.\u00a0Personal technology was booming, and its dark sides were not yet very apparent.\u00a0 (And the darker sides, like social media and smartphones, basically didn\u2019t exist.)<\/p>\n

And the tech companies, then, were run by people who looked very different from the people who run them now \u2013 even when, as in the case of Bill Gates, they were the same people.\u00a0 It\u2019s easy to forget that Gates was once a rather libertarian figure, who boasted that Microsoft didn\u2019t even have an office in Washington, DC.\u00a0 The Justice Department, via its Antitrust Division, punished him for that, and he has long since lost any libertarian inclinations, to put it mildly.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It’s a different world now.\u00a0 In the 1990s it seemed plausible that the work force of tech companies would rise up in revolt if their products were used for repression.\u00a0 In the 2020s, they rise up in revolt if they\u00a0aren\u2019t.<\/em>\u00a0 Commercial tech products spy on you, censor you, and even stop you from doing things they disapprove of. \u00a0Apple nowadays looks more like Big Brother than like a tool to smash Big Brother as presented in its famous\u00a01984 commercial.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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