Technological Slavery: Enhanced Edition: 1

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Your book Life on the Screen was published in 1995 and it was noticeably optimistic about this new digital world. By the time you wrote Alone Together, in 2011, that optimism was gone. What changed? Sherry Turkle A theme that appears repeatedly in the writings of the social critics of the second half of the 20th century is the sense of purposelessness that afflicts many people in modern society. Just because we invented a powerful technology doesn’t mean we have to become its slaves” Sean Illing

It is absurd to say that a person is independent, self-reliant, or an individualist because he belongs to a collectivity of hundreds of millions of people rather than to one of 30 or 50 people.”This, as the name suggests, is the transportation, recruitment and/or harboring of people for the purpose of exploitation. This usually involves a constant threat of violence or other coercion. Source: Pixabay 4. Descent-based slavery is still a thing in places You’ve written a lot about empathy and how these technologies are making it harder for us to be empathic. I wonder if you think they’re encouraging us to treat other people as objects or as actors in our own personal drama. As you say, we’re always living through our screens, always performing, always projecting our image and our story. Sherry Turkle

But do we dignify Kaczynski unduly? I recall a similar concern in late 2005, when a documentary ran on American public television about Mark David Chapman, the killer of John Lennon. Similar complaints were raised:“we dignify this criminal too much by even mentioning his name”; “we should never hear his voice”; “we should never read a word of what he says”, and so on. Many opposed the documentary, and yet it was produced, and aired. And nothing was to be gained except sheer voyeurism. There was no deep message, no residual value in hearing Chapman speak. It was pure pop culture. And yet it aired, because he has a right to speak, and we have a right to know. How much more important to hear from Kaczynski—not just the mail-bomber who eluded the FBI for 17 years, but a man with ideas that challenge the core of our modern worldview, and even offer a kind of salvation. This invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. … [Writing is] an elixir not of memory, but of reminding… [It offers us] the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom… (Phaedrus, 275a) Technologically-induced stress is bad now and will get much worse, leading to a condition where humans will be completely manipulated and molded to serve the needs of the system. Such a state of affairs is undignified, abhorrent, disastrous for nature, and profoundly dehumanizing.The big problem is that people don't believe a revolution is possible, and it is not possible precisely because they do not believe it is possible. Cloud and mobile apps to allow first-line responders, the public, and vulnerable workers to raise awareness, access resources, and report concerns, among a wide variety of other solutions. It is not possible to make a LASTING compromise between technology and freedom, because technology is by far the more powerful social force and continually encroaches on freedom through REPEATED compromises.