Tech Can’t Fix It
Big problems won’t be solved by tech alone
"...It’s not Uber’s fault alone that work can be precarious and many Americans have trouble making ends meet. Jeff Bezos may be delusional for wishing to move polluting industries to space, but Amazon is also not really responsible for warming the earth. And likewise, if Facebook intervened more in misleading online information, it wouldn’t erase the root causes of Americans’ doubts about vaccines, nor would our children be totally safe if schools had facial recognition cameras. We can see the ways that humans have deployed technology as tools for good, and we need to do more to mitigate the downsides of technology in our world. But I also fear that we — and me, too — overvalue technology’s importance." (NYT, 10 August 21)
Posted: August 12, 2021, 10:49 AM