Digital Dizzy

Digital technology surrounds us, and becomes more immersive by the day. As a person who had a (relatively) happy career programming computers in the good old days (ie until 2010 or so), I should enjoy the advances.

Besides it’s silly to rant against so useful a tool. Might as well claim walking is better than one of those newfangled wheeled contraptions, memory is ruined by written words, or the pride of John Henry is lost to steam machinery. Digital aids are very useful .

I guess my main concern – outside of how radically they are changing society – is their fragile nature. An awful lot of things can make them fail in minor or catastrophic ways.

“Oh come on!” you yell – organic stuff, including especially people, fails all the time. Makes mistakes, dies. That is quite true .

The difference is that life is based on dealing with the unexpected. Organisms have embedded feedback and repair systems that work remarkably well. Adjustments to changing environments usually happen. Life seems almost impossible to create from scratch, but once started it is very hard to stop. Even people are tougher than we usually think .

But digital technology? Especially remote centralized AI? I wonder if it is too much, too soon, and all eggs in one fragile, dizzy basket .

New Amish

It is well known that we establish certain likes or dislikes at definite ages. Boys center on sports attachments around 10 or 11. People tend to enjoy the music of teenage years as long as they live. It is, of course, possible to change, but there can be a lot of resistance .

Cultures too have some of that stickiness. Religions are long-lasting but centered on origins. Nation states have a definite point of origin and tradition. And then we have social cults like the Amish.

As far as I can tell – I’m too lazy to investigate on Google – the Amish basically picked a date around 1880 as “thus far and no further”. Anything invented before that, fine and dandy. After that – just frivolous garbage .

We may laugh at the arbitrariness of the cutoff, seemingly picked at random without much real logic involved. Yet I have found myself doing the same thing. An old “neo Amish” gentleman. The “new stuff” is “stupid and irrelevant” and just makes me crazy. Current music, film, food, fads – I ignore them all. I froze my electronic usage about 10 or 15 years ago. I like older books. And I don’t care – let the wider world go down its own devil’s route .

A complete curmudgeon. I still enjoy complaining with my peers. But I float along in my neo Amish nostalgia, content with the memories in my own life. And all the things that I accept as necessary. From that personal arbitrary cut off point years ago.

Business Visionary

We generally admire the extraordinary individuals who through intelligence, drive, or structured vision lead their companies to heights and influence. In the old days Ford, Carnegie, Vanderbilt. In modern times, Gates, Murdoch, Musk .

They are generally saluted as less evil embodiments of human ambition – helpful to society rather than disruptive politicians like Napoleon or Hitler .

No doubt there is some truth in that. Corporations are often a force for good, producing wealth which eventually trickles down to all. A cornerstone of our affluent modern world. Almost forgotten are the days when they were labeled (with some justification) “merchants of death.”

Remember, however, that all of those leaders were human. No matter how ruthless, they were constrained to mortal existence and secondary desires. I believe that, increasingly, AI driven business will become ruthless in ways we cannot imagine, completely morally bankrupt from a social point of view .

The dangers of treating employees like machines has long been luridly documented in literature. AI goes a step further, since it cannot understand any fundamental difference between flesh and metal, nor any obligation to consciousness versus obedience .

Today’s specialized titans of industry, unfortunately, are already well down the road to AI sterility.