this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2024
328 points (99.1% liked)
Technology
59981 readers
2518 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Contrarian much, you have multiple answers for exactly the answer you asked for.
As a species, the one thing that defines us is the pursuit of technology to overcome our natural physical ability. We are currently hitting a wall in regard to electron based computing.
I think you're confusing technology with politics to the point you're just making a point unrelated to the topic.
All tech raises the standard if that's then used by people to horde resources and have an unbalance in quality of life that's a policy issue not one of the technology.
What a sad view of humanity to think that our one defining characteristic should be pursuit of technology rather than the ability to intelligently collaborate and thereby form communities with a shared purpose.
I can assure you that the success of human survival throughout the history of our species has had far more to do with community and resourcefulness than with technological advancement. In fact it should be clear by now technological advancement devoid of communal spirit will be the very thing that brings an untimely end to our entire species. Our technology is destroying the climate we depend on and depleting the soil that we need for growing food, to say nothing of the nuclear bombs that could wipe us out with the wrong individuals in positions of power.
You've kind of whiffed what I said, at no point did I talk about tech over all else like some kind of Adeptus Mechanicus :D
My take here is that our grasp of tech is what allowed us to surpass other animals. Again, looking at "technology" in some really shallow one dimensional way. There are tons of environmental and communal benefits we've gained through our technological pursuits, the sad view is maybe thinking all tech things are bad and viewing that part of our world only in its moral inferiorities. Our domestication of fire being a prime example of a technology benefitting our social and communal enrichment.
Good job moving the conversation further away from the post
I'm directing my criticism specifically on the technological advancement which is devoid of communal spirit, not on all technological advancement categorically.
Crediting human achievement to technological advancement is a mistake in my opinion. Technological advancement is not inherently good or bad. Communal spirit is what determines whether technology yields positive or negative outcomes. That's the real ingredient behind everything humans have achieved throughout history.
Sadly techno-optimism has become a prevailing mindset in today's world where people and institutions don't want to take responsibility for the consequences of their actions because of belief that as-yet-unknown technological advancement will bail us out in the future, even when there's no evidence that it will even be physically possible.
But what I said is that your view is a sad one, not an incorrect one. The truth is, technological advancement may truly end up being the defining characteristic of humanity. After all, when we think about extinct species, we tend to associate them most strongly with what made them extinct. Just as we associate the dinosaurs most strongly with a meteor, maybe an outside observer will some day associate humanity most strongly with the technology that sent us out in a blaze of glory.
The Voyager 1 is still (mostly) ticking after almost 50 years with basically ancient technology by today's standards, and it's been through the hell of deep space, radiation and shit all that time.
What's wrong with old technology if it still works? I don't care what all magical computations a quantum computer can do, a mere hour of data retention just sounds pathetic in comparison.
You know we're going to lose contact with V1 this decade, and as of last year the data stopped making sense? Which tied into my criticism of your other comment, we're getting close (in the grand scheme) to how small we can make a transistor so we just make clusters of electron based compute models each running its own resources or do we invest in finding a better more efficient way?
Yes, I'm aware. ~50 years is a little over ~438,000 hours of service time, with no ability to even perform physical hands on maintenance.
How is a pathetic one hour memory of any sort somehow progress? By the time it cures cancer or whatever, the data is still that much more likely to be corrupt by the time they check it and try to save it.
1 hour < 438,290 hours
I tend to agree with this. It's why I've become less and less interested in the advancement of technology and more interested in ways to use the tech we have to build community.
Thank you, at least someone gets the gist of what I mean 👍