[hlandau]

Author here.

In a word: yes. The universe is cold, ruthless, and does not care about us. I make no claims otherwise.

Society isn't that, though. Not least because nobody is particularly happy about the above fact and most people are trying to get away from it, not embrace it. And so, society is made up of people who have the capacity for empathy and adaptation to the nuances of others. So the relevant comparison here is not the timeframe before human civilization came to exist, but the society which existed prior to computerisation.

The adoption of computers within a society largely replaces human-to-human interactions with human-to-computer interactions, or interactions between humans which are now modulated and controlled by a computer (human-computer-human). That adoption trend inherently converts relationships between humans which are adaptable and contain a component of empathy, to interactions controlled by non-adaptive machinery with no capacity for empathy.

The adoption of computers as a technology within the context of a society seems, to me, to make society inherently more oppressive and less humane for this reason. (The main exception I would grant is computers only used by the people who have freely chosen to own them (as per comment above), and to which other people aren't subject to non-consensually.)

[haswell]

> The adoption of computers within a society largely replaces human-to-human interactions with human-to-computer interactions, or interactions between humans which are now modulated and controlled by a computer (human-computer-human). That adoption trend inherently converts relationships between humans which are adaptable and contain a component of empathy, to interactions controlled by non-adaptive machinery with no capacity for empathy.

I agree for a subset of tech interactions (not all, or even most machinery resembles this), and this is the primary conversation we need to be having IMO.

> The adoption of computers as a technology within the context of a society seems, to me, to make society inherently more oppressive and less humane for this reason

This is where I don’t agree, and I don’t see how this follows from the former paragraph.

Zooming out again for a moment: from the cold indifference of the universe, infinite possibilities emerge. That same coldness gives rise to the most horrible things one can imagine, but so too the most wonderful things one can imagine.

I’m old enough to remember life before everyone had a computer, and for me, that life was significantly worse. My ability to connect with people outside of my immediate circles is how I survived and eventually escaped a deeply harmful environment.

I do think that technology can magnify humanity’s best and worst impulses, and makes dangerous people more dangerous. But it also enables global collaboration and connection on a scale that was previously impossible, and unlocks positive outcomes that were simply impossible before.

Again, I think there’s a really important conversation to be had about the pitfalls of technology. But to position it as “inherently” anything seems unproductive at best and extremely counterproductive at worst. To position it as inherently oppressive seems to ignore the many ways it is anything but that.