
Sundar Pichai: ‘Technology Doesn’t Solve Humanity’s Problems’ - mitchbob
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/08/business/sundar-pichai-google-corner-office.html
======
Kurtz79
To put the title into context:

"Do you still feel like Silicon Valley has retained that idealism that struck
you when you arrived here?"

"There’s still that optimism. But the optimism is tempered by a sense of
deliberation. Things have changed quite a bit. You know, we deliberate about
things a lot more, and we are more thoughtful about what we do. But there’s a
deeper thing here, which is: Technology doesn’t solve humanity’s problems. It
was always naïve to think so. Technology is an enabler, but humanity has to
deal with humanity’s problems. I think we’re both over-reliant on technology
as a way to solve things and probably, at this moment, over-indexing on
technology as a source of all problems, too."

~~~
discoball
<<But there’s a deeper thing here, which is: Technology doesn’t solve
humanity’s problems. It was always naïve to think so. Technology is an
enabler>>

Google was enabling the DoD to be more efficient at killing people and China
to be more oppressive until its workers protested. So he's right about
humanity having to solve its problems but he's forgetting that Google, the
corporation, is opting to make it harder for humanity to solve its problems by
enabling those who do not have humanity's best interest in their heart.

~~~
ucaetano
> Google was enabling the DoD to be more efficient at killing people

The world is complicated, and things are never as simple as that.

Would you consider drones and smart bombs bad when the alternative is carpet
bombing?

It is always too easy to ignore the world as it is and focus on a utopian
case. War will happen, with whatever tools are available.

~~~
danharaj
> Would you consider drones and smart bombs bad when the alternative is carpet
> bombing?

No one was ever going to carpet bomb a wedding.

~~~
ucaetano
> No one was ever going to carpet bomb a wedding.

Not a wedding, indeed, an entire town, with possibly dozens of weddings
happening at the same time. Plus hospitals, schools, etc.

If you had to pick between carpet bombing and smart bombs, which one would you
pick? (And consider you don't have a choice, like the trolley problem, you
NEED to pick one).

~~~
mrguyorama
>And consider you don't have a choice

How do we not have a choice to NOT bomb a desert on the other side of the
world?

------
dumbfoundded
Technology absolutely solves humanity's problems. There's pretty much no
problem that given a large thoughtful effort, technology has not solved. The
problem is that humanity is bad at choosing where to invest in technology. Our
society has been set up so that orders of magnitude of more money is spent on
advertising technology than clean energy, sanitation, sustainability, and
ethical food production. Technology is not the problem.

People act like somehow the technology has a mind and it wants us to be free
or some bs. Silicon Valley isn't special. It's part of the same system to
maximize short-term profit and the whimsical wants of billionaires. Technology
would absolutely solve humanity's problems. That is if we put our money where
our mouth's are.

~~~
voidhorse
You're certainly correct that the major problem is social, economic, and
structural, but I do think there are some technologies that are inherently
tricky to justify regardless of the economic structures they arise in.

The atomic bomb is one obvious example of a technology that seems to be
inherently bad not only for humanity, but for biological life itself.

You could argue that the problem of the bomb is more-so a problem of finding a
bad technical solution to the problem of war, but it's quite difficult to
think of a beneficial application of the atomic bomb, and thus, very difficult
to justify its invention from a moral/valued standpoint.

I think it's also a problem that we seem to treat technological progress as a
glorified end for humanity—we find it very difficult, for whatever reason
(perhaps economic as you point out) to have the courage to admit when
something _shouldn 't_ be invented, even if it presumably _can_ be. I think
part of this stems from the co-opting of science by technology, and science's
silly claim to be "value-free" and neutral—which has had some disastrous
consequences. If I'm engaged in a value-free enterprise, I have no reason to
stop and wonder what devastation or havoc my creation might one day wreak, I'm
doing it, after all, in the name of science, or progress, of unreflective
pursuit of an end I can't forsee.

~~~
jbob2000
Arguably, the dropping of the atomic bombs saved more lives in the long run by
forcing the Japanese to surrender and end the war, full-stop.

And arguably, nuclear weapons are keeping the world at peace. Sure, everyone
has them pointed at each other, but it’s that threat that keeps us honest and
peaceful. Just like how drivers in Chicago are courteous and never honk their
horn - you’ll get shot if you drive like a dick.

~~~
jeremyjh
> Arguably, the dropping of the atomic bombs saved more lives in the long run
> by forcing the Japanese to surrender and end the war, full-stop.

This was a popular myth that Truman started. In fact, if we’d told the
Japanese we would let them keep their emperor, they almost certainly would
have surrendered. The Soviets had just entered the war in the Pacific and we
wanted to end it before they captured much territory. Ironic since the
Japanese had no intention to risk a Soviet occupation either.

~~~
dragonwriter
> In fact, if we’d told the Japanese we would let them keep their emperor,
> they almost certainly would have surrendered. The Soviets had just entered
> the war in the Pacific

Er, no.

The nuclear bombs were dropped on August 6 and August 9. The USSR announced
it's declaration of war at 11pm Trans-Baikal time August 8, and began invasion
at 12:01am August 9. So, at the commencement of the atomic bombing, the
Soviets had not just entered the war.

> and we wanted to end it before they captured much territory.

So, what you are saying is that he Soviet entry into the war, absent the
nuclear bombings, would put pressure on the US to grant Japan more lenient
peace terms. Maybe that's true, but I'm not sure how that's an argument
against the bombings.

~~~
jeremyjh
What I'm saying is the Soviet entry into the war by itself was enough to push
Japan into an (almost) unconditional surrender to the US, so the bombings were
unnecessary. The timing was not coincidental, they had agreed on a Soviet
entry within three months of V-day in Europe at Yalta. While Stalin probably
didn't know about the bombing, Truman almost certainly knew the specific date
of the invasion of Manchuria in advance and it likely established the
timetable.

------
lordnacho
I disagree. Technology is the very solution to our problems, the driver of
social change.

Why? Because our social instincts don't change terribly fast, being coded in
DNA. Our hardware/OS is more or less what it was when the last ice age ended.
Nobody has extra arms or hearts. People still use "look each other in the eye"
and other old school tropes to decide if they are comfortable with a new
person.

The only thing that changes us is when some guy figures out you can melt
certain ores and turn them into sharp tools. Or when some lady finds out the
seeds she harvested from a certain grass can be nurtured into new plants.

Innovations like this change the economy and allow us to organize society
differently. People no longer need to spend a large part of the day washing
clothes. These days you don't even need to know how to farm or hunt. That
means you can do other stuff while still having your needs met.

The only way to solve our social problems is to try to think of better ways
use the planet. That's technology.

~~~
WhompingWindows
"the only way to solve our social problems to think of "better" ways to use
the planet?"

I am skeptical. What if instead of designing new tools and new ways of
exploiting natural resources, we also shifted our cultural mores and practices
to encourage more efficiency and less waste? New shiny tools are great, but
there's something to be said for maintaining what's already laid down and
properly utilizing what's already available.

There is a book on this dichotomy of environmentalists vs technologists, and
how one group advocates efficiency/conservation and the other advocates
innovation/change. I think both schools of thought are needed to move forward
to the best outcome, wouldn't you agree?

~~~
lordnacho
> encourage more efficiency and less waste

That's exactly what we can do with technology. How are we going to clean up
all the plastic? How do we build a house that doesn't leak heat? How do we
avoid putting all that carbon in the air?

The answer is always going to be this: someone thinks of a new way to arrange
things in order to achieve these goals, in a way where we get more goodness
(utility, health, happiness, etc) out of the same blue sphere.

> There is a book on this dichotomy of environmentalists vs technologists, and
> how one group advocates efficiency/conservation and the other advocates
> innovation/change. I think both schools of thought are needed to move
> forward to the best outcome, wouldn't you agree?

Yes, they are two sides of the same coin. When the tech exists, society (ie
environmentalists in this case) can plausibly push for new behaviours.

------
starbeast
Marketing led design processes don't solve humanity's problems particularly
well.

For anyone who would like ideas on how to get technology to do a better job of
following needs, I'd strongly recommend the book 'Design For The Real World'
by Victor Papeneck -
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/190560.Design_for_the_Re...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/190560.Design_for_the_Real_World)

------
davebryand
He's right. Humanity's problems are solved by humans solving themselves. Each
one of us is a puzzle that gets solved in the same way--doing the inner work
to quiet our mind and open our hearts. When enough of us are solved,
humanity's problems will automatically solve themselves.

Sundar seems to have done the inner work and understands this Truth. His
"Cockroach Theory" is enlightening:

 _I realized that, it is not the shouting of my father or my boss or my wife
that disturbs me, but it 's my inability to handle the disturbances caused by
their shouting that disturbs me.

It's not the traffic jams on the road that disturbs me, but my inability to
handle the disturbance caused by the traffic jam that disturbs me.

More than the problem, it's my reaction to the problem that creates chaos in
my life.

Lessons learnt from the story:

I understood, I should not react in life. I should always respond.

The women reacted, whereas the waiter responded.

Reactions are always instinctive whereas responses are always well thought of.

A beautiful way to understand............LIFE.

Person who is HAPPY is not because Everything is RIGHT in his Life..

He is HAPPY because his Attitude towards Everything in his Life is Right..!!_

[https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cockroach-theory-beautiful-
sp...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cockroach-theory-beautiful-speech-
sundar-pichai-brahmbhatt-cswe-/)

~~~
yoavm
What's the source of this text? I've looked it up and couldn't find one
reliable source that shows that Pichai actually told this story once.

~~~
davebryand
You're right, I can't find that he actually said this. Guess I'll have to
pretend that he did. :)

------
jillesvangurp
I think I disagree here. Technology is very much a key part to solving most of
humanity's problems. It always has been. Technology is what drives humanity
forward. You can look at every empire in history and you will find that at
their peak they had some kind of technical advantage over others. Conversely,
their fall tends to be correlated with losing that edge.

Silicon Valley thrives on startups spending money on all sorts of crazy stuff
that accidentally succeeds once in a while, courtesy of plenty of investor
cash to keep that going long enough to find out. The successes are wildly
lucrative. There are probably more than a few future billion $ unicorns being
nurtured to success in the valley.

However, as soon as unicorns succeed they turn corporate. I think Google is a
great example of this. IMHO there's a clear difference between what Google
accomplished technically before and after their IPO. At this point it seems
they are mostly milking tech that they built/acquired around or before 2005
(search/maps/youtube/android/ads/etc.). It's not that they are getting nothing
done but they are accomplishing far less at far greater cost since they
probably spend more than ever on R&D while having increasingly less to show
for it. They take less risk with their projects and their comfort zone has
shrunk to the point that they felt a need to park their more wacky initiatives
under the alphabet umbrella, outside of Google. Of course, this may end up
being a clever move if some of those efforts succeed. But I would look outside
of Alphabet for likely unicorns.

This CEO was employed to look after the cash cow while the Google founders
focus on the more exciting stuff in Alphabet. He's not there to build the next
Google, merely to keep the existing one going. Stagnation is not unique to
Google. Many companies suffer from technical stagnation. Very few companies
actually survive more than a few decades. In the tech world, things are
trending down not up in terms of longevity.

------
hathawsh
The accurate thing to say is that technology magnifies people's will. People
use technology to spread both good and bad messages, to entice people to do
better or worse things, to help others or to put them down. The spread of
technology means more people have more power to do either good things or bad
things. Therefore, it's on all of us to use technology for good and build
technologies that help good work flourish.

------
pnathan
This is a _dramatic_ shift from the mid-90s viewpoint, which held an
incredibly youthful optimism that has long fed into Google's culture. I want
to bring that to one's attention.

That said, this also reads like a _thoughtful_ and _mature_ viewpoint; nuanced
and understanding the reality of humans colliding with sophisticated
technology.

Historians and philosophers have a lot to contribute to this world; I think
there's an increasing awareness of that reality.

~~~
zeroname
If you're at the top of Google, one of the most well-financed entities in the
world and you _actually understand_ all of its "high end" technologies to a
reasonable degree, I think that's going to bring you back down to earth. Plus,
coming from another culture brings in some perspective.

------
namank
He's basically saying "guns don't kill people. People kill people".

Replace "guns" with "technology".

------
jonnykim98
Is code truly amoral? Technology is not morally neutral. It embodies a set of
values, a framework and an ideology. For instance, Google search engines have
intrinsic properties that make them inherently and irredeemably flawed,
because they attempt to infer intellectual properties, such as the meaningful
content of a web site, from physical properties. Search engines rely primarily
on query term location and query term frequency, sometimes boosted by other
computable factors, such as link popularity. These pseudo-intellectual
technologies such as search engines and metasearchers, are not morally neutral
they fundamentally alter exosomatic conditions of our being as sensemaking
entities. We now have new intellectual technologies coming to ascendancy:
information architecture, knowledge management and intelligent infrastructure.
Now is the time to raise questions about their non neutrality instead of
abdicating such responsibility - for if anyone has agency it's the firm that
designs these algorithms.

~~~
golemotron
Is a hammer amoral? You can bonk someone on the head with it or build a house.
So the answer is yes.

~~~
jancsika
You can't convincingly ransom a hospital on the other side of the Earth by
swinging a hammer in your basement.

You can't remotely exploit life-critical systems by studying which hammers
were used to assemble them.

You can't send streams of hammers through web browsers and persuade the user
to mint coins in their spare time.

You can't hammer a nail in a copper wire outside your beach house and catch a
printer on fire in the midwest.

I have no opinion on the question about the morality of code. But no answer to
that question has anything to do with a hammer.

------
loceng
Can someone explain if "right to be forgotten" laws and processes are
equivalent to China's "wall" of censorship and processes?

~~~
ma2rten
I will try to give an objective answer.

They have a different underlying value system. Europe believes in
individualism and privacy. China believes in collectivism and harmony.

Right to be forgotten protects the individual. China's wall protects the
government.

~~~
puzzle
No matter the values and principles, no matter whether you agree with them or
not, at the end of the day both positions are the law in the respective
territories. You don't get to pick and choose which laws should be enforced.
But you can choose which countries to do business in, of course.

~~~
Emma_Goldman
'You don't get to pick and choose which laws should be enforced. But you can
choose which countries to do business in, of course.'

That's - if you'll excuse me - a very amoral and commercial way of looking at
things: you don't belong to any society, and don't wish to exercise any
control in any society, and the only way in which you can or should exercise
your rights is in where you do business.

It is precisely the rationale of democracy that you DO 'get to pick and choose
which laws should be enforced' (to some extent).

~~~
puzzle
I thought this whole conversation was in the context of companies like Google?
I don't think companies are people. They definitely don't get to flout the
laws as they see fit, but they have the right to operate in the markets they
choose. Even lobbying makes me uneasy.

As to the laws, yes, it's up to the citizens to shape and evolve them, through
a referendum, elected official, regime change or whatever other way. But once
they're signed, they're the law.

------
toomuchtodo
"Technology can solve humanity's problems, we simply choose to wield it in a
manner where it does not."

------
quaunaut
> But there’s a deeper thing here, which is: Technology doesn’t solve
> humanity’s problems. It was always naïve to think so. Technology is an
> enabler, but humanity has to deal with humanity’s problems. I think we’re
> both over-reliant on technology as a way to solve things and probably, at
> this moment, over-indexing on technology as a source of all problems, too.

The headline sounds so much like a copout, and to a degree, I think even the
completed statement is. However, when you read the overall interview, I think
I share a similar perspective:

Right now, technology has clearly amplified everyone's voice to vaguely the
same level, and as a result has exponentially amplified the voices of fringe
groups. And as a society, we have to confront that. But it's a relatively
recent problem, and our earliest attempts at solutions have been entirely
based on technology, instead of a better mixture of people and technology.

In other words, we need technology to enable people to better learn, then
curate their world, and get involved in ways that show support and
organization better than a Like/Retweet button.

I think we're not far from tools like this being widely available, but we're
just at the beginning of such a concept, and the overall reticence society now
has to technology thanks to the irresponsible stewardship of its leaders will
inhibit technology's ability to fix the problem, too.

------
TangoTrotFox
What is the difference between today and 20,000 years ago? What's the
difference between today and 20,000 years from now? There are of course social
and political changes but the key thing that invariably is behind all progress
and improvement in society is technology. For instance throughout our entire
history as a species we not only had slavery but it often played a key role in
day to day life. Then, as we hit the industrial revolution it suddenly began
to be rapidly phased out of existence, world wide. By the time it was ended
slavery had long since gone from a necessity to a luxury and was well on its
way from a luxury to a burden. Technology obsoleted it and society followed.
In areas where technology has not completely obsoleted slavery, it still
exists to this day.

Amusingly even Socrates predicted as much thousands of years ago, _" For if
every instrument could accomplish its own work, obeying or anticipating the
will of others, like the statues of Daedalus, or the tripods of Hephaestus..
If, in like manner, the shuttle would weave and the plectrum touch the lyre
without a hand to guide them, chief workmen would not want servants, nor
masters slaves._" Technology is, practically by definition, exactly what
solves humanity's problems.

Though to be fair, this headline is somewhat clickbaity. The article is not
really suggesting that technology doesn't solve humanity's problems. But
rather than Google, and to some degree the entirety of Silicon Valley, has
entered its twilight phase. And as Google has surprisingly rapidly
metamorphosized into the next e.g. Microsoft, it's not an unreasonable
suggestion.

------
browsercoin
he's right tho. It facilitates humanity's problems by giving those in the
power to abuse with impunity, steroids.

An entire generation of Chinese kids grew up thinking the Tianmen Square was a
god damn festival singing "Wo Ai Beijing Tianmen"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6IVg_mpzIQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6IVg_mpzIQ)

------
jfasi
A bit orthogonal to the point of this interview but:

> When we follow “right to be forgotten” laws, we are censoring search results
> because we’re complying with the law. I’m committed to serving users in
> China. Whatever form it takes, I actually don’t know the answer.

This is an important point: Google has a lot to offer Chinese users. From
providing a trusted search engine in a context where people still trust
foreign products over Chinese ones, to simple access to its services which,
let's be honest, are pretty solid for the average user. It's fair to criticize
the company for trying to find a way to access an environment that will almost
inevitably demand some degree of censorship, but it overlooks the real good
that that such a presence would deliver.

Much of the criticism I hear of Google in this case centers on their presumed
willingness to tolerate censorship. Pichai makes a good point here: complying
with some degree of censorship imposed by a regime is just the cost of doing
business in an international setting. No one is howling for Google to pull out
of Europe after the ridiculous "right to be forgotten" censorship ruling. You
can quibble about where to draw the line; censorship out of a misplaced desire
to protect privacy and censorship to prop up a repressive, authoritarian
regime are far from equivalent, but in either case it's a cost-benefit
analysis with principles on one side and the potential gains for users on the
other. This quote suggests Pichai hasn't yet found the best way to do that, or
even that he ever will.

And to those cynics out there who will throw out thirst for profits, I say: if
money were as strong a motivation for Google as y'all seem to think it is,
Google would have never left China to begin with. They (full disclosure, we)
lost _tremendous_ leverage in that market when it became obvious that
operating in China was not sustainable.

------
vertline3
I knee-jerk want to say this guy is bad for censorship, surveillance and so
on, but I think he is sort of like Roger Goodell, commissioner of the NFL, he
is there to take the unpopular choices so owners can get wealthier without
responsibilty.

------
vijay_n
Technology when in hands of Google certainly won't solve any sort of problems,
they may pretend to you that they are solving problems but they will be
carving you inside out from the other end.. So one or other way, truth came
out ;)

------
sudeepj
What are humanity's problem exactly? Every era of humans had different list of
problems. Problems today (climate change, nuclear weapons, etc) are very
different than say 1000-1500 years ago.

Technology definitely solves lot of problems and some tech enables to scale
the solutions (e.g. discovery of antibiotics and tech to mass produce them).
But then it gives rise to new set of problems which are much harder to solve.
The harder the problems get more collaboration and working together is needed
at global scale, which itself is very hard. In this sense, tech can only go so
far.

------
nicklaf
"Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral." -Melvin Kranzberg

What _is_ bad are the neutral to bad actors who propagate technology, without
planning or caring for its unintended consequences.

Technology is an amplifier, and like other amplifiers humans build, it is far
easier boost some existing signal when you abdicate yourself from the goal of
also maintaining the integrity of the signal: sure, you can get more power if
you don't care about noise. In fact, building a perfect amplifier of arbitrary
power is probably impossible.

------
sullyj3
Not to be cynical, but there's enormous PR pressure on Google and Sunday
Pichai specifically to make this their opinion. Widespread public opinion is
turning against silicon valley, and even technological advancement more
generally, like a kind of mini-second-postmodernism.

For sure silicon valley has some serious problems, but humanity is a lot
better off generally than it was a few centuries ago, and the reason isn't
because we all became nicer people. Discounting technology as a driver of
human flourishing is a grave mistake.

~~~
solidsnack9000
_...and the reason isn 't because we all became nicer people._

We did become better governed. Not unrelated to technology but not directly a
result of it, either.

------
gallerdude
I think technology is all about giving us more degrees of freedom. For a
familiar example, video games can provide vastly more experiences as
processing power marches on. But this is far from limited to computer-adjacent
things.

Facebook gives a lot more degrees of freedom in relationships with other
people, YouTube and blogs and reddit give content creators the most
meritocratic markets to have ever existed, the camera on your phone is better
and more portable than 99% of old cameras.

~~~
Emma_Goldman
You are confusing 'freedom' and 'power'.

On the most popular analysis, to be free is to be deprived of a personal power
which one has, e.g. for some force to interfere and stop you from exercising
your capacity for speech.

We cannot have been unfree to use facebook before the invention of facebook
because we never had that power, and because it is not a personal power, but
an instrumental power outside of our person.

------
lappet
I agree with the quote from the article. Think of technology as a tool. If you
take email, for example, you can use it for pretty much anything - it solves
the problem of communication. But it doesn't inherently solve poverty, racism,
inequality or any social problem - it could be used to do that, or it could be
used to make them worse. The growth of social media has brought people
together for better or for worse.

------
ThomPete
Technology is a natural extension of humans, so of course, it doesn't solve
our problems it's part of our problems and our solutions.

------
asabjorn
That is only because technology is build upon science, which captures the
belief in a rational God of Christianity that it sprung out of and doesn't
capture the ethical aspects. It is a somewhat problematic aspect that anything
non-ethical has increased leverage arguably at a much quicker rate than our
ability to manipulate the material aspects of our world.

------
lgleason
The last thing I want is a un-elected, for profit technology company that is
more powerful than many small countries moralizing to the world....especially
by banning/silencing those it deems to not be "pure enough" for it's platform.
On the plus side success tends to breed failure and I think it is beginning to
head in that direction.

------
bitL
So technology is turning into a social/philosophical amplifier now;
historically any disputes from large or even small philosophical differences
were resolved through wars/murders (and it's all going to be about philosophy
in an "abundance society" with its surrounding politics), so I can't wait to
see what future holds...

~~~
agumonkey
It's becoming the new cultural infrastructure.

------
hartator
If you define “Technology” by having better means to alter the world, you
can’t be further from the truth.

------
agumonkey
Good to hear. Now we can do real work

------
benologist
I think he means tech companies perversely hoarding hundreds of billions of
dollars even while they avoid tax obligations all over the world doesn't solve
humanity's problems.

But as Bill Gates shows, a lot of money clearly can solve many of humanity's
problems.

------
ryanmercer
It creates a lot of them

\- microplastics

\- co2/global warming

\- an increase in cancer from use of various radiation/chemical pollutants

\- rapid transmission of disease via air travel and automobile travel

\- all sorts of negative consequences from the rise and widespread adoption of
social media (addiction, depression, bullying, terrorist recruitment, easier
avenues for committing fraud, etc)

Technology is a tool like any other, can be a benefit and a curse. A gun can
provide recreation, can put food on the table but at the same time can be used
to murder. Dynamite allowed much more efficient (and safer) mining but it also
showed that there was the possibility of far more stable explosives than black
powder and nitroglycerin which almost certainly directly resulted in many
other explosives, like TNT, being developed and used to wage war.

------
drasticmeasures
Maybe Google's failure to not make the world worse is being spun into an
argument on how all technology has its benefits and evils, but the social
benefits from Google's tech appear to be outweighed by its social malefices.

------
auslander
... but it does solves our shareholder's ones.

------
qwerty456127
But it can be used for that. It's just a tool.

------
WalterBright
> Technology doesn’t solve humanity’s problems.

But it does. Vaccinations, for example, have solved humanity's smallpox
problems. Technology has solved all kinds of medical problems, it has solved
the famine problem, and on and on.

------
buboard
I think the next phrase is more interesting:

> we are probably, at this moment, over-indexing on technology as a source of
> all problems, too

A lot of the real changes in the world (immigration, cultural fragmentation,
overreaching governmental power) have been masked by the continuous media
infatuation with "social media". While they help people deal with these
changes, these media are not the source of good and bad things, people are.
From the euphimistically-called arab spring to Trump, social media have been
fingerpointed, while ignoring the actual background forces which cause these
changes.

------
brianolson
'Technology' is kinda definitionally something that humans created to solve a
problem. I suspect 'big business capitalism' is driving us to solve the wrong
problems sometimes.

------
zackmorris
Just for fun, here are the top 10 problems I deal with every day. Are there
technologies that solve these? If not, why?

1\. Getting up in the morning earlier than my body wants to. I think I need to
go to bed earlier but find myself watching TV or surfing social media/news.

2\. Much of my work consists of repairing technical debt from stuff done 3-5
years ago with the best of intentions. There appears to be more money in this
than architecting new software.

3\. For lunch I go home and make a sandwich. This may very well be the
highlight of my day. Is there a sandwich making machine?

4\. I go back to work and work later than expected, usually leaving around 7
PM. The timer says I got 6 billable hours in, but I spent a day to do it. Is
there technology that makes billable hours work better or is my efficiency
really 50% or whatever. I don't know.

5\. I go to the gym 5 days a week for 1.5 to 2 hours which includes 0.5 hours
of cardio. I'm getting stronger but generally always look the same, and so
does everybody else. I've been doing this for 20 years.

6\. I go to the store on the way home and always get the same things. I could
maybe set up some kind of delivery service. I worry that automation will put
grocery stores out of business someday but am sick of going to the store
constantly.

7\. I drink a beer and watch Netflix all night. This is awesome. But is this
the pinnacle of civilization? I don't know.

8\. I see members of my family roughly once per week or less. They all live
within 50 miles. Time becomes an inexorable march of lost days, each lost day
growing more pressing in my mind as I fall asleep each night. The future
implications of this are too painful to contemplate, so thoughts are troubled
and fleeting.

9\. I started a TODO list of inventions, projects I'd like to work on, etc. I
stopped when it reached roughly 200 items. That was a decade ago, and I'd be
surprised if more than a handful of items have been crossed off. Is there some
kind of a machine that can lower my obligations each day to perhaps 2-4 hours
so I can work on the things that might actually help the world? Or is this
vanity, is it better to wait for them to spring themselves into existence
within 2 weeks or 2 years, sometimes by just mentioning them on the internet?

10\. Weekends are the hardest. The yawning mouth of obligation to family,
friends and home maintenance stretches like a tunnel to infinity from which no
light can be seen brimming from its depths. Holidays become a 2-3 month
marathon of reactionary mode optimizing of the things that must be done like
last year. A point is reached at which the distraction of daily minutia frees
the mind from worrying about the things that will never be. As if all the
technology in the world led to a place of maximum distraction, dilution and
ineffectualism, each layer cementing the exhaustion beneath the one before.
Where is the technology that gives me the time, that pays me the money so that
I don't have to run the rat race anymore? If that doesn't exist, then is what
we have now really technology?

------
voidhorse
Technology solves some problems. It also creates some problems. The
fundamental issue lies in the fact that we've lost sight of the _ends_
technology is supposed to be in service of, and the development of technology
for technology's sake (or more often, for economy's sake) has become the
unconscious, inarticulate end of the world's major players.

As Sundar states, it is not that technology in itself is, in its essence,
problematic, nor has it become the source of _all_ humanitarian issues. The
issue is an apparent incapacity or unwillingness on the part of most of the
participants in the technological sphere to question the ideologies that
underlie the development and deployment of particular technologies. Compound
this with technology's tight coupling to the prevailing global economic
structure and you're dealing with an aspect of human life that is as thorny
and difficult to comprehend as it is constitutive of modern existence.

Here's a question: to what extent do algorithms mirror human reasoning and to
what extent does human reasoning (at the macro level of social patterns) begin
to mirror the predominant algorithms in use today? One's exposure to
particular phenomena in a systems context is more or less dictated by the
algorithms and structures the system employs (its rules and ontology). This is
why an overly technified approach to social problems, such as politics etc.,
reduces the depth of social understanding and interaction. Because technical
systems ultimately have to serve _economic_ ends, whatever _moral or social_
ends they might serve are eclipsed.

Social technologies are geared toward keeping users happy or blasting them
with advertisements because doing so serves the economic ends necessary to
keep said technologies functioning. Unfortunately, keeping users happy is
often counteractive to other ends which we might reasonably say rest on
morally and socially superior ground. Individual experience becomes systematic
and "algorithmic" to the extent that the only inputs that remain in a grossly
technological society are filtered through fixed patterns of technological
interaction.

Twitter's character limitations, for instance, not only affect the system of
twitter itself but conspire with its popularity as a means of _social_
interaction to place strictures and limits on the very _nature_ of modern
social interaction. Thought, so often subject to truncated expression through
mediums like Twitter, itself becomes truncated. Dialogue, which is given no
space on social media platforms where people "comment" and "react" but never
discuss begins to disappear as a meaningful, commonplace social practice.
Thoughts and opinions are radicalized and tribalized. We participate in fixed
echo chambers comprised of fellow individuals whose membership was not
determined through a complex social process, but rather through an algorithmic
process, which dumbs down the quality, depth, and sophistication of group
formation and interaction.

Systems originate as expedients to serve _some_ historical end and soon, by
extension and unreflective adoption, dictate behavior, and dictate the ends.

------
viach
Well, but at least technology makes these problems less annoying.

~~~
transpy
Specially when your bedroom light fail because of bad wifi or when your
roomba's AI doesn't recognize your cute dog's poop.

------
krmboya
I'm likely to get some downvotes for posting this, but the title reminds me of
this talk [1] by the well known man called Billy Graham. The three problems
technology cannot solve:

\- Human evil

\- Human suffering

\- Death

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90mj79GqWhc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90mj79GqWhc)

~~~
phamjamstudio
It was a good talk worth sharing :)

------
Glennross
(Please try to respect the netiquette when voting.)

Empty words by Sundar Pichai employed to achieve a desired effect in Google's
benefit.

The airplane is an example of a technology that has brought us closer together
and helped advance the ideal of an interconnected global "village" and which
I'm contrasting with the promise made for Google's products -- but don't get
hung up on my example, because my argument is directed at Google.

Maybe it's just Google's tech that has failed to deliver on its promise for a
better world.

~~~
rcMgD2BwE72F
These might be empty words in Sundar Pichai's mouth, but the underlying idea
is not:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmakon_(philosophy)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmakon_\(philosophy\))

It's time for Silicon Valley (I actually mean supporter's of
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism)
actually) to learn what Classical Greeks discovered a long time ago.

~~~
dna_polymerase
Could you elaborate on the Pharmakon in this context or point me at any
resources to get a better understanding of it?

~~~
rcMgD2BwE72F
What makes a remedy a _good_ thing isn't the thing itself but the way it is
used. That's therapeutics. A badly used remedy can easily become poisonous.
It's the same with _any_ technology, e.g the Internet, smartphones, IA…

I'd recommend reading Bernard Stiegler, a French philosopher whose work has
yet to been translated to English though (as I just discovered). I think this
English interview might be a good introduction: [http://krisis.eu/wp-
content/uploads/2017/01/krisis-2011-1-05...](http://krisis.eu/wp-
content/uploads/2017/01/krisis-2011-1-05-lemmens.pdf).

Note that he often gets political but it's really worth it though if you're
interested in the way technology is being designed and adopted by mankind
(he's also focused on the Anthropocene but that's another topic). His annual
conferences at Pompidou Centre / IRI (specially the ones about IA –
[https://enmi-conf.org/wp/enmi18/](https://enmi-conf.org/wp/enmi18/), in
French unfortunately). I'd recommend his seminaries on philosophy (via his
School of philosophy [http://pharmakon.fr/wordpress/le-projet/the-school-of-
philos...](http://pharmakon.fr/wordpress/le-projet/the-school-of-philosophy-
of-epineuil-le-fleuriel/) and via the Ars Industrialis non-profit) but they
aren't yet translated. Again, sorry for that.

