
Is technology making us vulnerable? - jonbaer
http://aeon.co/magazine/technology/is-technology-making-us-vulnerable/
======
darkmighty
I'm starting to dislike this kind of essay. It's thought provoking and
interesting, but in the end you can bring it down a a few claims completely
based on anecdotal evidence. There's no data/analysis to support anything,
which is made worse by not clearly stating the main thesis; it ends as just a
bit of "fear mongering".

Let me pick on the claim that we'll suffer indefinitely from the same design
flaws: cars still kill people, so we'll never learn, right? Wrong, if you look
at the data car mortality has declined pretty steadily since the 1930's [1].
Not only it lacks evidence but the claim that some mistakes can't be learned
as a general rule is also absurd: given generic statistical approach about our
errors and our ability to gather data, we don't have to fear that some
mistakes will somehow be "unlearnable". We may have cognitive biases, but
thankfully we're smart enough to make tools free from such biases.

There are many more points that could be dismantled like that.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year#mediaviewer/File:U.S._traffic_deaths_as_fraction_of_total_population_1900-2010.png)

------
guard-of-terra
The city of Donetsk, population over 1 mil, is now besieged for as half year,
with bombings, large swath of population leaving, lacking water and/or
electricity for prolonged periods of time, supply of all things unreliable and
a lot of armed men of various agendas around.

One thing that didn't happen to it is "apocalyptic breakdown of society". It
seems to still tick on with rather normal human life.

I think those fears are blown out of proportions for societies that don't
already have large debt of latent structural damage.

------
platz
[http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2015/01/01/black-mirror-as-hell-
is...](http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2015/01/01/black-mirror-as-hell-is-other-
people-futurism/)

> technology increases possibilities, and forces us to make hard choices that
> we had the luxury of not having to make before

------
Terr_
No, we simply trade certain vulnerabilities for others.

~~~
Strilanc
It would be quite the coincidence if the vulnerabilities we traded _exactly
matched_ each other in terms of risk.

~~~
marcosdumay
It would be quite the coincidence if they added mostly to one side too. The
expectation is that they add up to something similar to what we have now, more
similar as more areas change... That is, if the risks were independent.

That said, the risk are not independent, thus talking about probabilities (and
coincidences) is foolish.

------
yellowapple
I'm just going to assume that Betteridge's law of headlines is in full effect
here.

