Answer: Ah - so you’ve noticed.
Yes- you are correct, we have indeed become “addicted”, and “dependent” on a whole bunch of technologies, particularly “Electronics New Technologies.”
How did this happen? It was no accident.
The way addiction works through such reward based neurotransmitters as the Dopamine learning and reward system in our brain is now reasonably well understood by people ranging from scientists to pushers, advertising and marketing executives to gambling machine designers, pushers to … ENGINEERS.
The purpose of human technology should be to assist human beings in achieving their goals.
And plenty of it does this, with spectacularly good results.
And organisations like NASA are very good at progressing technological developments that achieve these goals within this paradigm.
I’ve written a lot about AI, and its likely future impact upon humanity. I fear it will be a very dangerous and negative impact.
But that is not because I am negative about the potential of AI, or am uninformed about it. Quite the opposite, I understand AI well, and I understand its fantastic potential well. And I believe it could be one the the best things that humanity can ever develop.
The problem is, I understand the New Technology development paradigm too.
The NASA approach to developing technology yields great (often expensive), reliable, results. And NASA is developing AI technology too, and that’s potentially good.
Problem is, this IS NOT, NOT, NOTHING REMOTELY LIKE, the development paradigm being used by the capitalist New Technology companies like Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, and the list goes on.
To the new technology capitalist enterprises in that list, and a thousand others, a good new product is a product that “Addicts users”, and makes them “dependent on your product line.”
Businesses have always known that repeat sales are the key to success, and that the best way to guarantee repeat sales is through making your customers dependent on your products. Doesn’t matter if your customer is the government, the military, or the general populace, if you can get them to the position where they cannot function effectively without your product, you will get wonderful repeat sales. Dependency is addiction, and dependency is far and away the ‘BEST’ guarantee of repeat sales a capitalist enterprise can hope to achieve.
So, when users cannot operate without oil, vehicles, electricity, communications media (once it was the post, then the telephone, and now … digital everywhere), GPS, electronic devices and smart phones, software etc. etc. capitalist enterprises rejoice. Especially when they need YOUR software, device, etc. etc.
Because when users are addicted / dependent on your technology / products you don’t even have to produce good products any more. You can produce rushed to market buggy untested software and hardware, and it sells even more. Then you can sell the version 3 and 4 upgrades that fix some of the bugs and make even more money. Then you can speed up the technical obsolescence cycle to the point where people barely learn to use the new technology, before you’ve replaced it with even newer buggier technology, and THEY HAVE TO UPGRADE. Phase out 2G and 3G asap, and push 5G. It’s a wonderful world - but not for the users.
So yes - the reason we are addicted / dependent upon electronic devices and a host of other New (and not so new) Technology is because the design, development and marketing departments of thousands of companies are attempting to achieve exactly that. They design, build, and evaluate new products precisely on their ability to create addiction / dependency, NOT on whether they produce good results that help users achieve their goals.
Buyer beware indeed.
And AI technology is being progressed in exactly this addiction / dependency development paradigm.
And unless we break out of this pattern I fear that we are going to pay a VERY HIGH PRICE.
(CK is talking WW3, billions of deaths, and nuclear winters here. A VERY high price.)
China has a different mind-set on this. While the Western World is all too complacently comfortable with the proclivities of capitalism and technology, the Chinese Communist Party views capitalism as a useful, but potentially dangerous, dog that sometimes turns on its master.
China’s one party government wants technology that helps it achieve its goals. And it is concerned about what is best for China, and its people.
And it is not at all convinced that the Western World’s New Technology capitalist enterprises are producing technology that does that. It suspects they are trying to produce new technology that addicts Chinese citizens to western technology, western social media, western concepts, games, influences, media, etc. etc.
And they are indeed, largely correct. Not because it is an evil plot of the Western World, but because it is a natural modus operandi of capitalist new technology enterprises. Always has been, but there is now so much more opportunity, and yes - we are getting much better at it.
Yes- they study the eye movements of six year old children playing computer games to find what grabs, holds, and addicts their attention.
Yes - they use all that big data to find out exactly what advert on what screen causes you to spend some extra dollars on something you neither really want, let alone need.
And yes- AI will do all this so much better.
Soon you won’t be able to live without AI.
And that includes the military that will need AI, drones, missiles, GPS, software, satellites, but maybe not generals and pilots anymore.
A Brave New World indeed, where Soma is the least of the things we need to worry about being addicted to / dependent upon.
So next time you read about The Great FireWall of China, or China banning / restricting Google or Facebook or some such, bear in mind that this may truly be mankind’s best hope of avoiding fatal dependency / addiction.
No - CK is not a great fan of Chinese Communism. I like, support, and believe in Freedom of Speech. And one reason I like it, support it, and believe it to be important is because it enables us to point flaws and faults in the Western World’s approach. But this achieves nothing unless the Western World actually takes notice and does something about it. And that’s where CK needs your help to get people using a web site like this one.
So in the Western World with Free Speech I can write that I recognise that the Chinese approach isn’t all bad, and has some important advantages over the laissez faire complacency of the Western world.
I look at the issues of New Technology dependency, social media abuse, US and UK (and other Western World polarised politics), and I recognise that unless we find another way to steady the ship, we are going to pay a very high price. Clearly the UK with Brexit already are, but the final costs of New Technology dependency could be far, far higher.
This is an important question and issue.
And China is probably paying it more appropriate attention than the Western World.
Hope this helps.