Somewhere between a luddite and a cyborg
Tech needs a new vision for the future. Many people I speak to are stuck in one of two modes: "burn all tech", or "tech is our only hope".
The polarisation stinks of online influence. Now we're all stuffing our brains with the same bot comments over and over, we're too burnt out to have our own ideas.
How can we innovate if we can't think of anything new?
Why should we innovate, when innovation costs the Earth?
Doing a masters in computer science and AI has been a surprisingly soul searching endeavour. My memories of enjoying tech as a kid were usurped by this ugly reality of spying and grasping and selling. I do still love technology, just not the industry it has become.
So how do we build a new vision? We can't go back to what was, and we can't keep going as is.
For me, I'd like to see:
- a lot more people with the knowledge and skills to handle technology for themselves
- really fancy, high resource tech only being used for high impact stuff like healthcare
- basic old tech being used (and reused) for day to day necessities like communication
- computing groups like knitting groups where it's normal to show up with a project and get help from experts
- goodbye to big data unless it's truly impactful
- decentralised networks
- different metrics for evaluation that aren't about efficiency and speed
- low power websites as the default
I think I'll keep adding to this list (if I remember I made it in the first place). Some of those need a lot more thought.
Help me imagine something new. Tell me about what you'd have on your list here. Or write a post and send it to me!