The central question of our time is the relationship between the human ability to create technology of various kinds, and our ability to manage the technologies we create. It's typically assumed that if we're smart enough to create some technology, we're also smart enough to know how to successfully manage it. This is a sloppy wishful th…
The central question of our time is the relationship between the human ability to create technology of various kinds, and our ability to manage the technologies we create. It's typically assumed that if we're smart enough to create some technology, we're also smart enough to know how to successfully manage it. This is a sloppy wishful thinking assumption, because creating a technology and managing it are two very different skills.
Underneath the vast complexity of the modern world lies a simple foundation, a "more is better" knowledge philosophy. This is a 19th century philosophy that became outdated at 8:15am on August 6 1945 over Hiroshima Japan. But we mostly still don't grasp this, because the "more is better" knowledge philosophy is to us what the divinity of Jesus was in 12th century Europe, a largely unquestioned blind faith dogma taken to be an obvious given. We thought we walked away from faith during The Enlightenment, but really we just changed what we have faith in.
So long as an unlimited "more is better" knowledge philosophy is married to the reality of human limitations, we are setting the stage for a collapse of some kind. No one knows what the limitations of the human ability to manage power might be, but whatever those limits are, we are racing towards them as fast as we possibly can.
The central question of our time is the relationship between the human ability to create technology of various kinds, and our ability to manage the technologies we create. It's typically assumed that if we're smart enough to create some technology, we're also smart enough to know how to successfully manage it. This is a sloppy wishful thinking assumption, because creating a technology and managing it are two very different skills.
Underneath the vast complexity of the modern world lies a simple foundation, a "more is better" knowledge philosophy. This is a 19th century philosophy that became outdated at 8:15am on August 6 1945 over Hiroshima Japan. But we mostly still don't grasp this, because the "more is better" knowledge philosophy is to us what the divinity of Jesus was in 12th century Europe, a largely unquestioned blind faith dogma taken to be an obvious given. We thought we walked away from faith during The Enlightenment, but really we just changed what we have faith in.
So long as an unlimited "more is better" knowledge philosophy is married to the reality of human limitations, we are setting the stage for a collapse of some kind. No one knows what the limitations of the human ability to manage power might be, but whatever those limits are, we are racing towards them as fast as we possibly can.