Is technology good?

The Therac-25 was a radation therapy machine, incredibly advanced for its time, running the latest greatest software. It resulted in the deaths of several patients as the checks required to ensure that the beam doesn’t fire at the incorrect energy were poorly written.

The proliferation of WhatsApp has led to a spate of mob-led killings in India. Rumors spread quickly now and groups can coordinate faster than ever before.

The same internet that delivers us Netflix, YouTube brilliance like PBS Idea Channel also serves as a vehicle for the popularization of legalizing pedophilia and the spread of child pornography.

Meanwhile, entrepreneurs across the world have taken to social media platforms to launch their businesses to new heights of prosperity and raise their standard of living.

Face recognition on one hand. Food delivery and ridesharing on the other. Predator drones. Wikipedia. Pornography. Pornography.

If we want to examine whether technology is good or bad, we have to first define what we’re talking about. No one refers to the developments in AutoCAD that enable us to build safer buildings as ‘bad technology’ because it’s out of sight and it’s really good for us. When we talk about technology taking over, we are pulling a trick akin to the AI paradox - that once an AI accomplishes something previously considered only the domain of humans, we say it is no longer AI - it is merely logistical regression or a particularly novel neural network. When technology reaches into something that was previously mediated only by humans, we call it (creeping) technology. If it enables us to explore a new domain humans could not reach before…well, that’s not technology, that’s natural progress.

I might be arguing against a strawman here, but this is how I see the frame placed around technology in my head.

Taken altogether, I am a firm believer in “Technology is not good, not bad, nor is it neutral.” The development of particular technologies at particular times shifts the livelihoods of millions and changes the way we structure our society in response. It is very hard to put a valence on such enormous structural changes. They are violent and inevitable, upheavals of systems often are. I think we can only counter the ever-growing behemoth of indifferent technology that rules over us with kind-hearted immediate empathy towards those around us. It’s the only thing technology can’t do better yet.