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Vladimir_Golovin comments on Existing Absurd Technologies - Less Wrong Discussion
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Maybe their point isn't "technology doesn't provide any tangible benefits", but "the scale of benefits that trickle down to us from technological advancements doesn't match the (perceived) scale of these advancements"?
No, they take it for granted -- and I'm afraid I'm guilty of this too. Strangely, cellphones and the Internet still amaze me, perhaps because I remember life without them.
Hmm, that just isn't true. There isn't a perfect match (indoor plumbing is low-tech with big benefits, I've seen really cool tech that's useless out of tiny niches), but there's a correlation (like, I could name five laser-based things you've used this week). There have been huge social changes (farming, literacy, urbanization, medicine, electric lighting, the Internet) due to technology.
They have more of a point about time scales. "Technology improves too slowly for us to benefit." But that's not so true since the industrial revolution, and completely false now.
If the Internet hasn't changed their lives (it sure changed mine), and neither have cell phones or cheap TV or recent medical advances or new kinds of jobs or satellite TV that reports on revolutions in nearby countries, then at least they could have noticed that as it accelerates so does social change (you mean they don't marry two black genderqueer atheists, either?).