From the techne pessimists of Ancient Greece to the computer firebombers of the Information Age, here's a look at the long—and fruitful—legacy of refusing the machine.
The growing and increasingly effective opposition to data centers is an excellent modern day example that “the current path of technologization is neither inevitable nor natural.”
Thank you for turning me on to Thomas Dekeyser - fascinating work !
I love your newsletter and appreciate it so so much and finally decided today, in the spirit of resistance, to pay you the 60$ to thank you for providing this vital vital service.
Thank you Brian for giving space to Thomas Dekeyser. His perspective also parallels the current innovation paradigm—rooted in neoliberalism, technological determinism and a narrow economic rationality—as neither inevitable nor desirable, and that viable, situated alternatives already exist, albeit often marginalised or invisible. Worth revisiting the collected works of Benoit Godin (RIP) on the history of the concept of innovation.
The examples given are very interesting, but I do wonder: did they have an effect at all? Was ever an invention that made 'economic' sense stopped by these techno-negativists? What resulted from burning computers?
What technology was actually stopped by ethics? Maybe chemical weapons is a valid example. What else?
Technology isn't inevitable, but when there is a profit motive it is pretty much inevitable that we fall for it. It might even be an evolutionary imperative that we jump on them (or on fantasies about them, see AGI).
Good points but I think it is just a first step in understanding what's going on.
Here are some of my own take.
1. The knife, spoon, fork and even a stick are technology. So saying "techo-negattive" is confusing because from what I remember neither Greeks or Ludites or govs banned or burned them let aside weapons (swords are long knives so thry are tech). So this isn't about technology is about something else.
2. I believe that no one should force another human to use or not to use any tools (technology is all about tools). If you wish to knit your trousers instead of using fabric made be a loom then it is (or ot should be) up to you not your neighbor or your gov. So what's up with that? If you wish to live under a rock and you are happy there then why should I force you to buy a house?
And we can continue but the RCA here can reveal uncomfortable truths.
1. Main issue was and will always be the balance of abilities between individuals that can easily become power unbalance. And many of us are fine tuned to sense this unbalance and act to rrbalance it. Ludittes fought for the fact that the new tech left them out of a better life since they didn't have the resources to own and use the tech.
2. Very important. Sometimes the tech innovators can be extremely blind to the dangers that their "children" can bring to all people. Remember that cars didn't have seat belts when they were invented right? Almost all technology have dangerous sides and no one should call "techno negative" people that can point out these problems or dangers. By the way, LLMs come with extreme hidden dangers, and most people can only grasp a tiny number of them.
3. Yes, some people do not understand technology and they simply react to mistaken beliefs. Are they true "techo-negative" or just misinformed?
And so on.
So, I doubt this is so easy to put in a box and label it.
We must use more precision in RCA-ing this fenomenon.
I believe that no technology is inevitable but also we must strive to correctly understand all its facts, positive or negative.
A knive can be both a tool or a weapon depending who's handling it.
This “backlash has become violent” framing buys into the “polarisation” narrative that the AI vendor PR wonks have been peddling for the past year. Love what you do Brian but this headline is wrong.
Those responsible are members of an extreme fringe whose ideas about dangerous super-intelligence are just as crazily overblown as the hot air from AI vendors. After too much ayahuasca at burning man they create an AI doomsday cult that serves Silicon Valley as well as any campaign the Astro-turfing PR consultants could come up with.
Media has an obsession with balance, and it’s too much work to thread the needle as it is, so reportage becomes “both sides-ism”.
The reality is that there’s a vast spread of rational criticism, organised protest and civil action among 99% of the population. These are regular folks who are not
With the “backlash turns violent” AI tech bro types and their AI brainwashed supporters: that tiny sliver who are the “AI author” brigade talking up legitimacy for their publications (Mikkelson twins types), the AI boosters and the vendors themselves are portrayed as being equal in weight to the vast bulk of regular folks who don’t want the evils of AI spreading in society.
The concerns I’ve had as an engineer with a startup background are placed on a continuum with crackpots in SF cults who are “known to police”. This is such an effective story to help the AI vendors I can’t help but wonder if the PR guys engineered it.
"It is arguable whether the human race have been gainers by the march of science beyond the steam engine. Electricity opens a field of infinite conveniences to ever greater numbers, but they may well have to pay dearly for them. But anyhow in my thought I stop short of the internal combustion engine which has made the world so much smaller. Still more must we fear the consequences of entrusting to a human race so little different from their predecessors of the so-called barbarous ages such awful agencies as the atomic bomb. Give me the horse."
Winston Churchill, 10 July 1951, Royal College of Physicians, London
And yet, those who profit from socially destructive new technologies tend to win eventually. In this regard, I don't think history is particularly encouraging.
Moreover, one shouldn't lose sight of the fact that what's wrong isn't techniques per se but some of the people pushing them. LLMs may well have humane uses,* but people like Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, and the mob of executive types eager to dispose of humans in favor of LLMs are monstrous. Few techniques are devoid of potential benefits to humanity, and few techniques are devoid of potential abuses in the hands of vicious people. Smashing the machines may help in the short term, but always, the fundamental, long-term problem is the people. The economic and political arrangements currently dominant in most of the world typically promote the most near-sightedly selfish and least scrupulous and compassionate people in the world. Changing those arrangements could, among other benefits, reorient technological development toward serving rather than immiserating most of humanity.**
*For example, last week, colleagues and I read and discussed an article about making and applying an LLM to DNA sequences, with a view toward identifying mutations that cause diseases:
The growing and increasingly effective opposition to data centers is an excellent modern day example that “the current path of technologization is neither inevitable nor natural.”
Truly informative book very much needed. Thank you
Thank you for turning me on to Thomas Dekeyser - fascinating work !
I love your newsletter and appreciate it so so much and finally decided today, in the spirit of resistance, to pay you the 60$ to thank you for providing this vital vital service.
ah thank you! 🤖🔨❤️
Thank you Brian for giving space to Thomas Dekeyser. His perspective also parallels the current innovation paradigm—rooted in neoliberalism, technological determinism and a narrow economic rationality—as neither inevitable nor desirable, and that viable, situated alternatives already exist, albeit often marginalised or invisible. Worth revisiting the collected works of Benoit Godin (RIP) on the history of the concept of innovation.
The examples given are very interesting, but I do wonder: did they have an effect at all? Was ever an invention that made 'economic' sense stopped by these techno-negativists? What resulted from burning computers?
What technology was actually stopped by ethics? Maybe chemical weapons is a valid example. What else?
Technology isn't inevitable, but when there is a profit motive it is pretty much inevitable that we fall for it. It might even be an evolutionary imperative that we jump on them (or on fantasies about them, see AGI).
Good points but I think it is just a first step in understanding what's going on.
Here are some of my own take.
1. The knife, spoon, fork and even a stick are technology. So saying "techo-negattive" is confusing because from what I remember neither Greeks or Ludites or govs banned or burned them let aside weapons (swords are long knives so thry are tech). So this isn't about technology is about something else.
2. I believe that no one should force another human to use or not to use any tools (technology is all about tools). If you wish to knit your trousers instead of using fabric made be a loom then it is (or ot should be) up to you not your neighbor or your gov. So what's up with that? If you wish to live under a rock and you are happy there then why should I force you to buy a house?
And we can continue but the RCA here can reveal uncomfortable truths.
1. Main issue was and will always be the balance of abilities between individuals that can easily become power unbalance. And many of us are fine tuned to sense this unbalance and act to rrbalance it. Ludittes fought for the fact that the new tech left them out of a better life since they didn't have the resources to own and use the tech.
2. Very important. Sometimes the tech innovators can be extremely blind to the dangers that their "children" can bring to all people. Remember that cars didn't have seat belts when they were invented right? Almost all technology have dangerous sides and no one should call "techno negative" people that can point out these problems or dangers. By the way, LLMs come with extreme hidden dangers, and most people can only grasp a tiny number of them.
3. Yes, some people do not understand technology and they simply react to mistaken beliefs. Are they true "techo-negative" or just misinformed?
And so on.
So, I doubt this is so easy to put in a box and label it.
We must use more precision in RCA-ing this fenomenon.
I believe that no technology is inevitable but also we must strive to correctly understand all its facts, positive or negative.
A knive can be both a tool or a weapon depending who's handling it.
🥂🖖🇨🇦
This “backlash has become violent” framing buys into the “polarisation” narrative that the AI vendor PR wonks have been peddling for the past year. Love what you do Brian but this headline is wrong.
Those responsible are members of an extreme fringe whose ideas about dangerous super-intelligence are just as crazily overblown as the hot air from AI vendors. After too much ayahuasca at burning man they create an AI doomsday cult that serves Silicon Valley as well as any campaign the Astro-turfing PR consultants could come up with.
Media has an obsession with balance, and it’s too much work to thread the needle as it is, so reportage becomes “both sides-ism”.
The reality is that there’s a vast spread of rational criticism, organised protest and civil action among 99% of the population. These are regular folks who are not
With the “backlash turns violent” AI tech bro types and their AI brainwashed supporters: that tiny sliver who are the “AI author” brigade talking up legitimacy for their publications (Mikkelson twins types), the AI boosters and the vendors themselves are portrayed as being equal in weight to the vast bulk of regular folks who don’t want the evils of AI spreading in society.
The concerns I’ve had as an engineer with a startup background are placed on a continuum with crackpots in SF cults who are “known to police”. This is such an effective story to help the AI vendors I can’t help but wonder if the PR guys engineered it.
"It is arguable whether the human race have been gainers by the march of science beyond the steam engine. Electricity opens a field of infinite conveniences to ever greater numbers, but they may well have to pay dearly for them. But anyhow in my thought I stop short of the internal combustion engine which has made the world so much smaller. Still more must we fear the consequences of entrusting to a human race so little different from their predecessors of the so-called barbarous ages such awful agencies as the atomic bomb. Give me the horse."
Winston Churchill, 10 July 1951, Royal College of Physicians, London
https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/scientific-progress/
And yet, those who profit from socially destructive new technologies tend to win eventually. In this regard, I don't think history is particularly encouraging.
Moreover, one shouldn't lose sight of the fact that what's wrong isn't techniques per se but some of the people pushing them. LLMs may well have humane uses,* but people like Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, and the mob of executive types eager to dispose of humans in favor of LLMs are monstrous. Few techniques are devoid of potential benefits to humanity, and few techniques are devoid of potential abuses in the hands of vicious people. Smashing the machines may help in the short term, but always, the fundamental, long-term problem is the people. The economic and political arrangements currently dominant in most of the world typically promote the most near-sightedly selfish and least scrupulous and compassionate people in the world. Changing those arrangements could, among other benefits, reorient technological development toward serving rather than immiserating most of humanity.**
*For example, last week, colleagues and I read and discussed an article about making and applying an LLM to DNA sequences, with a view toward identifying mutations that cause diseases:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-024-02511-w
I'm not convinced LLMs are great for this purpose, but trying them is reasonable.
**I don't expect this to happen. I merely note its possibility, as a matter of principle.
Apropos, Dave Karpf remarks today:
"This is all a downstream consequence of giving some of the worst people in the world access to practically unlimited capital."
(https://davekarpf.beehiiv.com/p/palantir-s-ceo-is-like-a-james-bond-villain-except-bond-villains-are-better-dressed)
Obviously being terroristic against technology is futile. It’s a primate rage response to the feelings tech offer us.
Solving information technology involves investigating the whole enchilada, the idea we explain in symbols. Do math in symbols.
Think big, terrorism is puny and dismissable.