yuvipandaYou can’t solve social problems with technology but my god can you make them far far far far worse
This is a good response to people simply saying ‘it is a social problem, you can not solve it with technology’. Often the existing technology is what is making some fundamental social problem worse and we can change the technology so it stops doing that.
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Doc Edward Morbius ⭕@yuvipanda I see this as a corollary of the Elizabeth Eisenstein principle[1]: One of the most effective ways to change the behaviour of a system is to change how information flow through it.
How fast/slow, what's promoted/demoted, what's encouraged/discouraged, what's amplified/repressed, what's collected/discarded.
Harshad Sharma@yuvipanda All here *gestures around* for this take :D
Verwechslungsgefährte@yuvipanda Tech like Social Media makes social problems appear first of all.
Shut it down, and mightier will decide upon the relevance of your kind.
Second, a host of a platform of any kind will always be one of the mightier. Hence decentralized Mastodon (tech!), obviously.
Elizafox 
& (winter edition 🎄☃️❄️)@yuvipanda Yes but on the other hand, if someone is hitting me with a hammer, I don't think the hammer is really to blame there.
@yuvipanda Now, if the hammer has a gun attached and it goes off and shoots me in the leg, then yeah, that's horrible user-hostile design (and there is plenty of that in tech).
Tech can't solve all social problems, but it's easy to make the problem a Hell of a lot worse.
Nathanael Nerode@yuvipanda That's a better way to put it. Because technology can create problems, but it can also solve problems.
I immediately thought of how Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood addressed a huge number of social problems related to the status of women in society by developing the *technologies* of artificial birth control, liberating women from constant pregnancy.
Most attempts to "solve social problems with technology" are not nearly as radical or clear-headed as Margaret Sanger's promotion of birth control technology, however.
I can think of a few other examples. "Engineering controls" in public health. Making renewables cheaper than fossil fuels.