‮🅮Dec 16, 2024

So many leftists react like this to any new technology and it's honestly dangerous. I've heard so many people say things like "it's a bubble, it'll burst soon" or "people will reject it in a grand Butlerian Jihad" with regards to AI. What if that doesn't happen? Because these people essentially don't take it seriously and think it'll just go away, they don't make plans on how to deal with it and just cede these technologies entirely to the right. And they have plans on how to use these technologies, certainly not for the average person's benefit.

https://strangematters.coop/political-economy-of-near-future-space-industries/

This article by @beka_valentine talks about this tendency with regards to space exploration, which many decry as "techbro fantasies." People who do this are not prepared to deal with uprisings on asteroid mining colonies and give them support!

Capitalism Storms the Heavens - Strange Matters

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Show threadJMC 🌹🏴Mar 26

@TheTedJamesExperiment @beka_valentine

You're so right about this. (Editor at the magazine that published this speaking!) We've struggled hard against this tendency in ourselves and actually wrote a whole tech editorial talking about the nuances and complexities of technological issues, a few print issues ago. I think you will enjoy it.

https://strangematters.coop/technology-and-the-left-socialist-futurism/

Can Technology Save Us? - Strange Matters

Strange Matters Magazine

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Show threadJMC 🌹🏴

@TheTedJamesExperiment @beka_valentine

I think that our inability on the Left to have serious conversations about industrial and technological questions is a major liability to the movement, and is likely to result in us getting swept away by changes we did nothing to integrate and adapt to.

It's also contrary to the spirit of the historical workers' movement, even as recently as the New Left, which was often excited by new technologies and their possibilities for emancipation.

Mar 26 at 4:57amWeb
Show threadJMC 🌹🏴Mar 26

@TheTedJamesExperiment @beka_valentine

(Though that said some of the rot began in the New Left, with doctrinally rigid anti-tech types emerging from dogmatic readings of genuine critics of technology like Illich, Ellul, the ecologists, etc.

And conversely, not all of it is rot -- some of those critiques are important! Degrowth etc should be part of the picture. But as an absolute principle, they can be taken too far, and become obstacles to our getting free.)