Polymer Witch @polymerwitch@social.polymerwitch.com

My immediate reaction is "no shit", but I know a lot of people are shocked by this. Twitter does similar. This is why I am concerned by places like IGD using Twitter embeds on their site. Just use screenshots and simple links. Stop by inviting the vampires in.

Since a few people seem confused, no this doesn't mean you should be a doomer and YOLO precautions. It also doesn't mean that you should be a doomer and give up on trying for a better world. I'm saying, identify who actually is failing in public health management, and focus anger where it will be effective.

Technology at the end of civilization will look like blinky lights washing away the racism, capitalism, religious bigotry, colonialism, etc. Then it decorates the villages with twinkles of joy.

So, I've started using "Liberation Technology". Technology is abstractions, tools, and such that are imbued with values. We can be deliberate about those values. We can build things that change our conditions for the better.

The mass AI managed surveillance network is a technology. So, is the brick that is hurled at it. The truly interesting philosophy of the technology asks which one of those will oppress and which one will liberate.

Appropriate Technology is going defunct though as a large portion of was written by english philosophers trying to romanticize the poverty in areas like Africa ("look how this African teen built a windmill from a bike tire, radio, and bubble gum. So quaint!"). There's also the issue with how you limit the spread of technology which is never really answered.

White people deciding what blinky lights people should get to reduce climate impact.

Appropriate Technology: A fairly defunct philosophy, but one I find interesting. Two main ideas converged to form it: a critique of industrialization and seeing poverty stricken areas build up local infrastructure through mutual aid. The idea is that technology should be understandable, maintainable, and managed by local communities. A person can build a plow but probably not an auto factory. (cont)

Social ecology: A view of technology that sort of just ... hand waves it away. We will figure it out later I guess by acting as stewards of the eco system. It honestly doesn't say much about technology other than maybe a more municipal approach to industrialization? The philosophy could be helpful in specific situations, but I don't know if I get blinky lights or not.

Primitivism: a complete critique of technology. Entirely non-prefigurative. Sometimes the technology that we use as individuals helps us abstract and act on desires. Our desires will be mediated, yes, but they will also be actionable. Primitivists also too often embrace a dichotomy between nature/the wild and humanity. Human garbage dumps are natural and wild. That says nothing of why they should be abolished.

Problematic dreams with no blinky lights.

Solar punk: an aesthetic. A story of a possible future. It can be very pretty. It can be useful for expanding our desires. In the end though it's just a dream with blinky lights.

Free Source Technology: a political philosophy that posits, again, that as much information should be gathered and made available as possible, and state power should be used to enforce an equality of access. The ability to be empowered however is completely dependent on the ability of individuals to exploit that free data.

Open Source Technology: Free software, but the class strata is reinforced.

Socdem states with blinky lights.

Technological police state: This one doesn't really have a formal name I know of, but it's a new idea that's similar to technocracy, but instead of operators guiding the bias it's the market. If all information can be consumed, then more control can be had. It's anarcho-capitalism with blinky lights.