Technological defeatism - a belief that, since a given technology is here to stay, there's nothing we can do about it other than get on with it and simply adjust our norms - is a persistent feature of social thought about technology. We'll come to pay for it very dearly.
Interpretation
Technological defeatism suggests that we must accept and adapt to technologies rather than challenge or change them, which can lead to negative consequences.
In this quote, Evgeny Morozov discusses the concept of technological defeatism, highlighting the passive acceptance of technology as an inevitable force in society. He warns that this mindset can result in significant costs to our social norms and structures as we fail to critically engage with the implications of technological advances.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about the social responsibilities of tech companies.
Just as Josef K, the protagonist of Kafka's 'The Trial,' awoke one day to discover that he had become part of some unfathomable legal carnival, we, too are frequently waking to discover that the rules of the digital game have once again profoundly changed.
For many oppositional movements, the Internet, while providing the opportunity to distribute information more quickly and cheaper, may have actually made their struggle more difficult in the long run.
I have no problem with technological solutions to social problems. The key question for me is, 'Who gets to implement them?' and, 'What kinds of politics of reform do technological solutions smuggle through the back door?'
The newspaper offers something very different from Google's aggregators. It offers a value system, an idea of what matters in the world. Newspapers need to start articulating that value.
Social media's greatest assets - anonymity, 'virality,' interconnectedness - are also its main weaknesses.
The decentralized nature of online conversations often makes it easier to manipulate public opinion, both domestically and globally. Regimes that once relied on centralized systems of media control can now deliver ideological messages more subtly, with the help of little-known intermediaries like anonymous commenters on websites.
There are really two things that have to occur in order for a new technology to be affordable to the mass market. One is you need economies of scale. The other is you need to iterate on the design. You need to go through a few versions.
We don't pay a whole lot of attention to the Internet until people have played the game - then we pay a lot of attention to whether people liked it. We read through it and see it, but we don't take it into consideration. ... [The Internet] is not going to dictate the direction of where the game goes.
The tech industry - and, more specifically, Silicon Valley - continues to stumble forward in earnest about how few women are represented in its top ranks of management and on its boards.
The engineering is long gone in most PC companies. In the consumer electronics companies, they don't understand the software parts of it. And so you really can't make the products that you can make at Apple anywhere else right now. Apple's the only company that has everything under one roof.
We need to be vigilant about how we design and train these machine-learning systems, or we will see ingrained forms of bias built into the artificial intelligence of the future.
Government isn't that good at rapid advancement of technology. It tends to be better at funding basic research. To have things take off, you've got to have commercial companies do it.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.