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  "canonicalUrl": "https://www.jacky.wtf//essays/2024/more-critical-tech",
  "path": "/essays/2024/more-critical-tech",
  "publishedAt": "2024-09-03T23:45:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:e2ctbutx6kya6si4if5ngjmm/site.standard.publication/3mniussyp2d2g",
  "tags": "essay",
  "textContent": "I'm _sure_ someone out there, either in the past (near or far) or in the present, has written about\nthe need for critique of establishments that you work and live within. My personal turn came\nfrom working at the pink mustache company. I was _convinced_ that by working at that place, I'd get\ncloser to working on things that'd help expand transit for everyone. As someone who can't drive\nwithout supervision (for now), this was something I would have loved to see. That and getting $100\nin credits _every month_ was great. The RSU-backed Nesquik smoothie was being chugged. It didn't help\nthat I also have a deep interest in computing from a small age — something that's changed so many\nparts of my personal and public life.\n\nThis brings me to the point of _critique_. It's not hard to veer hard into being a \"loud\" megaphone\nthat echoes what another outlet is saying; to turn into a grandstanding demagogue of sorts. However,\nthese folks are easy to clock with the understanding that commerical social media is driven by algorithmic\namplification and traffic capital. This is more of an issue if you're not someone who gets a\nlot of their information from the Web (although broadcast television _isn't_ any better — it's\nmostly white labeled contracted studios that aren't accountable to the populous that they broadcast\nto). That doesn't dismiss the need for us to begin the work of holding the institutions and\norganizations we exist under (mostly by force).\n\nSomething Paris Marx [wrote in his self-critique][1] includes a book I have yet to read:\n\n> For a while I felt a tension between my enthusiasm for technology and my opposition to capitalism\n> — how could I be fascinated by products and keynote presentations from a massive company that\n> charged premium prices on products made by poorly paid workers in Chinese factories, yet also\n> believe in the overthrow of the system that created those conditions? I found my answer in\n> fully automated luxury communism (FALC).\n\nIronically, [the idea of FALC][falc] is something that was predicted by J. M. Keynes [to have happened in the 1930s][2]:\nthat the advent and acceleration of technology and its outputs would reduce the amount of time\nwe'd need to work. Instead, the _consumption_ economy (driven by business — not consumers,\nmind you) took this and pushed it such that _more_ needs to be produced _solely_ because we can.\nAnd now we have the iPhone 16 and Samsung A30. Tech journalism became no different from what\nthe circulars you get in your mailbox every Sunday — a bunch of ads and prophecies\nof the \"hottest\", \"newest\" and \"greatest\". It's nigh impossible to find this perspective from\nplaces like The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Verge, TechCrunch, ArsTechnica, CNET, Wired\nor any of the tech or tech-adjacent outlets that exist. To tell a _massive_ company that they need\nto stop making shit is tantamount to getting sued with libel (it seems).\n\nSo, the task's left up to us. \"Us\" is meant to be the \"consumers\", the people who end up buying this\nstuff. Sometimes we have no choice due to [the production of things to die][3] — and at times,\nwe fall for marketing that tells us that if we spend more, we're investing in longer lifespans of\nour devices. This and so many other things — like generative AI being the next frontier of\nart, virtual reality being a great replacement for _actual_ reality and the notion that Facebook can\nlaunder its reputation to be an ethical social networking company aren't only not true —\nthey're _marketing_ lines. We, as people who either use tech a lot, work in tech or help develop it,\nneed to be the pushback that this industry is unwilling to provide for itself.\n\nThis began for me as an response to organizing and being more involved with people in organizing.\nHowever, I don't believe it to be a requirement. Paris Marx has [a page on Bookshop of books][4] they've\ncollected on such a topic. There's plenty of documentaries that you can watch on the topic like\nthis one (ironically) [in partnership with Microsoft][5] about racial bias and its ties to Jim Crow,\nor [Coded Bias on PBS][6] and [Aaron Swartz's life][7] to start. Reading and watching helps to\nreorient our perspectives that are saturated by media's obsession with propping up tech. But it also\ncomes to adopting different approaches to computing that can help bring about a cultural revolution\nthat makes the critique no longer necessary.\n\n[1]: https://disconnect.blog/how-i-became-a-tech-critic/\n[2]: https://www.npr.org/2015/08/13/432122637/keynes-predicted-we-would-be-working-15-hour-weeks-why-was-he-so-wrong\n[3]: https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/planned-obsolescence-1.5847168\n[4]: https://bookshop.org/shop/parismarx\n[5]: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/video/the-new-jim-code-reimagining-the-default-settings-of-technology-society/\n[6]: https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/documentaries/coded-bias/\n[7]: https://archive.org/details/TheInternetsOwnBoyTheStoryofAaronSwartzHD\n[book:1]: https://openlibrary.org/books/OL27337177M/Private_Government\n[phone:1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iphone#Models\n[phone:2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_Z_series#Phones\n[phone:3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_S_series\n[phone:4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_A_series\n[falc]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fully_Automated_Luxury_Communism",
  "title": "People Need to be More Critical of their Tech Environment"
}