Trade-Offs
26th January 2021
ZMan continues to deal in inconvenient truths.
The technological revolution was expected to solve lots of problems that plagued the industrial age. Society was supposed to become more democratic, for example, as improvements in communication made it easier for people to express their preferences in the public square. The distribution of goods would become more equitable, as innovation would smash the old bottlenecks. The technological revolution would make the world flatter, more egalitarian and more peaceful.
Some of the promised benefits have happened, but the trade-offs have been enormous and could very well be the end of us. For example, the cost of being able to call anyone anywhere from a device that fits in your pocket is having millions of people experiencing the lives through their phone. All the benefits of the mobile phone were realized with the first car phone. Everything that has came after that point has been the trade-off that no one could imagine. Most of them negative.