James Governor's Monkchips

In Tech We Trust: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Share via Twitter Share via Facebook Share via Linkedin Share via Reddit

The “rational optimists” say we’re moving in the right direction, and how can you argue against Hans Rosling’s bubble charts or Bill Gates’ multibillion dollar positivism/activism?

This morning the optimism was in high gear. Within about 10 minutes on Twitter we had

The BBC announced the Micro Bit, a potentially worthy successor to the BBC Micro, in getting kids to code. One of the lovely organisations behind it is called Technology Will Save Us.

And even better

Well thats good news. But there is more.

Or how about reforestation?

Or perhaps we don’t need tech per se, just the power of our imaginations

An argument based on empathy doesn’t seem so dumb when we have stuff like this

But then we live in a society that reveres banks over countries and communities. Optimism or not we’re clearly facing real and substantive challenges and dangers – mass extinction is pretty compelling evidence. Science is not a Cargo Cult, whatever the deniers might claim, though it increasingly looks like a religion in terms of the the faith we put in it. I am in the lucky position of being half-American so I am naturally pretty optimistic, but I am also a European so I believe in resource constraints. We all have a lot of work to do.  Technology can’t save us. Only we can do that, by choosing how to use it.

 

 

 

 

No Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *