There is a mantra, or maybe a meme, going around that states tech is not your friend. Whoever coined the meme wants you to be wary of the misuse technology is prone to. And it’s hard not to find an uproar online daily as some new warning comes out.
My favorite parable of Tech Run Wild is a scene from the animated feature Fantasia. The sorcerer’s apprentice animates brooms to sweep and wash the sorcerer’s workshop, but they soon are out of control. The apprentice does not have the magic to either control them or stop them. The Disney animators derived the sequence from an 18th-century poem by Johann Wolfgang Goethe. Goethe probably derived his central idea from much older versions of similar stories. Hidden behind Goethe’s artistry is an older tale that we still cannot seem to pay attention to.
AI is probably the most recent apprentice we expect to run wild. Depending on who you listen to, the inventors should either be locked up, thrown in the calaboose, jail, prison, the black hole, or we should appoint them president for life. The old saying neatly sums up the problem that we have a hard time predicting the size of the oak from the acorn we plant.
The problem isn’t technology – it has been us over the ages. We don’t have sane institutionalized discourses about the effect of new and old technology; we proclaim new eras of plenty or generations of biblical famine. Perhaps we need a collegium in the ancient Roman sense – a group of concerned and interested individuals who consider, debate, and work on practical solutions to developing issues.
Modern governments have institutions dedicated to agriculture, defense, health, and other critical affairs. Why not technology?
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This is a great take. There’s very little discussion about how these technologies interact with our lives, and where they eventually become harmful and out of our control. The damaging effects of technology on our lives are being ignored for a focus of convenience, entertainment, and straight up distraction. It’s something worth having a deeper conversation about.
I don’t really expect much action from the government. I do foresee non-governmental organizations picking up the cause and making it hot for corporations and the governments to stand by with the same platitude used by the gun lobby about people killing people, not guns.
That’s what I think, too. Just because we can do something doesn’t mean we SHOULD do it. I love Goethe.
I had limited exposure to Goethe, mostly the Sorrows of Young Werther as part of a survey course. I took as many courses in the English department as I could, but then I declared my major, and It was anthropology all the way. For the sake of a well rounded education I was fortunate to have taken all that I did.
I was an anthropology major for one semester, then my prof hit on me. An anthropological phenomenon in its own right… I didn’t “meet” Goethe until I was 47 and it was a very important moment in my life. I didn’t know until today, though, that he wrote The Socerer’s Apprentice. Sorrows is pretty lame by today’s standards, but it redeemed 9/11/2001 for me. I was in the writing center at the school where I taught. One of my students came in and had Sorrows in his hands. “Hey Martha, I just got this at the library. It is worth reading?” Oh god, my heart just opened. Schorsch had just reminded me what really mattered. He is now a professor of German at San Diego State. ❤️
One semester? Martha, that’s a shame. You would have been a great anthropologist. Instead you turned out to be great in other areas. Still, all in all, great is great.
Shucks. 🙂 I liked anthropology a LOT and I figured that like with a lot of things just because I wasn’t majoring in it didn’t mean I couldn’t learn stuff.
True. that’s why all the interesting people have broad interests, and note one-note specialists.
Curiosity is, I think, the key. 😀
as with a lot of things. My brain is ahead and/or behind my fingers…
Good one, Lou!
For me, running wild and out of control is social media. I was an early adopter jumping on the social band wagon when Facebook was first launched, but a few years ago I became disappointed at the way the different platforms were being used.
Needless to say I dropped out of the social rat pack, I don’t need it.
Thank you for sharing your interesting post with our challenge 🙂
Thanks SueW it was an interesting prompt.