The terrosist attacks are caused by political, cultural and economic factors, I don't think technology has an important role to play in an eventual solution...
In the grand scheme of things this is possibly the correct answer. However, what technology can do is bring some meaning to more peoples life. One reason people do things like those which happened in Paris is due to the fact that these people are not integrated into a friendly, peaceful society. Thus they feel a void and need to fill it with something that gives them a sense of power and belonging. Technology can be used to enable people to create meaning for themselves. For Instance, the advent of digital music production enabled people who couldn't play a "real" instruments in the olden days to express themselves musically now. I know a guy who used to get into fights at night clubs until the day I introduced Cubase to him!
And even if these individuals are not strong enough to do something productive technology could at least give them a glimpse of power and belonging in online communities. For example, a person who is busy playing WoW all day won't get to shooting someone in the streets.
What I wrote above is, unfortunately, hugely idealistic. More realistically I see two options for this problem:
1. don't just bomb targets but level the ground.
This is of course not something we actually want to do because it would kill many innocent people. Still from an unempathetic point of view: Is killing millions of people now worse than eventually allowing <made up stat>twice as many people to be killed over the comming decades</made up stat>? instead:
2. We have to fucking evolve and acknowledge that they found a bug in our system and "we are the best, democracy rules, those guys are in the wrong - why are they so mean?" as well as a couple of bombs simply don't cut it anymore. Instead, we should come off our high horses and work our ass off to address the (political, cultural, economical) domains OP mentions so that we can leave our current conception of the world behind us and progress to something that serves us better in the coming years. However, this is radical and it is hard to make a society move into this direction as all of us would have to question everything we do.
Maybe finding time for teaching refugees your language for free is more important than working longer hours so that you contribute to pushing the GDP. Maybe moderate Muslims should do more to prevent those attacks even though it is neither their fault not their responsibility to do anything about it. Maybe the "average customer" should be more mindful when s/he goes shopping by making sure that s/he doesn't support supply chains which somehow benefit terror supporters. In short, every member of society has to work their ass of to bring some positive change about.
I'm not sure if WoW and similar games fulfill the deep needs of connection and belonging people have (for example, Breivik was pretty much playing WoW 24/7 for a couple years before he moved on to his radicalism and, eventually, mass murder). Given by the amount of negative emotions I've seen in online games, my guess is that's more of a paliative, similar to alcohol or drugs.
As for the Fight Club -> music production story, that's great and gives some hope. However, most people are not cut for and/or interested in solitary activities like this.
I don't see first option as a viable one, simply because there's currently 1.7 billion Muslims in the world (most of them doesn't support the radicals, but I'm guessing that could change very quickly if their innocent family members get killed during the "levelling of the ground"). It would lead to WWIII.
I think the positive route, along with some smart interventions (i.e. not having borders open to any and all refugees which want to enter Europe, but rather absorbing them at a manageable rate), is the way to go.
I agree "option" wasn't a good way to put it. As to Breivik, I didn't know that he played WoW. You are probably right that games don't offer enough substance/not a positive atmosphere.
And even if these individuals are not strong enough to do something productive technology could at least give them a glimpse of power and belonging in online communities. For example, a person who is busy playing WoW all day won't get to shooting someone in the streets.
What I wrote above is, unfortunately, hugely idealistic. More realistically I see two options for this problem:
1. don't just bomb targets but level the ground. This is of course not something we actually want to do because it would kill many innocent people. Still from an unempathetic point of view: Is killing millions of people now worse than eventually allowing <made up stat>twice as many people to be killed over the comming decades</made up stat>? instead:
2. We have to fucking evolve and acknowledge that they found a bug in our system and "we are the best, democracy rules, those guys are in the wrong - why are they so mean?" as well as a couple of bombs simply don't cut it anymore. Instead, we should come off our high horses and work our ass off to address the (political, cultural, economical) domains OP mentions so that we can leave our current conception of the world behind us and progress to something that serves us better in the coming years. However, this is radical and it is hard to make a society move into this direction as all of us would have to question everything we do. Maybe finding time for teaching refugees your language for free is more important than working longer hours so that you contribute to pushing the GDP. Maybe moderate Muslims should do more to prevent those attacks even though it is neither their fault not their responsibility to do anything about it. Maybe the "average customer" should be more mindful when s/he goes shopping by making sure that s/he doesn't support supply chains which somehow benefit terror supporters. In short, every member of society has to work their ass of to bring some positive change about.