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by julbaxter 1824 days ago
"Technology has become the idol of our society, but technological progress is—more often than not—aimed at solving problems caused by earlier technical inventions."

"Interesting possibilities arise when you combine old technology with new knowledge and new materials, or when you apply old concepts and traditional knowledge to modern technology."

Quotes from https://www.lowtechmagazine.com

3 comments

I opt for technology rather than leading a nasty, brutish and short life.
This presupposes two questionable assumptions: that you have any choice in the matter, and that technology itself isn't the thing that is making your life nasty, brutish, and short.
Before the industrial revolution 25% of deaths were homicide.
I do not read something like that out of that quote.

Vaccines, emergency medicine, construction or farming equipment, all these things that make life easier, healthier and longer are not what GPs comment was about.

It talked about technology that was needed to fix problems created by earlier technology (think: someone has to write an ad-blocker because someone else optimized distributing advertisements).

Um, these technologies enable a larger human population, which then causes problems. Tractors enable ever larger tracts of the best land to be devoted to farming, to enable a larger population, to need more land to cultivate, etc.
Isn't that the case for anything though? New problems only occur because of a previous change, and change usually only happens due to technology
You could say tech fosters a dependency on itself by people to sustain itself.