[morpheos137]

If you build a weapon it will be used as one by those with the will to do so. Much of technology is a psychological weapon against the human psyche. It pretends to fulfill our wants and needs like a drug but actually it is feeding off our energy and emotions to empower and enrich the few at the expense of the many.

The real threat of technology is not some rogue AI taking over the world but human intelligence and energy being harnessed and shepherded for nefarious ends.

[marcosdumay]

Informatics is an extremely powerful tool that can help with almost any task. It's not a gun.

[carapace]

The first thing the computer did was break the German codes.

The second thing the computer did was model atomic explosions.

Computers are war machines first and foremost.

[marcosdumay]

IBM was selling computers 4 decades before they were used to break the German codes.

[carapace]

What do you mean? IBM didn't sell computers until 1952:

> IBM built the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, an electromechanical computer, during World War II. It offered its first commercial stored-program computer, the vacuum tube based IBM 701, in 1952.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM#History

[marcosdumay]

Oh, I remembered one less decade, it was 5.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabulating_machine

Things didn't use to be name "computer" before Turing, for reasons that are a bit less obvious than they appear to be at first, but the idea is quite old.

[carapace]

edit: Have we had this argument before?

- - - -

> Oh, I remembered one less decade, it was 5.

Not to split hairs but IBM was founded in 1911.

> Things didn't use to be named "computer" before Turing, for reasons that are a bit less obvious than they appear to be at first, but the idea is quite old.

Babbage and Lovelace had the idea a couple of centuries ago, but tabulating machines and the business machines IBM sold aren't quite the same thing as what we think of as a "computer" today. Arguably the thing that most differentiates them- easy of re-programmability -is exactly what makes our modern machinery so untrustworthy.

Leaving aside the argument that accounting and tabulating are themselves tools of "the state" (e.g. the tabulating machine was "designed to assist in summarizing information ... for the 1890 U.S. Census.") can you deny that what might be called "computational supremacy" has been and continues to be a crucial aspect of international relations?

[argvargc]

I kind of agree with some of this - but not the conclusion you seem to have drawn.

The most nefarious weapon invented previously has been around for 75+ years and was developed as far as to reach the capability of completely destroying all human life in a matter of minutes. But... it never has.

And this is despite it being repeatedly under the control of those whom are arguably the worlds greatest and most inhumane psychopaths.

That is, there must be something in human nature, or the nature of life itself, that prevents it from using technology to annihilate itself with it, even when such power is given to those most likely to use it for that.

Not to say there isn't a danger, even a great one. And I could understand being disillusioned by the present state of affairs. But, as with all such dualism, there exists just as strong a pull to catapult the other way.

Just as there were greater, bloodier and more heinous wars prior to the invention of nuclear weapons, it would seem that with such mastery of destruction comes a greater responsibility - that ultimately we rise to embrace.