| Uh, this read is completely insane. A fantastical look into the mind of someone who thinks about many disparate things and is looking for ways to connect them. This is post hoc rationalization at its finest. I had a much longer post here initially. Deleted it because I got tired of mental gymnastics required to follow the author's thought process. Instead, here are the salient parts of my response: ---- The only way I can read the section on the mechanical tomato harvester is that they would rather have 32,000 people picking tomatoes than doing literally anything else. There are very good reasons that phone companies haven't employed people as switchboard operators for a nearly century. It isn't a valuable or useful way to spend a person's time. As a young adult, I worked in a distribution center filling orders by picking products from a shelf and placing them in bins. It was incredibly boring but also physically demanding. Pick the correct number of items ordered, push the button. Pick the next number of items ordered for the next product, push the button. When the order is complete, start on the next bin. Repeat as fast as possible without making any mistakes. It was SO draining to meet quota. After a few weeks, I didn't have to put any conscious effort in. Like driving a car, the process became automatic. I could think about other things while counting and pushing buttons. Thinking about things like how trivial this job would be to automate, so I didn't have to do this wasteful energy expenditure. I quit that job after about 6 months, beginning my career in IT. But I gained a passionate hate for menial labor that can be automated with some upfront investment. I wouldn't want to pick tomatoes, either. The tomato harvesting machine is a miracle. If this is the basis of calling technology inherently political, and using "inherently political" to cast a negative light on technology, then I have to call it out as hopelessly dystopian to not want "political technology". Namely fewer automated machines and more people doing menial labor. |