In the 2000s decade, my main thought was that if we looked at science & technology, our future was insanely bright, and if we looked at governance & politics, we're badly forked.
Now, while the politics has become insanely worse, and tech has continued, those are trends may be reversing.
In politics, the good thing I see is that the onrush of autocrats, asshats & abusers is becoming blatantly obvious. Ordinarily smug people are starting to realize that democracy must be continuously maintained, at every level. If you want to determine your life, your work, and your city/state/country, you must get involved. If not, some abuser, asshat, or autocrat will take over. Naive pacifism is (may be) being replaced by the realization that those who want to determine their own course must always be better armed & prepared than those Abusers. Asshats. or Aautocrats, who would take control of their lives, work or governments. People are finding again the course of shunning people, work, & govts that want to abuse them. The US and EU are finally realizing that outsourcing their entire manufacturing & tech sector to autocrats in China just might have been a stupid idea; not sure they realize quite what a historical-scale blunder it was, but it's still progress.
Now, can they win, in time?
Technology is also advancing. In some ways it continues to be fantastic. The first small nuclear plant has been approved in the US. Sustainable energies are seeing the results of massive investment.
Yet other parts of the tech world are devolving rapidly. Just looking for a home device that doesn't require cloud data extraction, whether it is a doorbell, thermostat, vacuum cleaner, whatever - is almost impossible to find. It seems like no investor will fund anything if it can't extract data from it's victims, err, users. Every bit of tech is trying to turn into a subscription, or companies like FB and Google are ramping up their surveillance capitalism.
This is actually the previous phenomenon, where abusers & asshats are co-opting the flow of funds in the tech sector to pervert it to a dystopia where they rent everything useful to the plebes.
So, don't help them do that.
Ask if anyone is building something new and of value that people can willfully choose or not, or if it is creating a dependency or forced, extractive, or exploitative relationship with the product/service. IF it is helping people avoid or fight abusers, asshats, or autocrats, do it. If not, choose something else.
In the 2000s decade, my main thought was that if we looked at science & technology, our future was insanely bright, and if we looked at governance & politics, we're badly forked.
Now, while the politics has become insanely worse, and tech has continued, those are trends may be reversing.
In politics, the good thing I see is that the onrush of autocrats, asshats & abusers is becoming blatantly obvious. Ordinarily smug people are starting to realize that democracy must be continuously maintained, at every level. If you want to determine your life, your work, and your city/state/country, you must get involved. If not, some abuser, asshat, or autocrat will take over. Naive pacifism is (may be) being replaced by the realization that those who want to determine their own course must always be better armed & prepared than those Abusers. Asshats. or Aautocrats, who would take control of their lives, work or governments. People are finding again the course of shunning people, work, & govts that want to abuse them. The US and EU are finally realizing that outsourcing their entire manufacturing & tech sector to autocrats in China just might have been a stupid idea; not sure they realize quite what a historical-scale blunder it was, but it's still progress.
Now, can they win, in time?
Technology is also advancing. In some ways it continues to be fantastic. The first small nuclear plant has been approved in the US. Sustainable energies are seeing the results of massive investment.
Yet other parts of the tech world are devolving rapidly. Just looking for a home device that doesn't require cloud data extraction, whether it is a doorbell, thermostat, vacuum cleaner, whatever - is almost impossible to find. It seems like no investor will fund anything if it can't extract data from it's victims, err, users. Every bit of tech is trying to turn into a subscription, or companies like FB and Google are ramping up their surveillance capitalism.
This is actually the previous phenomenon, where abusers & asshats are co-opting the flow of funds in the tech sector to pervert it to a dystopia where they rent everything useful to the plebes.
So, don't help them do that.
Ask if anyone is building something new and of value that people can willfully choose or not, or if it is creating a dependency or forced, extractive, or exploitative relationship with the product/service. IF it is helping people avoid or fight abusers, asshats, or autocrats, do it. If not, choose something else.