@adamgreenfield Anyone who seriously trains for wilderness survival learns that it's the tool user rather than the tool that makes the difference.

@adamgreenfield growing up my father defined life by his job, I decided to do the opposite

I define myself by my family, friends and community

@adamgreenfield

💯

@adamgreenfield I agree with your idea mostly, however I think there might be a version of technological neutrality in your idea. "No tools" and "it's just a tool" are both statements that tools are neutral. Rather, tools bias certain human systems. You can't have a nuclear reactor without a centralized state, resource extraction, higher education. Create nuclear reactors and you can then point to them as the reason why a strong state, mining, universities are needed. It's a feedback loop.

@adamgreenfield reminds me of how some misunderstand James Burke's "Connections" series (linked below). A discovery/invention doesn't CAUSE subsequent discoveries/inventions, it just might ALLOW FOR them.

The same is true with these tools. They may allow us to "progress" in new and interesting ways, but only if we do the actual work.

And the same tools, in the wrong hands, can produce horrors.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XetplHcM7aQ&list=PL5HjoPOFFC56enV6cW1zqRvXyY6pNm8cq

@adamgreenfield I see a lot of people struggling with this, and one of the reasons we're in a bad place as a society is the super rich keep pushing us to skip the part where we ask "we can, but should we" and no technology will ever answer that question

Justice requires learning, unlearning, reworking etc. and a tool may aid that, but it is not the starting point, and in many cases — esp. when we hide the decisions — the tech worsens it

@adamgreenfield Thank you for starting this thread. Most interesting and enjoyable. At almost 82 I've been lucky to have been privy to a lot of system changes, tool changes, and social changes. Degrees in psychology, linguistics, psycholinguistics, years of teaching in environmental and population psychology and then specialising in databases, IT training companies, and consulting.

From working on the early #ARPAnet to today's internet. From discussing "AI" (early machine learning) with one of the original researchers at Stanford in 1964 to working with Microsoft on Natural Language Query processing in SQL Server to watching the absurd claims of #TheGreatAI_Grift.
It's been a wild ride as well as frustrating - The Limits to Growth #ClubOfRome #MIT was written by classmates trying to raise the alarm about the nature of dynamic systems, particularly as they interact at environmental, social, physical, and economic levels. Their early work has been expanded many times but especially in Australia by CSIRO.
The (system) tools and computing informed much about the probable dynamics of global systems and yet many lessons have not been learned. The current #AI_Hype is an extraordinary lesson in a bizarre approach to tools.

One of the best works on tools was written by Prof Bill Merrill.
Well worth a read.

When originally written as his PhD the manuscript was stolen twice - powers in the US didn't like what he was saying. #DangerousIdeas

https://www.amazon.com.au/Wisdom-Tools-Bill-Merrill/dp/0977334813 [Not promoting Amazon]

Otherwise this there are PDF of it.

Just as the unintended consequences of the internet are ever more apparent there are many early warning signs already around the #AI_Con and the tools being bandied about.

All tool makers should print out your comment Adam and make it a morning ritual to reread it.

The World's dynamic systems keep sending us messages and humankind continues to ignore them, to trivialise them, to pretend they aren't system feedback.
#NepalGlacialMelt
#WorstElNinoInLivingMemory
#EuropeanHeatWaves
#NorthAmericanWildFires

The people of the globe need to all stop being distracted by the glitter of the tools and money and focus on actually saving the planet or at least really slowing the downward climate cycle. Heating up the planet with thousands of unnecessary #AI_DataCenters is a particular kind of madness in this epoch. #Nepal is a timely warning to the world.

Another useful perspective is provided by Prof William Rees
https://youtu.be/sZnnvH7FgBw?si=d69JGfttpefj3DCg

How tools are used by humans has always had consequences. Consider them. Consider what goals we really need, not what the short-sighted #GreedyRich tell us.

Thank you again @adamgreenfield 🙏🏽🥂🥂

To real tool wisdom 💖💖

@adamgreenfield Great minds:

https://mastodon.social/@iris_meredith/117178026845359543

via @iris_meredith

@adamgreenfield The continuation of the wealthy, manipulating the masses into subjugated subservience, via extraneous metrics developed to benefit them more, instead of you/us/99%, is the system that needs to be uprooted.

This can be done by pursuing individual proficiency ranges, earlier in developmental stages, not only through making Behavioral Science core education, but applying a more integrated hardware equation in the behavioral range process.

We have the tech to better target character trait data, through professions like #bioinformatics, that can be effectively integrated into educational curriculum. This averts distal abuses, like #TechBros and #FossilFuels #Oligarchy keeping too many from their inherent value ranges, and substantiates a more persistent, malleable, reliable infrastructure in human systems, and therefore better affecting overlapping ecosystems that ultimately cycle/feedback to us.

@adamgreenfield

@adamgreenfield I guess it’s all relative to epochs. It’s hard to argue that tools to make fire or farm the land did not bring ”progress”. Future historians may find that one of the tools we are working on now progressed us to the next era of humanity.

@adamgreenfield this, but also, it's a perfectly good thing to actually care about a tool, feel the sense of joy of working with the right one for the job, or making it better for others

@adamgreenfield the fixes are all at the system level and tools are part of that. There are no single factor fixes.

@gargon

(“I don’t know who needs to hear this,” etc., and at that I strongly suspect the people who most do will struggle to take the thought on board. Selah.)