Navigating Our Brave New World
Are you a tech optimist or pessimist? Do you think our advancing technology—in areas such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, robotics, and space technology—will make our world better or worse? And do you think the new technologies of the last two centuries have more helped or harmed the advancement of mankind?
I’ve found that the more traditional a Catholic is, the more likely he is to answer those questions pessimistically. He’s more inclined to be skeptical of the claims coming from tech optimists that we can make a better world through man-made technology. We see this skepticism particularly in the “back to the land” movement that has grown popular among a certain segment of Catholics in recent years.
I spent the first fifteen years of my career as a software developer, and my start coincided with the internet revolution of the 1990s. So I’ve heard many promises of a tech utopia, and how new technologies will “change the world” (an apparently mandatory phrase in every tech CEO’s company pitch). There’s no question that technology has changed the world, particularly in the last three decades—but has that change been for the better?
Recently Vice President J.D. Vance addressed some of those issues in an insightful speech given to a summit of technology leaders. Vance tackles one of the biggest concerns of advancing technology: how it impacts the workforce.
Since the days of the Luddite movement of the early 19th century, people have worried that new technology will replace their jobs. For 200 years it has been mostly blue-collar workers, whose jobs demand physical labor and thus are most easily replaced by technology, who have been at the forefront of the anti-technology movement. But since the advent of AI, knowledge workers (like me) have cause for concern. Will Crisis Magazine one day be essentially run by AI? Will AI write and
Article from LewRockwell
LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.
