why technology is bad?
For starters, technology is bad because it turns our brains into tools for production and consumption. That’s bad, no matter what angle you want to look at it from, since it means that we lose the ability to reflect. We forget that the technologies we have allow us to maintain our cultural values, but unfortunately we’re more focused on creating new technological tools to please the consumer.
This affects the next generation, and even those born before or after the last technological revolution, and may also bring about the next one.
But there’s a certain possibility that we have the power to change this, if only to maintain our own cultural values. If we spend our time creating creative works and creating institutions to preserve our cultural values, rather than building new ones and turning the whole society into a laboratory for producing new ideas and products, our minds will retain their creativity. We’ll create ways to spread and preserve our ideas, even if the culture we create is not good for the survival of humanity.
What could this look like? First, we have to adopt a new perspective. Culture is a thing that can spread and be preserved. It’s not an invention that can be replicated and manufactured for consumption and production. This means we have to preserve our cultural ideas and not turn it into another product, but to transfer it into the minds of future generations.
To promote this sort of preservation, we can create institutions that only promote ideas that promote human existence and care for the nature and environment. These could take different forms:
The arts are fundamental and important and should be promoted, since they promote our cultural ideas.
The media are fundamental and important, and we should encourage that they promote people’s lives and the continuation of humanity.
All institutions related to education should be based on these ideas. Not through the formation of new ones and business activities, but through cultural institutions. These institutions should create new educational resources, and this could be made as a part of teaching material. These institutions could be a part of school curriculums.
The media could promote us through programs that can influence people’s minds. If a program creates a public awareness, the people who are attracted to that program will promote it. That program may not create new ideas or products, but it will influence people and create new cultural values. If we give a new and positive culture to younger generations, they will promote it to others. The program may not create new technological ideas, but it will create new cultural values and institutions that can spread through culture.
Many technologies can be bad, but we have the power to decide if they are good or bad. We have the power to spread and preserve culture. We have the power to influence people and help them preserve and spread culture.
