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[deleted] wrote (edited )

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ziq wrote (edited )

What about the inherent alienation that technology produces, the isolation from each other and our environment it allows? Is an alienated, isolated, emotionally closed-off populace even capable of practicing anarchy?

How do you stop "anarchist technology" from growing and creating more technology that becomes increasingly destructive and authority-forming? How do you stop technology from creating hierarchies between those that have it and those that lack it? How do you get a detached, apathetic populace that are conditioned to receiving the instant dopamine release technology produces to give a shit about anything that doesn't give them an immediate reward? How can they care about what's happening in the world outside their sterile little bubbles when they're plugged into their digital ecosystems that allow them to ignore everything outside of them until it's too late?

What does "decentralize" even mean in the context of industry? Do you mean "cottage industry" - families producing a simple local product for the local market? Can that even really be called industry? Or do you mean actual mass-industry where electronics are created from materials acquired from diverse ecosystems as I assumed? Can the tech-industry exist without mass production since technologies are made up of so many disparate components? CNC machines look like they require globalized mass industry to be manufactured. It's hard to imagine a cottage industry family workshop creating them using locally sourced materials and without exploiting others.

no one's going to bulldoze their forest to send the resources overseas

That's my point though. Tech is habit-forming. Once a population decides they "need" it, they'll oppress whoever gets in their way to acquire it. If they have to bulldoze an entire country and enslave the inhabitants to mine the minerals to make their cellphones or VR goggles, and their culture revolves around that technology, they'll do it. They won't care if they or their victims have declared themselves anarchists. Anarchism doesn't mean anything, like any word, it can be misappropriated to justify any horrible thing if framed as being for the "greater good".

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