Genesis
Response
Penultimate
Finale
April 26th, 2021
Thinking highly of David Gelernter, I said I’d debate whatever topic he wanted, if he went first to define his position.
Alas his first 142 words didn’t give me much to go on, so I did my best to interpret them and respond. He seemed to be saying that tech can’t be at odds with tradition because tech is a means while tradition gives us ends, and means can’t be at odds with ends. So I gave some examples, near privacy and free speech, where tech changes seem to have changed something closer to our ends.
Gelernter now seems to say that tech is not means, and that both privacy and free speech have no associated values nor traditions, and thus cannot be used as examples re his thesis. Oh and he lists examples of when traditions did not change in the context of changing tech.
The main lesson I learn from this exchange is to avoid participating in debates without clearly expressed theses. Because I still don’t know exactly what Gelernter thinks he is claiming. Yes of course not every tech change results in huge cascading changes to common practices. But our practices do change, and tech changes often seem to plausibly be big causal contributions.
Yes in principle we could hold fast to key values, and then tech would only change how we achieved such values. But that’s not what I see. For example, while we might think that smiling is a choice we make in response to our underlying feelings, pushing people to smile actually seems to make them genuinely happier.
Similarly, we like to tell stories about how our habits serve simple admirable underlying values, when they instead often respond far more to conformity and convenience than we like to admit. As changing tech changes what is convenient, and changes what conformity can pressure, it often gives the lie to our pretty stories.
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