[Beal]

Embracing some technologies - like television and automobiles - has actually made us much easier to control.

I get why television works--it's a good conduit for mind control beams to an unfoiled head--but how do the dark lords control us through our automobiles?

[QatzelOk]

I get why television works--it's a good conduit for mind control beams to an unfoiled head--but how do the dark lords control us through our automobiles?

I'm happy to read that you get that television - a cutting edge technology in the 20th Century - is actually an instrument of emotional control.

The automobile is a device that makes itself a necessity by rezoning our human cities in such a way that the only way to do the number of activities required of a decent life is to drive in your own car alone.

Driving alone in boring unwalkable suburbs has killed our social cohesion, making us much more vulnerable to propaganda and central control.

Also, cars are much easier for authorities to track and follow than shoes or bikes.

[Beal]

I'm happy to read that you get that television - a cutting edge technology in the 20th Century - is actually an instrument of emotional control.

Well yeah, obviously, and it's controlled by the Jews anyway, right?

The automobile is a device that makes itself a necessity by rezoning our human cities in such a way that the only way to do the number of activities required of a decent life is to drive in your own car alone.

So the automobile made itself necessary by making itself necessary. Makes sense when you don't think about it.

Driving alone in boring unwalkable suburbs has killed our social cohesion, making us much more vulnerable to propaganda and central control.

Also, cars are much easier for authorities to track and follow than shoes or bikes.

I think the most important lesson here is that the Nobel committee is sadly lacking in the evil genius prize category. To invent the entire automobile industry with the intent of instituting social control, decades before the plan would bear fruit...absolutely brilliant!

[QatzelOk]

To invent the entire automobile industry with the intent of instituting social control, decades before the plan would bear fruit...absolutely brilliant!

Wherever there's money to be made, a mafia of war profiteers will carpe Diam. In fact, they seized all our days by using advertising and images of happy suburban families. The media of the postwar period was a cross between Potemkin village and Freudian psychoanalysis.

[Harmattan]

I am not a libertarian, I am not opposed to regulation in general, and there are certainly useful laws to be passed to control technological innovations.

BUT I am really tired of how technological innovation is approached by the people and the politicians: Europe became a very old territory that is afraid of its own shadow, afraid of every pollutant, of every chemical product, of absolutely everything. We became a fucking bunch of old cowards who are imagining problems, despise science, have turned the "natural" adjective into a holy cow (while consuming more than ever of course) and hate most industries.

On the other hand there are actual, real, problems like mass surveillance by the state and a systematic and deep profiling of all consumers (something that is very quickly "progressing"), with a destruction of privacy in general. And not only our governments do nothing to prevent this, they are actually the first ones to support and endorse those changes in a way that makes Orwell and conspiracy theorists look like naive idealists.

[Varax]

Embracing some technologies - like television and automobiles - has actually made us much easier to control.

Qatz, I actually share your contempt for suburbia and its corresponding TV and needing to drive everywhere culture. I dare say that's one of the things we can agree on along with how dreadfully boring they are, the lack of social cohesion/atomization of individuals, etc. I find them to be depressing. I view it more from the point of view of the way liberal-capitalist society organizes itself along with the power of the plutocrats rather than the technology itself and I think that suburbs are unsustainable and undesirable long term.

There are a number of interesting alternatives to this pattern of development, such as urbanates which would be communities designed for walk-ability/no real need for cars as well as efficiently using resources. It would also allow for a lot more greenspace and individual urbanates could be linked up using maglevs for instance. It's an example of a technological solution to such problems in terms of urban development and could be readily done if we kick capitalism to the curb. I would be interested to know what you think of it.

[QatzelOk]

There are a number of interesting alternatives to this pattern of development, such as urbanates which would be communities designed for walk-ability/no real need for cars as well as efficiently using resources. It would also allow for a lot more greenspace and individual urbanates could be linked up using maglevs for instance. It's an example of a technological solution to such problems in terms of urban development and could be readily done if we kick capitalism to the curb. I would be interested to know what you think of it.

I don't think we have to invent something "shiny and new" to replace our last "shiny and new" failure.

Really, we could thrive with only the least invasive of the last millennia's technology... and perhaps much less.

The urge to "invent something new" is more about vanity than it is about reason or logic or quality of life. The maglev, for example, would eventually fall into private hands and be used to extort money from the poor - just like our current transportation is used this way. And the new urban form would have problems that we can't foresee right now. Perhaps fatal ones either socially or physically.

But I agree with kicking capitalism to the curb. I just think that the search for shiny new gadgets is one of its features that needs to be eradicated.