Show Notes

We pause from issue-focused episodes and try to pull together the threads of the season so far to take a step toward our ethic of technology.

Links

• Donald Trump cannot block critical Twitter users, court rules

• The Lindy effect – John D. Cook on the expected lifetimes of technology:

  …if all you know is that a technology has survived a certain amount of time, you can estimate that it will survive about that much longer.

• President Bush’s “can’t get fooled again” gaffe

• “Keep your eyes peeled”

• A Framework for Moderation – Ben Thompson, published two days after we recorded

• After Technopoloy, Alan Jacobs. Stephen to this referred to as “Against Solutionism”—accidentally conflating Jacobs’ piece with a thesis Chris has been mulling on/slowly building an essay around this year. Chris is, uhh, flattered to be confused with Jacobs.

  • Jacobs’ other blog posts on solutionism

Things Chris has written related to this episode:

• Friction is the Friend of Serendipity

• “Zuckerberg’s Blindness and Ours” (L. M. Sacasas)—Solutionism is a nasty besetting culture-level sin we barely recognize as such. (riffing on a post by L. M. Sacasas)

• “Free Speech”

  …the whole reason we have these arguments — and the reason people tend to think as they do about the “free speech” question in these situations, legally nonsensical or not — is that we have outsourced the vast majority of our public discourse to these private platforms.

• “The Slow Web” and the limits of “solutions” (from the email archive, discussed in more depth in 7.04)

Previous episode:

• 2.03: Impervious Scale—The Roman Empire and Friendster Have Things to Say to You
• 6.08: People Do Reject Technologies, Part 2—Nuclear weapons, nuclear waste, and how to argue well with intractable disagreements.
• 7.01: Do We Really Need to Keep the Internet Around?—Season 7’s charter—by way of a rollicking argument about Alan Jacobs’ The Year of Our Lord 1943 and Tolkien’s idea of eucatastrophe.

Music

• “The Commuter” by Mister Lies
• “Winning Slowly Theme” by Chris Krycho.

Sponsors

Many thanks to the people who help us make this show possible by their financial support! This month’s sponsors:

• Daniel Ellcey
• Jake Grant
• Jeremy W. Sherman
• Marnix Klooster
• Nathaniel Blaney
• Spencer Smith

If you’d like to support the show, you can make a pledge at Patreon or give directly via Square Cash.

Respond

We love to hear your thoughts. Hit us up via Twitter, Facebook, or email!