2min chapter

FYI - For Your Innovation cover image

How Proximity Will Transform Industries with Rob Wolcott

FYI - For Your Innovation

CHAPTER

Navigating Individualism in a Technologically Driven World

This chapter examines the impact of technology on societal individualism, presenting scenarios in which people rely on self-sufficiency over traditional institutions. It also contrasts extreme self-reliance with a collective identity, prompting discussions on the societal structures we aspire to in an evolving technological landscape.

00:00
Speaker 1
You know, a reason why we
Speaker 2
can go to more approximate solutions, but also potentially like a driver of it is, I feel like there's societally a direction towards people becoming increasingly atomized and atomic individuals, essentially. Like I'm going to go live on a homestead where I have solar panels that are providing my power with battery backup. So I don't have to rely upon kind of the, you know, utility and it's going to charge up my Cybertruck. And by the way, I have Bitcoin mining in the back that's generating me money that I can then peer-to transfer against people. And I've just learned I don't even need to go to the pharmacy for my drugs. I can have a little refrigerator unit where I print out my Cipro in case of a bacterial infection. One, do you think that's net good for the world or you think we're all going to end up in little bunkers, not even working within firms with each other, but all looking out for our own because of the way that technology is developing?
Speaker 1
Yeah, well, technology enables us to do any of the above. It's simply a set of tools, but having things at hand allow in frames, and this is Martin Heidegger, in frames how we vision the world. Now, there are things going on that might cause you pause, climate issues, geopolitical challenges. So the threats you face will also affect the decisions you make and how happy you are with some of these things. But I like to think in terms of dimensions, all the way from the one you articulated, Brett, which is we're each atomized into our own little cocoon. All the capabilities distributed out around us to enable us to live by ourselves and screw everybody else and forget about everybody else. On the other end of the spectrum is the Borg. From Star Trek, resistance is futile. You will be assimilated. All of experience will exist somewhere in this continuum between atomized and the Borg. A question for each of us individually and also as societies, is what kind of lives do we desire to live? Because all of those eventualities will be possible. The question is what will we want to manifest and how will that happen?

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