The Impact of Technological Innovations

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This chapter explores the idea that technological innovations create their own problems and discusses the history of technology and its impact on society. It examines the balance between the benefits and drawbacks of technology, debates the net gains of technological advancements, and questions how different groups and societies are affected by technology.

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What are the limits of tech solutionism? Do technological innovations create as many problems as they solve? Or, in other words, do technological innovations improve the world on average over time? Are humans living in the 21st century actually worse off than those that lived in the 11th century? What's the difference between "art" and "content"? If image-generating AIs just produce images that are stylistic averages across all of their training data, then is it even theoretically possible for such models to create art that's edgy, avant-garde, or off the beaten path? Is cinema dead? Is literature dead? Are the humanities dying, especially in the US? And might that be a significant contributing factor to the withering of democracy in the US?

Justin Smith-Ruiu, formerly known as Justin E.H. Smith, is a writer based in Paris. He writes speculative fiction, documentary metafiction, criticism, literary non-fiction, and poetry, and also translates poetry. In 2019-2020, he was the John and Constance Birkelund Fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers of the New York Public Library. He is also a professor of philosophy in the department of history and philosophy of science at the Université Paris Cité. Learn more about him and read his writings at www.the-hinternet.com

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