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from the Do-you-know-where-you-are-going-to? dept.
A technology genius always has two basic options. For example, he can dedicate his work to creating a medical breakthrough that will save thousands of lives—or he can develop an app that will let people amuse themselves. In most cases, the technology genius will be pushed to focus on the product that has the potential to create millions of dollars in profits. Profit is the North Star of conventional economics. Lacking a collective destination, the only highway sign we follow is the North Star of profit. Nobody is putting up any highway signs that will lead the world toward a collectively desired destination.
It raises the question, does the world have a destination? If not, should it?
As I've explained, the UN's sustainable development goals (SDGs) are an attempt to define an immediate destination over a very short period. They represent a good beginning. The SDGs give us a destination over a 15-year stretch— just a moment in time out of the human journey of hundreds or thousands of years. Many people and institutions have made commitments to travel in the direction that the SDGs reveal—but, unfortunately, most for-profit companies are not redirecting themselves in meaningful ways to reach those goals because the market definition of success does not include them.
Toward what SDGs should tech people direct their work?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by anubi on Tuesday October 17 2017, @05:39AM (1 child)
I feel we waste a lot of our most creative people, mostly because they aren't "people people".
We call them things like "introverts", and mentally handicapped "asperger's".
In the natural world, we also have elements that aren't reactive with other elements either.
We call them the "noble" gases and precious metals... like gold and platinum. Quite non-reactive. But useful. And we found uses for them.
However, we have quite a few creative artist types that, well, don't react a lot. So far, we have not seemed to find a use for them.
From what I see, most of our technical and scientific talent simply ages out and ends up in the graveyard, never used. Worms and ants seem to be the main beneficiary of highly trained grey matter.
Our primary need seems to be entertainment, not stuff like advancement of the arts ( I consider science, technology, engineering, and math an art ).
A jobless engineer is a terrible waste.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday October 17 2017, @11:33AM
It's also the cultural status of people like that. With the rise of Google and Amazon and Apple geeks have acquired a little mystique, but in face-to-face interactions they're still terribly mistreated. Their skills are discounted and they're constantly snubbed in myriad ways. Plumbers and sanitation workers are treated better. (In fact, the only place I've heard where it is different is at Google, where the social hierarchy is flipped and geeks rule the roost.)
That's why communities like Soylent are important. They give the misshapen, odd weirdos we are a way to commune with others who are like us in their oddity.
Washington DC delenda est.