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posted by martyb on Tuesday October 17 2017, @02:55AM   Printer-friendly
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?


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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 17 2017, @01:46PM (1 child)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 17 2017, @01:46PM (#583456) Journal

    Now all that's left is to kill all the poor, ban universal basic income, and marginalize Muhammad Yunnus and microcredit.

    One of these is not like the other. Killing all poor, aside from being the vile murder of many billions of people, would eliminate the need to do anything about UBI or microcredit, because you just killed the people who would have used those programs. You don't have to ban or marginalize anything. The first act of democide renders the rest irrelevant.

  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday October 17 2017, @04:50PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday October 17 2017, @04:50PM (#583534) Journal

    Maybe reverse the order of the list.

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