I'm surprised no-one in this entire thread has even mentioned the possibility that autism, OCD, ADHD, etc. might be, in part, caused by such streams of nonsense.
Human sociality needs to be boostrapped. Kids watching this all-day-every-day are /definitely/ gonna grow up funny. Why do you think daycare costs more than a mortage?
The article mixes its message a bit between automation/disruption/capital. One couldn't really say that Uber is in the business of automation. The capital/labor distinction is more productive, but since it is derived from marxism no one actually uses it.
I'm starting to get the impression that this genre of "technology gone bad" article is starting to be a safe surrogate for talking about class. The muddling of terms is actually a feature: one can avoid the dirty reality of class by framing it as an inherent feature of technological progress, which, of course, is a good in-and-of-itself (unless you're a dirty commie).
I think the same is true of immigration: low class people blame their poor condition on immigrants, rather than their class standing.
This is what is called the ideology of no ideology.
A small cadre of elite economists that convened as the Mont Pelerin Society (led by Hayek) called themselves neoliberals for a bit but stopped using the term.
Perhaps doing something to control an overheated housing market would help more than tearing up new land 100 miles away from cities whose prosperity derives from the 'network effects' of geographical proximity.
The problem is that there is no such thing as 'blind progression'. It will always be defined by someone or something, boxing all future progress into that person's biases. This is the same well-intentioned by inherently flawed utopian thinking as everyone else.
I would totally sign my life away to an AI as long as no one was telling me that it was a sign of 'progress'. At the very least, no one should be profiting from it
Anti-humanism is a very interesting strain of thought these days. Homo-Deus by Harari is my favorite example.
The problem, of course, is that if we got where we are now by being humans, then how do we know we're far enough along to 'quit' being humans without going backwards? How do you know that 'giving up' isn't the same sort of intellectual trick that that Nazis played on themselves? How do you give up without giving up?
I think this is more or less correct, but I think the more important take-away from the article is how this kind of thinking ends up getting wrapped up in NRx and inevitably, the alt-right. Viewed from 1,000 ft, it is very easy to
coldly construe our weird political landscape as a fulfillment of this hyper-rationalist dream: the irrationalities of the poor and uneducated are something to be corraled by the cold and calculating. It's the sort of thinking popular with plutocrats, since it rationalizes their actions.
Accelerationism is interesting to me insofar as it is transparent about the fact that technology is an a-human (not in-human) force. Blind faith in the liberational potential of technology does nothing to actually fulfill this potential, but instead just furthers it's a-human qualities. The reference to the California ideology is apt.