Well, we have progressed to philosophers like John Gray (the author of Straw Dogs, not the relationship counselor who wrote that Mars/Venus thingy), though he would presumably argue that we haven't, given his views on progress.
I've been working a theory that what we are seeing in the last 10 years or so is the escape of these techniques from government into private industry.
With a single powerful player, you get a consistent, but slightly false narrative. If you have lots of players though, you get multiple competing narratives and the news stops making sense.
Is partly why I still think Gibson is one of the people who got it closest to the mark.
>It was a thoughtless mistake to bring the explosives on the plane
Certain thoughtless mistakes are worth fining a company into oblivion over and maybe jailing some people for a bit, just to make sure you have made the point.
Someone smuggling an experimental drone laden with explosives on a commercial flight, is one of those kind of mistakes.
>the actual number of people attempting to zero the amount of oil they use? Much lower than claimed concern.
How do you know how many there are? Anyone doing that couldn't travel except by foot, buy any commercial products or use any available communication services.
edit - alternatively, there are loads of people attempting to zero the amount of oil they use. They are just using oil to get there.
> "If people were deeply individually concerned about the risks vs. rewards of these technologies, they'd stop using them."
Why do you think that? It clearly doesn't apply to stuff like oil, for instance.
I could give up my phone, but I would be in deep shit if I did it tomorrow. It would take a lot of arrangement to do so and it would piss off my family and lose me work.
Mass surveillance is not really for investigating individuals.
The game being played is not '1984', it is 'Foundation'.
It is for steering entire societies, and this works far better on the boring people who think they have nothing to hide as they are the easiest to model
Don't use *.io anyway. The domains are being sold under a very morally dubious arrangement, given the UK kicked all the people off the island of Chagos and gave the domain registration to a private entity.
>induced demand, where adding capacity can actually create more demand.
The timeline on induced demand for number of houses required has to be pretty long. Also, if you are worrying about induced demand from housebuilding, then you are attempting population control with homelessness.
Did anyone sensible think automation was largely responsible for the job loss in the richer countries? Manufacturing has chased cheap wages globally since the 1960's.
I always thought the widely accepted narrative was that automation might bring some bulk manufacturing back to richer countries when it starts to compete with the cost of a skilled worker in a lower wage economy, after a decades long policy of outsourcing manufacturing chains, not that richer countries somehow automated away all the jobs at home.