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i do not understand what kind of live you have to have lived that you are optimistic about the potential for technology to change society for the better. i was born in 1990 and as far as i can tell every single technological innovation made in my lifetime made the world worse
okay wait there's one good thing about the internet and it's that it allows you to share cooking videos. this is by far the least cursed usecase for the internet https://t.co/vHiWhAtxkz
would be interesting to see differences in the answer by gender, age, maybe profession and/or salary as a proxy for class š¤ can't be bothered though. welp, this is what i get for expressing an opinion on twitter i guess. you'd think i'd have learned by now
haha yeah https://t.co/ZBqC3Byfyu
detailed counterpoint https://t.co/UtYBU0mP1G
@QiaochuYuan https://t.co/RWLpW8jjHu
@QiaochuYuan https://t.co/lqlBLabSbY
@QiaochuYuan I don't really see any downsides that come close to the benefits of communication anywhere (esp in emergencies), maps & directions & place directory, online payments & banking & brokerage, music anywhere, wikipedia & youtube for learning anything...
@QiaochuYuan in my view when you zoom out to the global population and look at metrics like poverty and hunger it feels like something like this https://t.co/jucXcFcsWT
@QiaochuYuan basically every area of life has seen technological improvements since 1990, from better food to safer cars to lighter winter coats https://t.co/ZSnwFteuPG
@QiaochuYuan technologies developed more or less during my lifetime that i am really glad about (some of these existed before but werenāt available to regular consumers): - wireless noise-canceling headphones - google maps - online shopping (amazon, etc) - lasik - cell phones - cloud storage
@QiaochuYuan - youtube - usb-rechargable everything - portable speakers - speech-to-text - oura ring - budget airlines (maybe not a tech advance exactly) - vibe lights (see link) https://t.co/noNeGokFsS
@QiaochuYuan i have used (directly or indirectly) and benefited from all these things. theyāre not perfect, but even though e.g. uber sucks iām still so so so glad it exists as an option where otherwise there would be no option.
@QiaochuYuan I think youāre confusing āinternet servicesā with ātechnologyā. Keytruda (2014) is an anti-cancer drug that saved one of my friendās dadās life, for example. Accurate weather forecasts for farmers in poor countries are now widely available and hugely valueable. Etc etc.
@QiaochuYuan yea Iām on the other side of this lol sorry https://t.co/g105y56Wir
a thing I surprised myself saying in a podcast recently was that I think that facebook, instagram, tiktok, etc are definitely good things. it's unfashionable to say so in some circles, and it's true that there have been some shocking things like misinformation,