Monday, December 4, 2017

I've fallen out of love with technology

By now, the complaints about technology are

familiar: The internet in 2010 seemed like an amazing place where a teenager with a rare illness, for example, might feel validated and connected to others like her thousands of kilometres away. That's still true, but now we are seeing those same qualities unite people with dangerous conspiracy theories and spread violent propaganda.

The downsides aren't confined to social media, which has been in the eye of the storm recently. People are talking about the pernicious effects of personal information concentrated in the hands of a few companies, about robots taking human jobs and about technology addiction.

Ten years after the release of the first iPhone, we're over the initial wonder of it all and are beginning to grapple with how smartphones affect our communities, our personal safety and basic human interaction.

If more people begin to focus on the drawbacks of technology, it could have lasting consequences for the economy and for tech companies' bottom lines.