This is going to be another one of those “let’s ask ourselves some difficult questions” newsletter introductions, so if you’re in the U.S., I certainly won’t blame you for not giving Actuator your full attention until after the holiday.
I generally approach these conversations through the same basic lens: a majority of technologies are neither inherently good nor bad. At the end of the day, it’s up to us as the arbiters of such trends to influence the resulting impact they have on this planet and its inhabitants.
Nor do I believe that most of the people who develop such technologies hope or expect them to have a net negative impact on the lives around them. I do, however, accept that — more often than not — the implementation of such technologies are beholden to broader macro trends and long-standing power structures.
Given the number of years I’ve been doing this, I suspect that many technologists are sick to death of that old talking point: the robots are c...
