Watching the World Rot at Europe's Largest Tech Conference

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  http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/11/the-warped-world-of-web-summit/508442/

   

  TheRadicalModerate 

  Now that I'm through being snarky down-thread, perhaps it should be pointed out that none of the things that were described above sound much like "tech" to me. Software is everywhere now, and we've reached the exponential knee in the curve where there's enough of it that it's possible to try out the silliest ideas for almost no investment. If that's "tech", it's a particularly degenerate form of it.
  That makes this sort of like the Cambrian Explosion for weird business ideas. There are lots of possible niches in the ecosystem, and everybody's racing to fill them.
  Like the Cambrian, that produces a lot of ugly-a­ss animals, most of whom won't survive for very long. It's not a pretty process. But it is the kind of process that enables the emergence of startling beauty from time to time, and to create the conditions for a small number of extremely complex entities. But for every species like homo sapiens that's produced, evolution also spins off an endless number of variations on a house fly. I'd expect the same pattern at Web Summit: lots of flies, with maybe the occasional lemur thrown in.
  There is a deep, very important discussion to be had on what it is exactly that we're becoming. A lot of the ideas floating around in transhumanist circles have very little humanism attached to them. Depending on whom you talk to, that's either a good thing, a bad thing, or just a... thing. But I'm pretty sure that none of the answers are going to be found in the dimmest depths of the Software Sausage Factory. That's always going to be a very messy place. And under no circumstances should we send Sam there again.

  
  

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    Ormond Otvos |  TheRadicalModerate 

    
    

    It seems more and more obvious that humans are an evolutionary dead end.

    
    

    

    
    

    beenthere | Ormond Otvos 

    
    

    Man I hope you're right. The human species has got to be one of the most vile and destructive species ever to emerge out of the Darwinian landscape. The rest of the living things on the planet really need a break from our dumb cruel asses. Hopefully it'll come about before we figure out how to stuff the planet with 20 billion people; just so 19.999999 billion people can swim in each other's filth and excrement while the privileged, corrupt, despicable 0.001% live like galactic royalty.

    
    

    
    

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    UpComing1 | beenthere 

    
    

    Young man, Life on earth will persevere long after we are gone. Have a look at the scales of the various biological epochs and compare that to how long humanity has been around. Even if we do our best to annihilate ourselves and the ecosystem that sustains us, life will regenerate and flourish again when we are gone. It's not possible for us to eliminate all life even if we eliminate our own.
    
    So yes, lament our blind destruction and overbreeding. Lament the likely collapse of civilization, and possibly all of humanity. Try to stop that from happening for humanity's sake. But life itself will be on earth for millions upon millions of years to come whether or not we make it past the next 100 or next 10,000. Keep perspective about what you are actually distraught over. We don't need to save the planet... we need to save ourselves. To do THAT, we need to get very clear about sustainability within our ecosystem. That requires very real independent science guiding public policy. Start studying. Start organizing.