Technology and Possibility

[Gary Childress]

Is there a point in our technological development where we'll finally achieve a just society? For example, will AI create the circumstances where some people will no longer have to do the jobs that no one (including them) wants to do? Will information technology finally be at our fingertips where everyone can make adequately informed decisions on social and political matters and vote equally on them so that there can be true democracy?

Or will technology create conditions where a few people can consolidate ever greater power over all of us?

Or is being led by the best something that can be achieved through technology and therefore a few of the best people ought to have greater power over us?

Or was the best of all possible worlds one where we all lived in stone age circumstances of clans of hunters and gathers, which we may never again realistically experience due to technological "progress"?

Or is just being alive the best of all possible conditions?

Or is being dead the best of all possible conditions?

Or is there no such thing as a standardizable definition of "goodness", "best" or "justice"?

Or _________ (fill in the blank) ________________

[popeye1945]

The pressing question since the beginning of the industrial revolution has been, or should have been, whether the system is going to serve you or you are intended to serve the system. No matter the progress, will the elite keep the population in relative slavery?

[Cerveny]

The definition of “good”, “best”, “justice” or “rightness” exists objectively, that is, in the world of ideas… I often feel that we are permanently confronted with it… Well, I don't mean as a "thing" but rather as a pressure, a force...