The past and technology

Ven. Sujato has some interesting thoughts on technology in his essay ‌ Tech is the past—and it’s burying us in it:

We’ve become so conditioned to thinking of the future in terms of tech that we have lost the capacity to imagine any other kind of future. I grew up on sci-fi, which was full of space lasers and FTL, all operating in 17th century ideas of “empire” and “colonies”

The reason why is worth considering, and I would take it a step further and say it’s flawed to speak of computer and human memory with the same word.

There’s something in tech, I think, that enshrines the past in ways beneath our consciousness. Perhaps it’s the concept of “memory”. In humans, “memory” is a creative process, where the past is re-enlivened with emotion and purpose, but also with randomness and newness; each act of remembering is unique. In a computer, “memory” is something fixed. A photo is always the same. the words we say are stuck there in black and white. The past is not a vaguely receding ocean of memories slowly merging into the unknowable, but crisp sharp images, as present as the present.

People get hauled over the coals for something they said on social media 6 years ago. There it is, as fresh and as something they said yesterday.

The Buddhist concept of anattā, often translated as a “not self”, is far simpler than the sort of metaphysical woo that gets lumped in with it. Everything is more of an ongoing process, both shaping and being shaped by the present. And thus human memory isn’t something that’s absolute, but shaped by the present.

Try it right now. Imagine a tomorrow where tech is not the center of things. Imagine a future where what evolves is humanity. Where we have better societies, better politics. Where human consciousness is more free, more open, more wise. Where we indulge in the creative possibilities of the human mind. Where tech, if we allow it to exist, serves humanity. Imagine a world with less, not more.

Star Trek sort of went there. When Asimov couldn’t figure out how to end Foundation, he went there. Both are flawed. Dune might actually fit the bill since there was a conscious choice to ban computers.

Maybe I’m drawing a blank because this is further outside of my favored sub-genres of sci-fi and fantasy, but I can’t think of a lot of fiction that imagines this sort of future of moderate de-growth, the great wealth of humanity is used to ensure there are no starving children, but it’s also not some weird utopia.