I've been thinking about #artificialintelligence, calls for its #regulation & some previous cases of #technological determinism.

As I've said here before, perhaps the best way of thinking about all this is to return to the work of #LewisMumford who makes the distinction between Authoritarian Technics & Democratic Technics... which encourages us to focus not on the characteristic(s) of #technology, but rather the #political interests of those who deploy & promote it.

https://northwestbylines.co.uk/business/technology/is-artificial-intelligence-out-of-our-control/

Lewis Mumford (1895-1990) es lo que podríamos decir un erudito, durante décadas estuvo con sus escritos, ensayos y columnas, enseñándonos sobre filosofía, historia, arquitectura o urbanismo.
La esplendida editorial Pepitas de Calabaza, ha sido la amabilidad de editar la mayoría de su obra.
Ahora que tanto se está hablando de las ciudades, de 30 o 15 minutos, de sus planificaciones o adecuaciones a los habitantes de hoy, creó que para centrarnos en la ciudad desde su nacimiento, tenemos un libro que refleja muy bien esos cambios (a mal o a bien).
Su "La ciudad en la historia,
Sus orígenes, transformaciones y perspectivas" nos da un repaso no solo a lo que entendemos como lugar, abarca todos los aspectos de ella.
Pese a su extensión, se lee bien, no usa casi notas a pie, con un capitulo grafico al final y una bibliografía abundante y comentada.

1168 págs., 15x22 cms.
Encuadernación: cartoné
PVP: 50,00€

#historia #lectura #bookstodon #lewismumford #ensayo #ciudad #urbanismo #libro

@fencoul
yes I've talked about that in reference to #LewisMumford & the distinction between democratic & authoritarian technics.... the same #technology but difference political context(s) - see post on Dec30th last year

Den Vergleich mit dem Abnehmen, den @SheDrivesMobility gerade bei #AnneWill gebracht hat, ist übrigens eine Abwandlung eines Zitats, welches #LewisMumford bereits in den 1950er Jahren formuliert hat.

“Building more roads to prevent congestion is like a fat man loosening his belt to prevent obesity”

So I've been on #Mastodon for 2 months & have pretty much completely shifted my #socialmedia activity over to here (with the occasional tweet just to keep that a/c alive & the name/identity unavailable for re-use);

here, while I have still had some fraught exchanges, in the vast majority of cases these have been more civil & constructive... so thank you to everyone for making this a much better place & for continuing to build a more 'democratic technics' (see #LewisMumford post in my timeline)

#LewisMumford, writing on #technology & society, deployed the term 'Technics' to discuss interactions between technology & the socio-political uses to which it was put.

He used two categories:
Authoritarian Technics; and
Democratic Technics.
The same technology could be both in different circumstances depending on its control & use....

This seems to me to be a useful way of distinguishing #Twitter (authoritarian/centralised) and #Mastodon (democratic/decntralised)
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13691180050123721