Will technology change everything? A talk by the MD of Daimler Benz

Uber replacing taxis while owning no vehicles, Airbnb replacing hotels while holding no property, autonomous cars, AI, cheap electricity, robot factories, computer medical diagnosis, IBM Watson's automated legal advisers, tricorders, 3D printed everything...

The source of this technologically star struck litany is an industry insider, Jonathan Brathwaite, with much corporate skin in the game. My inclination is to first ask underlying questions about the framework within which the questions are asked. I have said for decades "we are all going to hell in a hand basket". Although we have a choice as a species, there is really not much debate about this any more -- only denial. One obvious part of our fatal planetary direction is a vastly accelerating income inequality and growing poverty. I am just now reading a very old book by Murray Bookchin, "Post Scarcity Anarchism" (;1965-69) which colors my comments. In the context of growing inequality and the impending near annihilation of the human race and much of the planet, most of the items on this long list of technological changes are just irrelevant to everybody but the extremely rich -- such as which hotel to stay at or which taxi to call to dine out. Others on the list we should all be happy to hear about such as "Work: 70-80% of jobs will disappear in the next 20 years". In the post scarcity world since World War 2 this should have happened a long time ago, yet scarcity is enforce by capital using monopoly control and corruption of state power in pursuit of profit. In balance the list point more clearly to the potentiality of a Utopian world of unhindered human self expression and actualization and the end of material need, not a problem for people. However power is not shared, hierarchical structures of domination are enforced with violence and coercion. Whether we take the path to Utopia or annihilation is a wide open question, much  more relevant than the details and speed of such marvelous technological change.





An interesting talk by the MD of Daimler Benz | Jonathan Brathwaite | Pulse | LinkedIn: "An interesting talk by the MD of Daimler Benz"



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