https://digitalrightswatch.org.au/2021/03/25/technosolutionism/
"Techno solutionism is problematic because its roots run deep and it’s
incredibly hard to weed from public discourse once it has been introduced. It’s
often politically appealing to solve issues an electorate is buzzing about by
“investing” money to tackle the issue. Look at the millions we poured to this
consultancy to build a fancy new thing that will solve our problems! Remember
the money and time spent on the CovidSafe app? Or the harmful and inhumane
automated welfare system now infamously known as robodebt? Across government,
money is thrown at issues in completely irrational attempts to disrupt reality.
Yet these technological solutions are too often designed around simplified use
cases, not complex abuse cases. Without a clear grounding in reality, these
solutions cause harm to the same people they were naively intended to protect.
In such a world, citizens become ever more visible to their governments, but
not the other way around. In 2019, UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty
warned about the rise of a digital welfare dystopia and that technology
companies operate in a rights-free zone when it comes to developing
technological solutions.
Many of these techno solutionistic technologies and systems used to be
relegated to fiction, archived across pop-culture, but now they are coming to
life at the behest of law enforcement and intelligence agencies. The best known
fiction example may be
The Minority Report by Philip K. Dick where three
mutants foresee all crime before it happens. We are also reminded of that
episode of
Futurama where the Oracle robot predicted crime (very badly).
Fiction no more, predictive policing algorithms are alive and well, and just as
one might expect they are biased, racist, and compounding harm to already
marginalised communities. Yet they continue to be peddled for all the reasons
above—they take a complex problem and provide what seems like an easy fix, they
tick all the right political boxes of being seen to be doing something about an
issue, and they outsource liability and responsibility away from those in power
to grapple with the complexity."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
