Created: February 14, 2021
Modified: January 24, 2022
Modified: January 24, 2022
my relationship with tech
This page is from my personal notes, and has not been specifically reviewed for public consumption. It might be incomplete, wrong, outdated, or stupid. Caveat lector.- I've identified as a 'tech' person, but I now feel uncomfortable in many tech circles. What is tech and what does it mean to be a tech person?
- In a broad sense, tech is the advancement of science and engineering to make possible things that weren't possible before.
- In a narrow sense, 'tech' is software eating the world.
- In a social sense, tech is:
- Silicon Valley VCs. People who try to predict trends, have a general vision of what will be economically viable, and know how to build companies.
- 'Technologists': people with a general aptitude for software and computational thinking, and a broad curiosity. People like NameRedacted, SuccessfulFriend, NameRedacted.
- Researchers: people with hyper-specialized deep understanding of specific areas.
- Coders: Craftspeople who can build great software but don't see it as their role to think about the bigger picture. (or at least, only to the extent that the thinking affects their decisions about what to build). People like NameRedacted, NameRedacted, many Googlers.
- Bros: People with some level of tech understanding, for whom the social aspect of being part of something cool is more interesting than the inherent tech. People like NameRedacted.
- Kids: People like myself or SuccessfulFriend in high school or college. Still in the early stages---I found it was intoxicating to control a computer, knew that there was power in it, and was broadly curious.
- Futurists: people who think broadly about where tech will go and its social effects on non-actionable timescales. (distinct from VCs). People like Asimov, Yudkowsky, Bostrom, etc.
- Luddites: people who think tech has a neutral or negative effect on the world. Kaczynski, much of the modern media.
- Analogists: people who don't directly work with tech, but adopt aspects of a rationalist worldview. SSC, effective altruists, etc. Maybe gwern?
- I've thought of myself as a broadly capable scientist and computationalist. I did well in all areas of undergrad CS. I thought it was important to understand how big services like Google worked. I wanted to understand mechanisms that carved the world at the joints. I wanted to understand intelligence.
- I still believe that AI will work. Hard tech in bio, energy, and space travel will advance and solve many problems, while possibly introducing others.
- One thing I initially got wrong about tech is that I viewed interacting with computers as more important than interacting with people. Computers are so much more scalable, and software is forever. This is true, but the world is subtleter than that.