I call myself a Technology Philanthropist. So what is a technology philanthropist? I define a technology philanthropist as one who believes technology should be implemented and advanced for the betterment of all of humanity.
On average, technology has delivered us from the dark ages. The modern exponential growth of technology has clearly, on average, reduced human suffering, increased positive human metrics (life expectancy, mortality rates etc.). There is currently no sound reason why we all should not celebrate the clear overall positive effects technology has had on our species. We are experiencing geometric / exponential growth in the sheer quantity of collective human knowledge.
The growing dilemma we all are facing is our finite biological capabilities in contrast with those inherent in emerging technology which is theoretically nearly limitless. As strong, intuitive, creative, emotional, imaginative, moral, intelligent etc. as any one person may be, every human being has finite capabilities on all measures. These limitations are systematically being overcome by machines with greater faculties and we are yielding choices and decision making authority to these machines more and more every day. So inevitably, machines will be invisibly making most of our decisions for us by proxy. The result of this understanding is the largest transference of authoritative power in human history. The US Government knows it, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, and similar corporations also know it, and that is why they are all fully vested in the unprecedented accumulation of human sociological data – their stated purpose… to capitalize on it!
The technology to analyze “big data” and find new ways to leverage new correlations and find hidden understandings within the data is one of the hottest topics in tech today and it is well known that this is also where the big money is going to be (and big power).
Where is the large political lobbying organization advocating for laws protecting human beings from oppressive or exploitative applications of technologies and emerging technologies?
So I believe there is a new form of advocacy missing from the current technological landscape – one with a stated purpose beyond profiteering and capitalizing – that stated purpose is for the betterment of all of humanity. – Technological Philanthropy
Technology should be employed for the liberty, and the health and welfare of human beings, not for any purpose contrary to these goals.
I am working on converting my labor exclusively to this end, I have a comprehensive 10 year plan (now 9 year plan) on how I am going to achieve these goals.
Would you like to join me?
Hi, I was wondering why you made this? (Not in a bad way) just wondering 🙂
I believe this topic is very important, especially looking forward into the future as technology plays a larger role in our lives. This blog is a way to organize my thoughts on technology and philanthropy and hopefully will provide some interesting ideas to other people which they can use to increase their quality of life and that of others.
I agree
Good post! I read your blog often and you always post excellent content. I posted this article on Facebook and my followers like it. Thanks for writing this!
You always do the right thing. God Bless you.
Thank you
Many people are able to take advantage of others through software because most people don’t know how software works or how to use computers together in new ways without expert help. Most people don’t know how software works because it is short-term (but not long-term) more efficient to complicate things beyond even experts ability to understand most of it. There are very simple things most people could learn to do in computers together that would allow them to break their dependency on those who take advantage. These things include to store bit-strings in p2p clouds many times per second like programmers use variables, to tell each other about this data they’ve broadcast and others get and use it automatically through their code, and to use public-keys to name each other without authority, and to train neuralnets and reinforcement learning AIs on combinations of these bit-strings, to form a web of data instead of a web of people trying to take advantage of each other through DRM on the addresses. To those who DRM the addresses, my response is I’m not going to use addresses, I’ll secure hash data and name it that way, so it doesn’t matter where it came from, anyone can name it by that hash in their own bit-strings. This probably sounds really boring to most people, so to explain why its not, I’m building some simple games that can expand open-endedly like a multiplayer computer. Keeping it simple enough most people will understand how it works is the challenge. I can build any huge complex thing I want, but few can build something simple and advanced. Those few should teach others how to do simple and advanced together. Complexity is too often a weapon against people understanding how to end their dependence on those who take advantage.
Complexity is too often a weapon against people understanding how to end their dependence on those who take advantage. – Ben that is a very powerful insight, I couldn’t agree more, excellent quotable. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks!
I have to thank you for the efforts you’ve put in penning this blog.
I really hope to view the same high-grade content
by you later on as well. In fact, your creative
writing abilities has motivated me to get my very own website now 😉
Well spoken… I encourage everyone to visit the Humanianity project.
As we have talked about, your concern about what we do with our amazing technology tools is absolutely appropriate and crucial. That technology needs to be in the hands of a species with a basic ethical philosophy that is well-defined, is associated with a strong ethical sense (motivation to do what one believes is the right thing to do), and promotes not only the survival of the species but also the good life for everyone, now and in the future. Currently that is not the state of affairs. We are talking, hi-tech, and quite angry chimps, our most feared predator. But we are also loving, empathic, cooperative, and benevolent. We are both. But being both is not good enough. So we need to use our technology to make ourselves better ethically. And this is a bootstrap operation. No one will make us do it. We will simply have to come together and agree to do it. And this means acknowledging that we all have work to do, work to do on ourselves as well as in behalf of each other. We must be willing to grow, and that means to change. A term for that effort is “Humanianity,” as you know.