Where Norbert Wiener in 1948 (CYBERNETICS) calls out the inevitable (because no one did anything to heed any warnings such as his) exploitation of technology as social control, in a warning that automating even "low" labor is a new form of enslavement:
/[...]
I have said that this new development has unbounded possibilities for good and for evil. For one thing, it makes the metaphorical dominance of the machines, as imagined by Samuel Butler, a most immediate and non-metaphorical problem. It gives the human race a new and most effective collection of mechanical slaves to perform its labor.
Such mechanical labor has most of the economic properties of slave labor, although, unlike slave labor, it does not involve the direct demoralizing effects of human cruelty.
However, any labor that accepts the conditions of competition with slave labor accepts the conditions of slave labor, and is essentially slave labor.
The key word of this statement is competition. It may very well be a good thing for humanity to have the machine remove from it the need of menial and disagreeable tasks, cr it may not. I do not know.
It cannot be good for these new potentialities to be assessed in the terms of the market, of the money they save; and it is precisely the terms of the open market, the “fifth freedom,” that have become the shibboleth of the sector of American opinion represented by the National Association of Manufacturers and the Saturday Evening Post.
I say American opinion, for as an American, I know it best, but the hucksters recognize no national boundary./
tom jennings
npub1qd…674he
2026-09-23 20:47:05 UTC
Author Public Key
npub1qd2pnra30h4mnslpdt66rweeqwnvgc00l4rv7tz0ge99zs2ypfeqw674heSeen on
wss://relay.ditto.pubPublished at
2026-09-23 20:47:05 UTCEvent JSON
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"content": "Where Norbert Wiener in 1948 (CYBERNETICS) calls out the inevitable (because no one did anything to heed any warnings such as his) exploitation of technology as social control, in a warning that automating even \"low\" labor is a new form of enslavement:\n\n/[...]\n\nI have said that this new development has unbounded possibilities for good and for evil. For one thing, it makes the metaphorical dominance of the machines, as imagined by Samuel Butler, a most immediate and non-metaphorical problem. It gives the human race a new and most effective collection of mechanical slaves to perform its labor. \n\nSuch mechanical labor has most of the economic properties of slave labor, although, unlike slave labor, it does not involve the direct demoralizing effects of human cruelty. \n\nHowever, any labor that accepts the conditions of competition with slave labor accepts the conditions of slave labor, and is essentially slave labor. \n\nThe key word of this statement is competition. It may very well be a good thing for humanity to have the machine remove from it the need of menial and disagreeable tasks, cr it may not. I do not know. \n\nIt cannot be good for these new potentialities to be assessed in the terms of the market, of the money they save; and it is precisely the terms of the open market, the “fifth freedom,” that have become the shibboleth of the sector of American opinion represented by the National Association of Manufacturers and the Saturday Evening Post. \n\nI say American opinion, for as an American, I know it best, but the hucksters recognize no national boundary./",
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