alt Hacker NewsAgriculture. Plumbing. The printing press. Electricity. Vaccines. Fiat money itself, which is a technology that is better than the technology of barter, which is better than each person having to grow or make every material thing they need.
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All problems are social problems in that sense, but that's not what I meant. And if fiat money (as in, a type of social contract) is a technology, then anything is a technology.
I think the point that is missed is all of these solved real problems that needed solving. I feel over the last decade we have exhausted the obvious benefits of the Internet revolution and more often than not we were seeing clever technology being developed, that wouldn't solve any problems. Then long and painful search for applications of that technology would ensue. Cases in point: crypto, llms.
"How do we remove feces from our living spaces" and "how do we stop dying from pathogens" are not social problems.