alt Hacker NewsYou wanted speed and connectedness every where. Speed by automating the intelligence, speed of payment transactions, high-speed trains ... Result? The speed of hacking everywhere, speed of $6B vanishing in 20 minutes and speed at which things going wrong.
None of these would happen in places that are not invaded by speed of technology and connectedness. Slow is good, not sometimes, but always. Human life is not compatible with things moving at speed of electricity.
But you gave the controlling power to children. The children with science toys want more and more speed, just for fun and profit. They, unfortunately, control the future of human race.
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That speed and connectedness increases GDP by vastly more though.
Slow is good, not sometimes, but always.
Ask any cowboy. The fastest way to move a cow is slow.
Easy to say when you’re not, oh idk, waiting on a helicopter to deliver a life-saving organ transplant, or freezing your bones off because you don’t have electric heat.
The trade-offs are worth it and humankind continues to accept those trade-offs. Yea 60+ people died in a train crash. So what? Tens of millions ride high-speed trains on a weekly/monthly basis without any issues. So why would we overreact to anomalies when by and large the technologies we’ve invented are pretty awesome?
I’m no opponent to the “slow life” and I have a lot of critical comments regarding modernity (cars, social media, modernist art) and overpopulation but we don’t need to throw the baby out with the bath water here.
To be fair, both high speed trains and planes are very safe forms of transportation, with deaths numbering in less than 1000 per year.
Currently the yearly global death toll for cars is at 1.16 million and climbing