Smoke & Mirrors
How Hype Obscures the Future and How to See Past It
Gemma Milne
Having read it
★★★★☆
An interesting read with many good points raised and posited in each of its sections and, as implied throughout, it helps show us how hype gets used and can obscure legitimate progress. It’s on us as consumers of information to be a bit more critical in our thinking rather than assuming technology and its like will save us from our own, often ill-thought-through, logic and justifications. Hype is not an answer and complexity is intriguing and not to be avoided!
A good passage
No technology is flawless, no technology comes without downsides; and anyone telling you otherwise is just hype. Saying that, we must be able to work out which of these pros and cons are rooted in reality and which risk profiles are being represented disproportionally. We must be able to work out which narratives are simply rooted in historical clichés, without the associated nuance. We must be able to work out which narratives are unfairly trapping society in fear, misunderstanding and simply out-of-date ideas, making us unable to take in anything new that may go against firmly held views.
A second good passage
Robots aren’t stealing any jobs – corporates are making active decisions to put people out of work and not take on the responsibility of retraining them. I’m not here to say that automation is bad, but I do think by continuing to blame the technology, we’re increasingly letting companies quietly get away with putting profits over people.
A third good passage
Critical thinking isn’t about being negative, but about being open to the idea that something might be wrong. And that openness, which ultimately leads to actively engaging in the topic, can be far more interesting than simply being fed entertainment in the form of tech-hype porn. Understanding the world doesn’t only mean seeing its dark side, it also means revelling in its complexity, and the realisation that we live on a planet so rich in open questions that we will never find an end to discovering something new. And it’s about getting closer to understanding why the things that don’t work, don’t work, and therefore find hints as to how to fix them.
That’s empowering, not depressing.