Aaron Bastani

No, AI, space mining and synthetic meat will not magically solve all of society's problems.
Bastani does not even mention that AI and big data will need exponentially more energy. Also, racial and social bias in AI models is not event mentioned in passing. And green energy isn't just jolly green, but wastes lots of energy in production as well.
It sometimes feels like an advertising magazine for the companies he is uncritically praising throughout the book.
I get it that positive outlooks are sometimes needed. But this kind of technocratic socialist perspective, praising unfettered growth will hardly solve problems of overconsumption.… (mehr)

I would say this book was better at the descriptive than the prescriptive: it was good at identifying the major crises facing humanity (population aging, climate change, resource scarcity, population growth, and increasing automation of jobs) and the technologies of the future (and present) that may solve them, but was not so good at addressing the likely reality that these technologies will be used selfishly and maliciously by those who own them. Technological utopia requires strong political pressure to put tech into the service of the masses, but Bastani didn’t seem to have a coherent idea for how this might be done. I also did not think Bastani took the existing power of tech companies (and capital generally) seriously enough - writing to your senator and doing mutual aid means nothing to trillion dollar enterprises. For this reason - the lack of path to “FALC” instead of technocratic serfdom - I had trouble accepting Bastani’s redefining of “communism” in non-Marxian terms.

But to Bastani’s credit, not many writers are willing to be so optimistic about technology’s liberatory potential. It was refreshing to read this after years of consuming Fisher, *Desert*, Adam Curtis, William Gibson, etc.… (mehr)

O slogan é bom e eu já conhecia e apreciava. E o livro? Certamente é uma leitura agradável, mas para quem já está de alguma forma inteirado da necessidade da esquerda de considerar o racionalismo e os avanços tecnológicos recentes como potências também para o bem, o texto não acrescenta muito, exceto otimismo (deslavado). A solução, afinal, para tornar os desenvolvimentos em dados/sistemas informacionais, genética, transgênicos (carne sintética?), exploração espacial, automação, energias renováveis... em coisas que melhoram a vida da população é a mesma de sempre. Contra o realismo capitalista, comunismo. A tentativa é, entretanto, de resgatar um entusiasmo utópico para um futuro melhor, capaz de enfrentar a atual estagnação da qualidade de vida e a crise climática futura.… (mehr)