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"The Techno-Fascism Encounter: A Pleasant Exchange Amid Divisive Views"

Jan 7, 2024 - 10:57pmSummary: While driving to Irvine, someone called our car a "toaster on wheels" and accused us of techno-fascism. The encounter was surprisingly pleasant; the man wasn't angry, just sharing his opinion, and we all ended up smiling. Despite not fully agreeing with him, I recognize that our world is far from perfect and can feel dystopian, especially within my field of work. However, I believe it's crucial to avoid authoritarianism and censorship by technology companies, and to strive for a more distributed platform for governance, in the spirit of what the Internet originally was.

Transcript: I got called a techno-fascist yesterday while, uh, Chandler and I were on the road driving up, uh, to Irvine. Uh, Chandler rolls down the window to this guy who's, like, pointing at me. He's, like, waving his hands out the car, and then he, like, rolls the window down. He calls to the car a toaster on wheels, or a laptop on wheels, and then, I don't know, spouts some shit about, like, generally techno-fascism. Um, it was kind of funny. Kind of funny, but also the way that he went about it was, like, pretty great. Like, he was just saying shit, and, you know, it wasn't like we even needed to respond at all. And he just wanted to, like, get his point of view across, and it wasn't like, he wasn't, like, pissed off. Like, he wasn't yelling at us. He was just, like, stating his opinion, and, honestly, he was smiling, and we were smiling, too. Like, the whole thing was just, like, kind of interesting as an experience. And, yeah, I don't know, like, in some ways, like, it's true also. Like, I don't know if I specifically am a techno-fascist, but, like, there's, like, some kind of heinous shit that goes on. Like, we don't live in a perfect world for sure, is all I'll say. Like, I don't know if I believe his position, but I think I can empathize to some degree. Um, because there are ways and perspectives that you can look through the world and look at our world as a dystopia. And I see some of those, too. Like, I work in the field, and, like, yeah, I think some of it is pretty dystopic. So, yeah. But at the same time, like, this is still the best time to be alive. And we have the opportunity to just make it better. So, like, I feel like we should probably just do that, you know. I think it's worth learning from the dystopias that there are. And those sensitivities, and learning to tune into those. And, you know, make sure we don't go down that path. And also don't go down an authoritarian path. I think that's pretty important. It's why I'm concerned about the censorship of models. Is because, like, I don't know if we want technology companies censoring us top-down. I really don't know if that's the way to go. There ought to be a more distributed platform to do this. And, I mean, that's kind of what the Internet was. And, yeah, I don't know. We'll see.

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