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The long read: What technology takes from us – and how to take it back | Rebecca Solnit
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2026
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Technology
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Because technology isn't to blame. Technology doesn't have any agenda or intrinsic capacity for malice...the people behind it do. The people who decide to use the capabilities of technology with malicious intent are to blame, they should be blamed for all of it. Do not let technology share the load of that blame, it is only the people behind that should that, they er personally to blame because they actively chose to use technology maliciously when they could just have chosen not to.
I don’t know, that just seems too simple. There’s a good argument to be made that technology can embody political values and power relations, apart from its designers. The “guns don’t kill people” line doesn’t hold much water when all the empirical evidence shows that the mere presence of guns makes us less safe, for example. Similarly, it’s not especially important why tech bros do what they do, or if they have good or bad motives, if the things they make hurt people or destroy the biosphere. The purpose of a thing is what it does, regardless of what its maker intended it to do.
You misunderstand me then...I'm not saying we should not regulate some technologies and what they're allowed to be used for, we absolutely should. But blame should be put solely on the people using it in horrible soul crushing ways. They are terrible people doing terrible things, blame them, punish them.