Ask HN: All this technology – what's the goal?

It should be fairly obvious that we are heading towards CCP-style social-credit score.

Those of low social credit score will appear as 'red dots' on your map, and interacting with those 'red dots' will lower your social credit score.

Why are you reifying technology and treating it as a conscious entity capable of having a goal, let alone any interest in teaching us to "live a life of virtue"? That doesn't make sense to me.

What is virtue, anyway? Philosphers, theologians, and even game designers like Richard Garriott have been batting the question around like a cat with a mouse for thousands of years, and to what result? It's not that there isn't an answer, but a myriad of answers: choose a moral code that suits you, or embrace nihilism.

> It seems nowadays our technology is raising questions about ethics, security etc.

Computer technology has never been about ethics. It arose out of military necessity, the need to break your enemy's encryption and calculate artillery trajectories faster than they could. Computer science has always been tied to the military-industrial complex, and we forgot this at our own peril.

> However, can we believe the fact we are becoming better as human beings along this path?

It's not a fact if we have to believe it. However, to answer your question, I don't buy the premise that computer technology and ubiquitous networking is making us better human beings. Besides, this raises other questions. Better human beings by what standard? Better human beings for whom?

_red mentions China's social-credit scores. I'm sure that it would be convenient for those in authority if tech could be used to alter their subjects' behavior through softer means of coercion than violence. Human cops insist on being paid, and can sometimes be persuaded to look the other way. Schooling tries to put a cop in every kid's head so that they govern themselves in a manner compatible with the rulers' preferences, but that doesn't always work either. Some kids aren't amenable to such programming, or eventually break it. But a cop in your smartphone, always watching and ratting you out that never sleeps, can't be reasoned with, and never takes bribes or demands time and a half for overtime? A daemon cop living in a machine that you don't truly own because you aren't legally permitted to alter it to suit your preferences? That's a tyrant's dream.

My answer to your question is that technology doesn't have an inherent goal, but the people who benefit most from technology don't have your best interests in mind, and their goals involving technology generally involve increasing their own power and comfort at everybody else's expense. It's not necessarily a conspiracy, though. Just a stand alone complex driven by human greed and power-lust.