Welcome to the Technocracy: Dreams of forgotten movement from the 1930s live on

> However, the overall track record for technology being revolutionary on its own is poor. For the last 20-some-odd years, technological progress has been reduced to maximizing attention in the form of gimmicks, addiction, and apps nobody needs.

This is missing forest for the trees. There is no doubt technology has completely revolutionized almost all aspects of life. I mean just take twitter, YouTube or even WhatsApp. A person from 1800s would hardly recognize the advancement made in the last 30-40 years. It would seem like completely magic to them.

"For many of today’s technocrats, giving up our autonomy to machines is a gamble worth taking. This is despite the fact that many tech elites themselves place the possibility of a catastrophic outcome (“p-doom”) at very significant levels.27 But the technique demands efficiency and progress: if we don’t pursue this, someone else will, so it must keep advancing."

It goes back to a much older disagreement about what comes first: spirit or matter? One camp believes that spirit/life is the true nature of cosmos, while matter is secondary. The other camp believes that life is only an aspect of matter, the doctrine of materialism in other words. Humans just happen to live between the two camps in this spiritual warfare.

This article was deeply disappointing. Anything about the people, the science fiction that struggled with these ideas? Mention of Player Piano?

Anything about Robert McNamara? About this stuff actually being tried? About the actual failures that actually happened? The "whiz kids?"