Whenever I enter agorera mode (a kind of technological Cassandra), there is a memo that comes to make me mansplaining to reveal an unknown truth for me, woman, that is expressed with forceful words in the agora, reproaching me, without realizing or realizing, that I have arrogated the right to plant the flip-flop. That truth is that the knife does not kill, it kills the man. Who could defend himself against these words uttered by man in the use of public reflection, of his strict property. Who have believed those of letters to take the opposite to the engineers, banners of the progress tsunámico, inventors of the electric light and the combustion engine.
What the memo usually forgets, obviously, is that, if the instrument in question did not have a sharp end, one or two sharp sides, and was not sold in the stores of any neighborhood, town or district, it would not be suitable to kill anyone at any time. Before the memo, which like a good fool does not shut up even under water, tells me that we are not going to ban knives or put doors to the field, I would like to bring here the following reflection that, without a doubt, will not make you change your mind.
The argument of "kill the man, not the instrument" is used repeatedly by the National Rifle Association (along with an extreme interpretation of the Second Amendment) to avoid limiting any kind of use of firearms. As long as they keep making money, they are able to blame the country's mental health problem (which, by the way, they are not willing to spend a penny on) rather than recognize that the only function of a weapon is to hurt or kill. It is not valid to cut a steak or to open a box after a move. It is only apt to cause 31,059 deaths in the US so far in 2023, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a website that counts deaths by firearm in real time in that country.
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Douglas Rushkoff, writer: "The technological elite prepares for the apocalypse, sees the end of civilization near"
As in Europe we do put doors to the countryside (that's how we are maniacs), the possession and use of firearms are strongly limited because we are aware, precisely, that they are instruments to kill. Moreover, in Spain, according to the Weapons Regulation, an individual can only possess or carry knives or knife of less than eleven centimeters and with a single edge; Automatic and double-edged knives are prohibited, and no citizen may "possess knives, machetes and other bladed weapons that are part of weapons duly approved by competent authorities or bodies."
Thanks to the pinnacle of cultural evolution that is law, we prevent many people from dying simply by limiting the availability of tools that have the capacity to kill. It does not occur to anyone to limit the number of people fit to kill as a solution to the problem because we would be left alone. Many of us imagine the massacre that would be a meeting of community of owners if these prohibitions did not exist and, with them, the limitation of access or acquisition of weapons or knives suitable for slicing the neck of the neighbor who puts a refrigerator chest in the storage room.
Well, the same goes for technology. There are single-use, military, and dual-use, civil and military, such as cryptography; of which can only be used in health settings, under prescription and control of a doctor, such as an insulin pump or pacemaker; or those that weigh international prohibitions, such as the cloning of a human being. When we are able to analyze risks, we are able to limit and manage them through regulation.
And then there's that data, communication, and internet technology that anyone uses because they've been born, grown, and matured, silently, based on dopamine cycles, around instruments that haven't been presumed to be dangerous. Who would suspect that there is an existential risk in the evolution of the Bakelite phone or the "Gondola" model yeyé. Or who would have seen with bad eyes the evolution in personal computer of the punched cards that allowed man to step on the moon. Nobody. Technology is neutral, cold, dispassionate, and therefore beneficial. Well, yes, the billionaires who interrogate Douglas Rushkoff about how to survive in their bunkers to the Navy Seals hired to protect them.
Those who have enriched themselves by making available to eight-year-old boys tools that educate them that bukakes are a normal way of relating to girls; that allow eleven-year-olds to take pictures every thirty seconds and share them with billions of people; or those who provide a free babysitting service for parents hooked on WhatsApp. They are the ones who blame them for misusing apps that, thanks to the democratization of the API of the foundational AI, turn an innocent photo into the nude of a minor from Almendralejo. The same, in short, that have released for consumer use a technology that should not have come out of highly controlled professional environments and that should not be operated by anyone.
I can hide a candy in the nuclear briefcase and blame my dog for the extinction of humanity for having pressed the button while trying to get hold of it. I could do it, if I were a psychopathic billionaire, but since I am a lawyer of walking around the house, what I will do is not leave anything lethal within her reach or use her basic impulses, precisely the ones I have trained, to blame her for it. Because, dear memo friend, guns kill and AI shouldn't be accessible to teenagers raised by YouPorn.
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