Hard article to read, but an important one. Here’s the thing: I know two people who own Meta “pervert glasses,” and I think if there is an innocuous use case for these glasses, they’re demonstrating it.

And yet, here’s Ellul on technical ambivalence:

And this technological nexus is characteristically ambivalent. Because the solution of one problem by technological means immediately raises a multitude of others, which result directly from those very means, it is impossible to say whether technique produces good or evil effects. It does both, simultaneously. We are confronted with a system in the strict sense of the word, what I will call the “technological system,” hence ethical issues may only be considered relative to the system as a whole, and not to specific instances.

This feels like a case where the problem is the existence of the technology and not its various uses. I recognize that I’m resistant to that idea with other technologies, like social media or the internet. When it comes to smart glasses or AI, though, I feel willing to say that we only solve the problems when we reject the technology altogether.

• technical ambivalence
• meta
• smart glasses
• privacy
• surveillance
• Jacques Ellul