Modern fears now center on runaway technology rather than genocide

Evidence

New fears replace the old ones; or, rather, some of the older fears come into their own as they emerge from the shadow of some other, recently evicted or receding. One is inclined to share Hans Jonas’s premonition: to an ever growing degree, our main fears will now relate to the apocalypse threatened by the nature of the unintended dynamics of technical civilization as such, rather than to custom-made concentration camps and atomic explosions, both of which require that grand purposes are spelled out and, above all, purpose-conscious decisions are taken. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 622

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Ellul’s autonomous technology thesis and to the reader’s scaffolding interest in how modernity’s own dynamics produce new forms of danger. — connects to: Iconic robots reflect current societal hopes and fears about technology. — Joanna Stern, I Am Not a Robot- My Year Using AI to…, 715; Modern technology extends action beyond the moral vanishing point, enabling harm — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 548; Ethical-robot rhetoric is a Trojan horse that lowers moral barriers to killer robots — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 669 (+4 more)

Related

• Modern technology extends action beyond the moral vanishing point, enabling harm (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Iconic robots reflect current societal hopes and fears about technology. #expands (0.80) — Joanna Stern, I Am Not a Robot- My Year Using AI to…, 715
• Modern technology extends action beyond the moral vanishing point, enabling harm #expands (0.78) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 548
• Ethical-robot rhetoric is a Trojan horse that lowers moral barriers to killer robots #complicates (0.75) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 669