We cannot have a rational debate about technology. | Dr. Hilary Agro, PhD

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Because on the whole, leftists are mostly (and rightfully) not all that excited about AI as it exists today, we are often accused of being luddites or hating technology.* But no, I do like some technology. I’m not against it as a concept. We perfected textiles 4,000 years ago. Then we invented books, and vaccines, and those are great. But almost everything else has been based on increasingly ramped-up environmental destruction and labour exploitation, "solving" individual "problems" that only primarily exist because of colonialism in the first place and which thus cannot be solved through more of the same.

So no, I don’t like the robots. But I want you to understand why.

When we’re faced with accusations oh hating technology, I sometimes see people say "hey, we love technology! We love high speed rail and mRNA vaccines!" And sure, we can take their bait and remain always on the defense, having conversations on their terms. But we also absolutely do not have to fall over ourselves saying that we want to hug and kiss technological progress. The onus is on Tech Bros to explain to us why we should be excited about new technology while there are microplastics in every mother’s breast milk and our rivers are drying up. And that’s what we should be hammering home in all of these conversations: the material reality of electronic technology. (Colonizers answer the question of "what are you going to do with this mass produced product when its usable lifespan is up to ensure it doesn’t poison our children’s environment" challenge, difficulty level: impossible.)

However, this is a wedge subject that I don’t think leftists are having enough hard conversations about. I have close friends for whom so much of their comfort, even their creativity, is based in electronic tech that some don’t really seem able to take a sincere, hard look at the environmental and social consequences of a screen-based society at scale, or at what it might be doing to us to let our joy be mediated by products we’re being sold.

Adding even more discomfort to the situation, this issue connects directly with the other two major wedge issues that are deeply unresolved on the left, which are:

Land back: The return of all land to indigenous stewardship.

Child liberation: The prioritization of the well-being of children, those living now and those to come, in every aspect of society and our daily lives.

I for one, do not find it acceptable that in Canada we churn through plastic at an appalling rate because we’re dazzled by consumer advertising and too depressed to cook or sew, and then we send our garbage to choke the air and waters of children in Malaysia. I do not like that.

I don’t think that children in Vietnam deserve to bear the cost of the addiction to immediate gratification that we’ve been given as a trickle-down result of our overlords’ addiction to power and domination.

I don’t think it’s acceptable that we want new gaming systems, so they get poisoned.

I don’t think it’s acceptable to sidestep environmental concerns in discussions of AI. I think it’s vital to not budge one inch on the requirement that "progress" always be measured first through a sustainability lens, and refuse to have conversations about technological merits until those questions are answered to the satisfaction of those of us who want humanity’s great-grandchildren to survive.

Whenever I’m speaking with a tech-optimist liberal or leftist who is suggesting solutions that require the maintenance, or expansion, of personal devices or computer-based infrastructure (e.g., a new game that teaches people about empathy, or an app that helps people find better housing, or any pro-social use of AI), I cautiously ask some version of these questions: "If your solution requires more technology to be manufactured, what should we do with it when it breaks, to ensure it doesn’t poison the environment? Can we focus on building the recycling infrastructure first to handle more production, before we make new stuff? Whose lands will be mined for the resources? Whose water will be used?"

When I try to talk about this, some people shut down. They downplay and dismiss, and use thought-terminating cliches like "well we can’t just go back to living in caves." And I don’t even blame them for not wanting to think about it. I’m not trying to shame anyone for having screen-based hobbies or hopes. I’m genuinely trying to have real conversations about this. Disconnected as we are from the Earth, from each other, from ritual and song and tradition and children and elders, we have so little that makes us happy. Capitalism gave us little emotion-regulation boxes made by slaves, and we were in too much generational pain to think about the consequences of outsourcing our emotional well-being to the slave boxes, so now the thought of losing our phones causes more...