> What is driving this headlong rush to implement new technology with so little regard for deliberation of the pedagogical and economic costs and at the risk of student and faculty alienation and opposition? A short answer might be the fear of getting left behind, the incessant pressures of “progress”. But there is more to it....
https://monthlyreview.org/product/digital_diploma_mills/
http://helmut.knaust.info/resource/noble/DDM.pdf
#DavidNoble #DigitalDiplomaMills #ProgressIsALie

> The transition from water to steam in the British cotton industry did not occur because water was scarce, more expensive or less technologically potent – to the contrary, steam gained supremacy in spite of water being abundant, cheaper and at least as powerful, even and efficient....
#SteamPower #ProgressIsALie #TechnologicalDeterminism #Techinicism

Reading #AndreasMalm's _ #FossilCapital _ convinces me again that #ProgressIsALie. An article by #BrianTokar sent me to Malm's books and they seem very helpful so far. They complement #AmitavGhosh's doubts about the "#Anthropocene" term:
> .. if some humans introduced steam power against the explicit resistance of other humans, then it would be hard to maintain a notion of it as the expression of a species-wide project... steam arose as a form of power exercised by some people against others..

> Progress — change for the better over historical time. The word has many uses (social progress, technological progress), but the reason it raises red flags for historians is the legacy of Whig history, a school of historical thought whose influence still percolates through many of our models of history. Wikipedia has an excellent opening definition of #WhigHistory...

https://www.exurbe.com/on-progress-and-historical-change/
#ProgressIsALie

> none of the favored explanations holds up... decisive in the end was the quest for managerial control.. managers at GE wanted a technological design and mode of implementation that favored their own power over that of unionized workers. .. the CNC design with all that.. and rejected the material design and social relations of record playback...

#DavidFNoble #Technology #BranchOfMoralPhilosophy #Progress #ProgressIsAlie

> ... [the] idea “that the permanent tendency of progress in the production and distribution of wealth is in the direction of more and more complicated and costly processes, requiring greater and greater concentration of capital and labor.”

- https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/01/06/rethinking-progress-in-a-time-of-crisis/

#DavidDamato #BenjaminTucker #progress #ProgressIsALie #USA