In an egalitarian world, how would/could our IT technology look like?

ilja

I was in a discussion yesterday where, on a tangent, it was remarked that in an egalitarian world, we would not have the computer technology we have today. One cited reason was that getting [some of?] the needed materials would not happen due to how toxic and difficult it is to get them (e.g. now we get certain materials because people are pushed to extract them under very harsh and toxic conditions because otherwise they wouldn't survive. In an egalitarian world, the threat of not being able to survive if not mining these materials wouldn't be present). If you consider the whole supply chain from getting materials to actually having computers and a world-wide network, I'm sure there are many other aspects who only exist in it's current form due to threats and incentives our current system has.

It made me wonder how much of our modern electric and electronic technology we would still actually have in a more egalitarian world, and how it would look like. What materials would we still have? What components can be made from it? What devices would we still be able to build? What could we still do with these devices? Etc.

I start this thread as a thought exercise and possible discussion for any one interested, to share thoughts and discuss about this.

Hélène

Would we even need computers in that world? If you remember the whole reason they exist (except the Ada Lovelace bit), it was to break Nazi Germany's cryptography during WW2... Which makes me feel very unsure that they would exist would that not have been needed.

A bunch of the usage for the technology nowadays is for work, and not very useful work IMO. Work that only exists because money needs to be made. One could argue about robots, but none of them are really being used to replace humans on the tasks they should be replacing them for; and a lot of the work robots are doing currently could be argued to not be necessary or wanted without the "money needs to be made" mindset.

johann

I would say the general invention of something that would be in the very general category of "computer" would be kind of inevitable. Also knowing a bit about computer history in Germany, I wouldn't say that they only existed...

Hélène to break Nazi Germany's cryptography during WW2

We could either way blame the invention on maths people. For example, Babbage's Difference Engine was invented long before even the first World War, in 1822 according to Wikidata. And I guess there were also lots of mechanical calculators, though the need for those was probably more for business and (circling back to military) ballistics calculations, but probably also - to a lesser extent - for scientific use of course.

Konrad Zuse started with his first models for a computer in the earlier Third Reich times as a mechanical computer (Z1). It's unsure if the original machine ever really worked because it was destroyed in a bombing attack.

I'm not a historian, trying to cobble together some bits from Wikipedia. It seems that Zuse tried to get some funding from the Wehrmacht but they turned him down because it would have taken too long. As far as I can tell it was more of a research and/or passion project of his.

I guess at some point, computers in general would have been made electronical too. Like I said it's unsure if the mechanical Z1 ever really worked and even if, it was incredibly slow and cumbersome to operate. The suggestion to make it electronical came at some point and the later Z3 used telephony relays. (Side note: Z3 was "released" in 1941, Colossus was "released" in 1943, so technically Zuse was first?)

So I would say the interesting question is, how would computers and the technology we built with them look today, without military involvement. I mean I guess the Zuse ones are the closest we can get to that but they stopped at some point and got overtaken more or less. But for example the Internet itself started by the military (ARPA) so I guess things could look quite different, though I have no idea how. Perhaps we'd all be using Fidonet or something like that. (^_^)

「 Fristi 」

I wonder if in such a world, we would've seen more advancements in nuclear power generation technology. Thorium reactors in particular, given that thorium is a lot more common and much easier to mine compared to uranium. Similarly, maybe we would've already made advancements in nuclear fusion tech.

At the same time, I think all of those would've been significantly held back if we didn't have computers. While it's true that the war may have pushed for its development, there probably would've been other motivating reasons to push for computer technology, though it may have developed differently. Because you also need to keep into account how computer tech evolved, and how that may differ in an egalitarian world. What if Microsoft never existed? Would we have Amiga computers instead? Would we have figured out semiconductors and other advancements needed to make everything really small? What about projects like Knoppix and Linux? Would we even get smartphones?

So many different paths it could've taken. But, unfortunately, capitalism ruined things, so now we have computers with NSA backdoors, pointless amounts of e-waste thanks to smartphones, a toxic google-dominated internet which brain-rotting services like tiktok.

ilja

Usefulness outside of "money needs to be made" mindset that I can think of would be sharing information (not storing of information because it seems that's hard to do passively in the digital world), and "easy" (not counting the difficulties to actually build and maintain the infrastructure) communication over long distances, both near real-time and asynchronous.

Currently it's easy to have computers, because the side effect of the "money needs to be made" mindset is that they are all around us so much that people even literally throw them away (I literally got mine from a box that was going to the dump and it's been my main computer for half a decade now). So a question I then wonder, is how much costlier (without necessarily implying commercial activity, e.g. taking time to build something is also a "cost" in time spend) this all becomes and if the cost is worth, not only inventing them, but also building and using them and the entire infrastructure. And getting the materials to build and maintain the whole thing. I do think that with a somewhat cooperative mindset people would be able to maintain some form of a world wide computer network, assuming computers are a thing ofc.

Computers may be slower and bulkier than they are now, but I don't think that's per sé a problem. As I cynically mentioned to someone at work earlier this week; "How long did it take in 1998 to open a mail client? How long does it take to open it now, even though our computers are 1000ths times faster?" I expect slower and bulkier hardware to lead to better optimised software for this hardware, meaning the user experience doesn't go down as drastically as one may expect. But I do like to think we wouldn't completely devolve technologically to pre-Roman times and forget all we've learned now, because that's just setting ourselves up to repeat history and is therefor not a stable state.

At the very least we'd still need electricity I think. But if strong magnets and copper wire are feasible to get your hands on, that shouldn't be too much of a problem. I'm unsure about Thorium because I don't know enough about it. If it's possible to get your hands on, then someone will probably experiment with it. But such a world would also need much less electricity, so we probably wouldn't even need much advancements for it to be useful. To get the materials, maybe some sort of commercial activity would still exist, and even without being forced someone would be willing to get this stuff if it pays enough?