The Religion of Technology

What Hacker News says

1. piva00Feb 2025
   "The Religion of Technology" by David F. Noble is a good historical summary of such ideology. The ideology has been around for a long time, the new phase with tech is just the latest iteration of it.

   Totally recommend the read!

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2. tivertDec 2023
   The article is worth it for the quotes from "David Noble['s] 1997 book The Religion of Technology." I'll have to check that out, because everything quoted there rings very true.

   Another good book in the same vein is Technopoly by Neil Postman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technopoly.

   > There’s ample evidence that neither Andreessen, nor Musk, nor any of the rest of them will be able to realize the futures they promise. Those visions only exist to keep us distracted from the real harms caused by their companies.

   I agree that they won't be able to deliver on their promises, and those promises serve as a distraction. However I'm not so sure the distraction is a deliberate deception. I think it's quite possible the "Silicon Valley elite" are delusional ("high on their own supply") and engaging in a lot of self-serving self-deception. It's also possible their promises are knowing lies. The reality is probably some combination of the two.

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3. piva00Dec 2023
   This is a very interesting read to me, simply because the timing was perfect with my reading of "The Religion of Technology" by David Noble.

   In "The Religion of Technology" he argues that advancement through technology is completely meshed with religious myths (and not separated nor antithetical from religion), the redemption/salvation arc, attempting to become more divine through God-like powers we have gained through technology (nuclear weapons for destruction, AI for immortality).

   It's a very, very interesting book from 1999 which feels much more contemporary than that.

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