The Fallibility of Technology
I loved technologies, because they have empowered us to perform many things that our ancestors could only dream of. But at the same time, I am also fully aware of the problems that often comes together with these solutions.
Technologies are not perfect. And since I understand how most technologies actually work, therefore, I am not a blind technologist who will pursue them at all cost. After all, technologies are suppose to be a mean to an end, and should not become the end itself.
Unfortunately most blind technologists failed to see the bigger picture. They pursue technologies for the sake of technology itself, without considering the risks nor the values they bring into our lives.
Not every new technology or a new version is an "upgrade". Often, a newly released technology (or version) actually bring in more problems and risks than the new functions they want us to know about.
In fact, due to Planned Obsolescence (for the sake of boosting sales), newer technologies are rarely build to last. And they are also rarely designed with repairing and recycling in mind.
A good example is our analog house phone. It always works and continue to work after decades, even when there is a power failure. However, the replacement - IP phone, frequently freeze up and need to be unplug for a reboot. The electronics component either burned or failed within 2-3 years, just enough to outlast their warranty period. Not to mention it cannot be used when there is a power failure.
Another good example is the tape backup. It provides the required airgap by default such that hackers simply cannot access to encrypt the data and held them for ransom. Even so, the data stored in tape cannot even last for a century.
Many blind technologists look down upon our ancestor primitive storage media, but they fail to see that the cave painting and the stone writing left by our ancestors, have managed to last for thousand of years and are still accessible by us today.
The true ironic with our modern technologies, especially our storage media, is that none of them can last for a century. Most cannot even last for a decade.
Unlike cave painting or stone writing, if our future descendants chance upon our modern floppy disk or compact disc, how will they retrieve the data, even if the data can last for thousand of years in these unreliable storage media?
They have to first build a reader for them, figure out how to decode the binary data into our languages before they can even start to translate into their own languages. Provided our storage media are still readable.
Some good references:
https://www.usenix.org/conference/atc20/presentation/keynote-miller
https://blog.storagecraft.com/data-storage-lifespan/