More precisely: Politicians that don’t understand technology will doom us all.

Whether it’s continued lusting after techbro nonsense and the money that is invested in them never mind whether the products are actually worth all that investment, or if they even have a product.

Whether it’s continued promises that the latest developments in some science fiction technology are just around the corner, and even though it’s not working right now, it surely will be ready soon, so no need to worry.

Whether it’s continued searches for problems to justify the solutions, because surely we need to digitise everything, that’s what progress means, and you can’t have progress without an app.

I’m getting sick and tired of politicians in charge who think that technology is going to solve all of our problems, and that they will be a flashy distraction. I am tired of journalists failing to ask pertinent questions and leaving a general public without the skills to challenge these narratives.

Crypto and digital currencies aren’t going to solve economic problems. We already live in an increasingly cashless society, and we didn’t need cryptographic glamours to get there. Pandering to a rich class of investor whose raison d’etre is rooted in gambling has never helped us. It didn’t help us with the gold standard. It didn’t help us with the housing market and financial crash of 2008. And it won’t help us if we decide that a bunch of crypto bros should have free reign over our savings and spending. If you want an economy to succeed, you need to make it as easy as possible for people to spend, as easy as possible to collect and report tax, and we’re already there. The problem was solved the moment the chip and pin card was invented.

Machine learning has it’s uses, but it’s not going to solve potholes for us. AI isn’t going to make the road worker’s job of driving out and repaving a surface any easier. It’s certainly not going to make it easier for councils to find the money to pay for equipment and materials. And as for finding them, it’s already really easy for people to find and report them. It’s not going to solve bottlenecks in the NHS. AI might assist a med tech in looking at a scan, but it’s never going to speed up getting the GP appointment necessary to get the referral for the scan. Nor will it help community aftercare once treatment is over.

Carbon capture isn’t going to suddenly fix the climate. In the long term, if the technology is ever proven, then carbon capture and storage might play a role in climate strategy, but it’s eternally 10 years away from being viable. Down my local park the council just spend a minuscule portion of public money building a brand new carbon capture system that we know works and it didn’t cost a whole lot: They just planted trees. Spades, shovels, wheelbarrows, and saplings. No advanced technology needed. As for the bulk of our emissions, all the money driven to the companies that caused or climate crisis in the first place so they can greenwash their final throes of profiteering could be better spend building up viable alternatives to car and short haul air transport. Divesting from fossil fuels could free up a decent chunk of marine traffic. Actually bothering to enforce our marine protected areas could help sea life thrive and begin sequestering carbon once again.

Apps. I loathe apps. Everything needs and app. Now the UK government wants to build digital licenses and put them into an app. How? Why? They are just going to hand a load of cash over to a contractor like the one that ruined lives of postmasters, and the end result will be over budget, delayed, barely functional, and anyone relying on it will end up facing legal fees when they inevitably have to pay fines because they weren’t able to produce their documentation on demand. The most infuriating thing here is within the past couple of years the UK government, like so many others, put the infrastructure in place to be able to handle quick, portable, secure, reliable identity document scanning. QR codes. The Covid vaccination certificate system was controversial but technically it was a great idea. All the human readable stuff in a readable PDF or image file, and then down at the bottom the same text in a signed form that can be scanned by anyone with a reader. No need to build an app, every device has built-in support for it, and people already have a good mental model for how a digital file works, is transferred, and backed up.

If any politicians are reading this, hear me: You need to understand how to manage policies, public institutions, listen to the people that work there, and find solutions to real problems that require an absolute minimum of technological implementation. That’s how you regain public trust and make people’s lives better.

Technology for technology’s sake won’t solve shit.