# Goal of technology

[The Platform Is The Enemy](https://danielbmarkham.com/the-platform-is-the-enemy/) piece is a bit of a ranty blog post inspired by the movie Idiocracy, but contains some inspiring thoughts. It discusses two interesting questions:
1. what is the goal of technology?
2. does technology (platform) make people dumb?

## What is the goal of technology?

> 1. The goal of technology is to become a **brain extension**, _helping you to decide what to do_ and then helping you get it done.
> 2. The goal of technology is to become a **hand-held power tool**, helping you accomplish the things you've _already decided to do_

Clearly, both positions are reasonable, it's a matter of subjective taste to pick a side. I personally am firmly on the human-centric side. I build and use technology as a hand-powered tool. But indeed, for many it becomes their extension. And that's not bad. Locally, while driving, the car indeed becomes a body extension to people. I still remember the first time this made a great impression on me while watching Alien 2 movie many years ago , where [Ripley operates the power loader exoskeleton](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSrcMaid0mg). The machine is a direct extension of her. It is her. Still, my position is: _human mind first, technology second._

## Does technology make us dumb?

The argument the author builds goes like this:

> 1. The minute we create a platform for something, ... _the assumption becomes that this is a solved problem_.
> 2. Platforms ... send out the subtle message: _This is a solved problem. No further effort on your part is required here. No thinking needed._
> 3. Human brains are not computers. Let the platform decide. Energy not needed. **Dump those neurons.**
> 4. Idiocracy

Now that is a bit bleak view on human race. Indeed, many of us like to dump neurons and [go on their autopilot](https://qoto.org/@FailForward/105522122721928195). And that's OK.

Yet, the view of an optimist would be that many other harness the freed up CPU capacity to do something better. Something new, something useful, something nice, _progress_. Take e.g., the effort to develop a COVID-19 vaccine. It took very focused and rapid effort of a relatively large group of people (scientists) to develop. They could do it, because they did not have to worry about deciding where to hide before a sabre-toothed tiger, nor about what to eat for dinner (both solved problems). And I call that a good thing.

Finally, the author applies this optics on software engineering:
> One bunch of folks creates various platforms in order to do the thinking for another bunch of folks. ... Most of the time we end up training morons who can weakly code against the platform but can't reason effectively about the underlying architecture or reason for the platform to exist in the first place.

Generally, I agree with the author's sentiment there. But again, let's not aspire to make everybody a guru engineer. Weak coding against a platform and having little clue what is going on is bad engineering, full stop.

Yet, in hands of an experienced craftsman, this becomes a great accelerator of creative processes. Yes, it causes a paradigm shift in the craft's practices: in 90's we used to write things from scratch 90% of time and 10% of time we re-used 3rd party libraries. Today, we 90% of assemble stuff from opaque (and often buggy) 3rd party libraries and code stuff from scratch 10% of time (mostly business logic). Maybe it feels dirty, but in the end it allows us to quickly create great stuff and deal with technical debt, bugs and performance later.

I remain an optimist.