ctrl+shifted explores the indirect ways in which technical means reshape people and society.
Progress is neither linear nor inevitable
We tend to take a narrow and excessively rosy view of each invention. Efficiency, convenience, comfort, a problem solved. Apart from the obvious risk of adopting mechanisms with drawbacks that outweigh benefits, this habit builds a larger narrative of a world driven by technical innovation alone, establishing a value system that respects technical prowess at the expense of all other skills and pursuits.
Although it is generally acknowledged that all changes involve tradeoffs, it is too often presumed that collectively we land on the best side of each tradeoff, and that we can subtract the downside from the upside to see only a net positive. Yet still we live with all the consequences of our actions, and the ups and downs are not a summation but a collection of cascading ramifications that are not equally distributed.
Technology-as-progress impedes understanding
Any discussion of the harms, and not merely the benefits, of technological shifts is difficult in a climate that views technology as a track that admits only movement forward and back. It is important that we not lean on this framing, because it arrests any serious probe into the world and our options for it.
Moreover, we recognize that the false dichotomy between bold drive toward a glorious future and Luddite yearning for a romanticized past is used with intent by leaders and vendors who use it to manipulate. Pretending that a shift is inevitable is an intentional tool for removing our agency and involvement in it.
Efficiency is not pure good
One of the quickest ways to stop thinking is to reduce a system to a single linear metric: Calories per acre, miles per gallon, dollars of economic activity per capita, wage dollars per hour. Those who choose the metrics choose the values, but only if we permit ourselves to be unduly persuaded by the weight of optimizable numbers.
AI is merely one chapter in a long story
A common complaint today is that people are losing their minds due to AI. This may be true, but it is a distraction from the larger observation that we have been on this path for a long time. We have allowed society to be completely remade in the name of progress and efficiency, letting human agency and intelligence erode. At ctrl+shifted, we do not ask whether any technology is good or bad, because no technology is an unalloyed good or bad. Our question is: When some new technological means is devised and adopted, what are its effects—and who receives them?
Other things are possible
The Enlightenment tradition idealizes the individual's agency, desires, motivations, and rights that take precedence over the collective. Worship of technological progress has overridden these values with a singular totalizing narrative. It erases individual capacities and will, and it inhibits individuals from exploring alternatives.
The one-track technology paradigm stunts imagination, but alternatives are possible. ctrl+shifted is not anti-technology; rather we believe that we should not permit ourselves to be limited by the technology that has thus far been pursued. We are interested in means and tools off the beaten path.