Clive Thompson interviews the philosopher Evan Selinger on how to tell whether a slippery slope argument might make sense: arguments about tech causing a slippery slope are are often BS, but if technology makes something significantly cheaper/faster/easier and incentives for misuse are high, then those are signs that we might need to take such arguments more seriously. I think the discussion of affordances with technology is especially useful here — technology doesn’t make us do something because it’s just a tool, but certain technologies make certain kinds of things much easier or more likely (and technologies also have constraints, in that there are certain kinds of things that they either cannot do or that are very difficult to do with those technologies). As they say, guns may not kill any body all by themselves as a technology, but guns make it much easier and cheaper to kill people and therefore encourage certain kinds of behavior and certain kinds of impact on cultures.

Along the way, they reference the philosopher Ian Bogost, whom you are already familiar with from earlier in the semester. They point to his article from 2012, “The Cigarette of This Century” in The Atlantic that analyzes the impact of the Blackberry as a predecessor of the smartphone. As I was reading Bogost’s piece it struck me that he’s essentially written a version of technology literacy narrative with this piece. Do you see connections between the essays you wrote and Bogost’s piece?