Good in the World is Blinded by Progress: The Unstoppable Force of Technological Determinism

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The last decade has been marked by profound change, especially in the last five years since the pandemic. Our daily routines were upended, social communication and economic behavior shifted dramatically, and widespread lockdowns put life on hold in countless ways. This upheaval was soon compounded by global conflicts. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and renewed war in the Middle East brought the realities of war, deepening social divisions, and economic anxiety even further into everyday life. People everywhere faced mounting uncertainty from rising prices, workplace instability, and the accelerated rise of AI automation. All the while we watched and ignored as climate scientists' advocation for saving the planets environment went from warnings for imminent interventions to absolute urgency, where now most will claim it's already too late to impose widespread measures to mediate the effects because it would not be enough to counteract output, therefore we must focus on what we can to slow the eventual demise of stable climate conditions worldwide.

During this period of transformation, people shifted more of their lives to time spent in the digital realm than ever before. While much of the world stagnated, technology remained on its relentless pace of innovation. For many this reinforced the idea of technological determinism, which is the belief that technology more than human choice drives change. It presents technological progress and social progress as interconnected, with society evolving in order to fit new technologies. As a result, worldly events sometimes catastrophic, are happening to roll out new technology. 

A single large data center can require millions of liters of water per day for cooling which is more than a small town.

One of the popular public criticisms during the Covid pandemic was the spread of misinformation and fake news. This isn’t new, but when applied to a global health issue that claimed countless lives, we as a society got to witness firsthand how the digital news ecosystem performs to inform the public during a time of crisis. Society witnessed in real time how digital media platforms shaped public understanding of the realities we live in.

Meanwhile, as individuals and governments focused on survival and finding reliable information, the world moved to using software more during lockdowns and most big tech firms experienced booming profits. Unfortunately we didn't see these profits convert into technological breakthrough devices or great policy ideas, climate resolutions, or health advancements and economic initiatives to bring hope across humanity during these times. 

The major breakthroughs that did occur were mainly in AI, with speculation that big tech focus and spending was on building and training AI models during this heightened period of digital activity to be ready for implementation. There seems to be substance to the public being at home familiarizing themselves using software all day, providing data and behaviour metrics through work activity, online shopping and entertainment habits concurrent with the rollout of AI. Taking a look at the stock market we can see AI related companies devouring market share now, with certain tech companies that lagged on AI development missing out on massive gains. Many tech companies saw all-time highs and record profits as the public spent more time online caught up in fake news ecosystems and making ends meet with surging costs and changing work environments.

From 2009 to 2025, global data center capacity expanded from ~27 GW to ~114 GW—a 4-fold increase. The land needed for that capacity is about 2× the size of Manhattan. Today, Meta is building a new one the size of Manhattan.

As the Middle East conflict reignited in 2023, polls showed a rise in support for Hamas in Gaza, while Fatah and Abbas lost ground. The drivers of this shift remain uncertain, whether it reflects genuine political change or was amplified by social media influence. In regions with lower digital literacy, such platforms may have an outsized impact on shaping public opinion. 

In the aftermath of the attacks and subsequent escalations, polls revealed stark divides. About half of Israelis viewed retaliatory actions as justified, while 95% of Palestinians did not consider the initial attack a war crime, and 71% did not label it terrorism. While there are deep seated divisions on each side of the conflict, public discourse in the West appears increasingly critical of Israel due to civilian casualties, while criticism of Hamas and its governance of Gaza is less pronounced. 

Western discourse increasingly focuses on humanitarian concerns, particularly civilian casualties fueling criticism of Israeli actions. Meanwhile, criticism of Hamas’s governance remains more muted. This creates a complicated dynamic where people who strongly value democratic freedoms and human rights may express support for causes tied to contrasting political and social norms. Much of this discourse unfolds online, where digital platforms mediate and often distort our understanding just as Marshall McLuhan suggested, “the medium is the message.” It means how we consume information shapes our understanding of what we believe. Since our perception of distant events through technology dictates how we make sense of those realities, the messages are shaped and skewed by how we encounter information through mediated technologies.

As technology, especially AI, becomes more capable of simulating reality, its power to manipulate beliefs and keep people focused on digitally mediated perceptions only grows stronger.

We’ve already witnessed how algorithms and misinformation sowed confusion during the pandemic, distracting the public while major tech firms operated with minimal scrutiny. Yet, we rarely question whether similar tactics are being used to influence groups that are already ideologically fluid or predisposed to distrust systems that historically haven’t represented or respected their values. In an era of late stage capitalism, marked by deep class divisions and open online platforms, it’s not difficult to find individuals harboring skepticism toward current institutions. People naturally share their experiences with others who have similar interests, forming groups and online communities around these shared topics. Because of social media’s interpersonal nature, activism within these platforms has become an important part of many individuals’ identities.

Consequently, even when people become aware that algorithms and AI generated accounts may be deliberately spreading misinformation to shape their beliefs, it is not surprising that some would deny this influence and persist in supporting those ideologies. They may believe the fabricated or AI-generated content is real, or become so deeply embedded in the online communities around these views that they feel the ideas originate internally, rather than recognizing they are being externally manipulated to provoke emotional reactions.

This process can trap people in echo chambers, where they repeatedly encounter the same type of content that reinforces their existing beliefs. As a result, they are cut off from new, accurate, and truthful information from either side, limiting their ability to engage meaningfully in understanding truths of the conflict to support change.

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Advances in AI technology have been progressing behind the scenes to ensure companies could secure future profitability. Additionally, global competition, especially from other countries with their own strategic interests in AI development has accelerated this progress. The Western world continues to push technological innovation to maintain its status as a dominant global force. While the West focused primarily on software innovation, China expanded manufacturing capabilities and leveraged high-quality intellectual property, sometimes replicating technology from leading firms. These products were then sold globally at lower costs, challenging Western dominance. As a result, the view and apparent market direction is that China now rivals America as a global superpower across multiple domains.

This competitive environment has created fertile ground for technological determinism to take root. Consequently, issues such as inequality, climate change, disinformation campaigns, escalating conflicts, and radical policies are emerging as byproducts of a relentless push toward exponential technological innovation. Unfortunately, the potential negative consequences are often overlooked or dismissed in the pursuit of advancing technology to sustain capital accumulation and geopolitical power.

Take a look at the second largest economy in the world. China's climate environment for example is in very bad shape. China has chosen to ease climate policies, allowing companies to pollute and risk environmental accidents without facing substantial financial consequences. This approach is intended to foster rapid innovation and accelerate economic growth, helping China close the gap with the U.S. on the global stage.

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We have distractions, fake news headlines and social media to cloud our vision of technological determinism, keeping us focused on the byproducts, such as war, conflict, climate and disaster in the world. We are shown the effects of technological determinism and discuss them online. As a result, we struggle to recognize or attribute these issues to the deeper, deterministic impact of technology’s exponential growth on the world’s evolution. This is exacerbated by the fact that anyone without credibility can acquire the technological tools to make a professional-looking studio podcast that wasn’t accessible to individuals two decades ago due to the barrier of entry. Now people can sound credible so there’s fake info and sensationalized headlines and conspiracies everywhere. 

Because the technological determinism shaping our world is masked by mainstream news and social media, we increasingly adopt the unquestioning belief that “we must keep building to improve things” and “we can’t go back and live without technology.” This leads us to blindly endorse the development of potentially harmful and surveillance-driven technologies, driven by the perception that the world is chaotic and only technological innovation can rescue us. Meanwhile the narrative pushed on the public persists that anyone can just learn AI, launch 50 companies a week and become a millionaire.

So where are the investment insights?

These technologies and their platforms are arenas of information where any content freely flows, people can discuss the positive and clearly more so the negative externalities such as war and climate change and geopolitics caused by this wave of technological deterministic driven innovations. We see discussion of  conflicts through individual personal experience from people sharing on their social media to each other. Since people directly discuss their experiences of how this era is playing out, it’s giving us clues of what’s a real threat caused by technology and what is fake news or propaganda to sway our ideologies. 

That’s why we think markets and semiconductors are at all-time highs despite all the climate, public and geopolitical risks. It’s less about the risks talked about and more about society’s determination to develop powerful technologies because those technologies will be able to solve the problems America and the world are experiencing now. 

Whether that’s true or not, we've entered a new phase of starting to hit a new gear of rapid pace of innovation, and the effects are snowballing. We’re seeing significant climate change and economic changes, including layoffs and automation. We’re also in a fourth turning, where generations are shifting into their next phase of life, with this stage being the crisis period. Tariffs and geopolitics are at a high, with world powers racing to innovate all to maintain power, historically akin to the space race and internet. There’s an exponential rate of change happening in the world right now, not just in technological innovation, although that’s driving it. The externalities of technological innovation are vast, similar to a wartime economy, like in infrastructure, technology, energy, resources and the list goes on of what this era of innovation brings. I won’t give away anymore of my ideas here, but follow along knowing that whatever’s happening presents many market opportunities because the snowball is just starting, and the effects are just beginning to show themselves. It’s our job as investors to identify these externalities, since the obvious AI technological developments, such as semiconductors and nuclear energy, have already seen massive gains and the rest will emerge in the sea of information on our devices. 

Which industries and sectors do you think will experience a snowballing effect as a result of society’s determination to innovate for the sake of maintaining capital and power dominance, ideological and geopolitical dominance as we enter this rapid pace of innovation?