I think you got my feelings upsidedown. Like, I am of the strict opinion that you can't solve these issues via standardization. It's not reasonable, and does miss the point of automation. I also don't like daylight savings time, but not because it makes timekeeping hard, since timekeeping is always a horrid mess even without it (hardly makes it worse).
But it's hardly technodeterminism to say that it's a bloodydamn hard problem to solve, and may not even be solvable (which is why I contend with the 'weakness of will' part). That's sort of my point: if they can't consistently solve the calendar by hand, I can't imagine getting a computer to do it. It would have to be something wildly complex, like a social networking system that bases your calendar on your own web of trust. Someday that may be reasonable someday, but we're probably only barely hitting the point where we can get Lady of Mazes-style masks of the world metadata [0].
So you have deeply complex richness in language and culture, but computers took decades to be smart enough to capture it in it's plodding bin-packing way. Either these cultures could miss out on years of work integrating in with the enormous advantages and progress computers provide, or they can wait and fall behind. I'd choose to be an optimist and hope that we can now bend to the complex needs of these cultures now instead of first resorting to poor approximations. Just as we can now do better than all-caps ASCII, we can try harder to meet the demands of these complex calendar systems. Woe be unto the programmer who has to code those horrific systems, but ... well, that's the job :)
Re automobiles, I think there's a long, complex history at play there. A town I used to live in would have the residents complain often of the train that would cut through at the most inconvenient times of the day, right across a crowded main street. They often complained of the audacity of the train company's scheduling, forgetting that the train predated the town. And, in fact, the town was there because of the train. But it's a mess, and what can you do. The train was there first, but the town's noisier. Hilariously the train company also doesn't care, I think, and frankly you always give right of way to the bigger vehicle (a lesson I learned from working in plants rather than social justice).
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Lady-Mazes-Karl-Schroeder/dp/07653507...
I'm a huge fan of this book. While I think it's probably not great literature, it has some well articulated ideas about how technology and society interact. A central conceit of the story is the protagonist lives in an area managed by tech locks. These restrict technology to match the society (it is explained somewhat late in the story, and how it came to exist is pretty interesting). You're not restricted from moving between worlds, so to speak, but it puts at the forefront how much even the subtle demands of technology can shape a society (from music-based tribes to singularity-tech ringworlds).
But it's hardly technodeterminism to say that it's a bloodydamn hard problem to solve, and may not even be solvable (which is why I contend with the 'weakness of will' part). That's sort of my point: if they can't consistently solve the calendar by hand, I can't imagine getting a computer to do it. It would have to be something wildly complex, like a social networking system that bases your calendar on your own web of trust. Someday that may be reasonable someday, but we're probably only barely hitting the point where we can get Lady of Mazes-style masks of the world metadata [0].
So you have deeply complex richness in language and culture, but computers took decades to be smart enough to capture it in it's plodding bin-packing way. Either these cultures could miss out on years of work integrating in with the enormous advantages and progress computers provide, or they can wait and fall behind. I'd choose to be an optimist and hope that we can now bend to the complex needs of these cultures now instead of first resorting to poor approximations. Just as we can now do better than all-caps ASCII, we can try harder to meet the demands of these complex calendar systems. Woe be unto the programmer who has to code those horrific systems, but ... well, that's the job :)
Re automobiles, I think there's a long, complex history at play there. A town I used to live in would have the residents complain often of the train that would cut through at the most inconvenient times of the day, right across a crowded main street. They often complained of the audacity of the train company's scheduling, forgetting that the train predated the town. And, in fact, the town was there because of the train. But it's a mess, and what can you do. The train was there first, but the town's noisier. Hilariously the train company also doesn't care, I think, and frankly you always give right of way to the bigger vehicle (a lesson I learned from working in plants rather than social justice).
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Lady-Mazes-Karl-Schroeder/dp/07653507... I'm a huge fan of this book. While I think it's probably not great literature, it has some well articulated ideas about how technology and society interact. A central conceit of the story is the protagonist lives in an area managed by tech locks. These restrict technology to match the society (it is explained somewhat late in the story, and how it came to exist is pretty interesting). You're not restricted from moving between worlds, so to speak, but it puts at the forefront how much even the subtle demands of technology can shape a society (from music-based tribes to singularity-tech ringworlds).