I love this: "we shouldn't respond to their diffusion of responsibility downward by diffusing all of our own upward the same way."
Another aspect of the de-politicizing myth of technology, one promulgated publicly and loudly by those with financial stakes in the expansion of specifically digital technology i…
I love this: "we shouldn't respond to their diffusion of responsibility downward by diffusing all of our own upward the same way."
Another aspect of the de-politicizing myth of technology, one promulgated publicly and loudly by those with financial stakes in the expansion of specifically digital technology into every nook of our lives, is that technological expansion is inevitable. "It's the future;" "The future is here;" etc. But of course it's a choice. Unfortunately, it's a choice currently being made by those who profit from the expansion, because they're the ones in whom we've indirectly but still collectively vested the power to make the choice for us.
Given that there's a choice to be made, what do we choose? Should we direct our agency toward erecting individual barriers to protect ourselves from being buffeted by forces of which we've relinquished control? Or should we direct our agency toward regaining popular control of those forces? Of course we can and should do both. But which choice holds the promise of a deeper freedom?
I agree with you and Eli’s points whole heartedly, thank you for posting.
I want to wedge something between those options, though, and it is actually to rediscover what is fun and feels good. Pleasure has been so outsourced to corporations, it has been so commodified. Until recently I felt buffeted around between option A: cave and indulge in crap because I’m too tired or B: scrutinize/observe choices through a lens of activism and how it relates to accreting resistance over time. But there is something missing from both, and it is the natural development of a life worth fighting to have in the first place, a life that is fun, and surprising, and delightful. And after so much isolation the last few years, I have come around to identifying my needs for connection so much better than I could before. If they are incidentally a form of resistance, so much the better. If they incidentally lower my “carbon footprint” (feel free to replace that with a term gas companies didn’t invent, too), then so much the better. But after being so manipulated by ads, by the hamster wheel of seeking money and status and elusive stability, I have finally rededicated myself a bit to the pursuit of simple things that actually feel good. I don’t actually think this is as coarse or dumb as I probably make it out to be. It’s something to chew on.
Thanks for your comment. You make your point out to be neither coarse nor dumb. If I may, I'd like to briefly map out where your insight fits in the argument I've been too-sketchily articulating.
It seems to me that "the natural development of a life worth fighting to have in the first place, a life that is fun, and surprising, and delightful" is precisely the point of fighting for a measure of democratic say in the behavior of tech firms and other economic behemoths.
The version of the good life advertised by tech firm marketing agencies is a life of ease, frictionlessness, consumption, and disburdenment. And, indeed, many technologies actually make good on this promise. The problem is that this picture is not in fact a picture of a good life. In ease, frictionlessness, and the rest lie uniformity, predictability, passivity, narcissism. And these are things that precisely undermine the conditions for the possibility of truly deep pleasure — of skillful exercise of judgment and embodied prowess, of lovingly attending to the world and others in it, of fun, of surprise, of delight, and, I would add, of grace, in a suitably wide sense of that word.
The encroachment of the logic of technology threatens precisely "the simple things that actually feel good" (as opposed, I presume, to things that give transitory, superficial feelings of goodness). This encroachment is currently perpetrated by firms with negligible checks on their druthers. We mustn't think that we can customer-revolt our way out of being dominated by an unaccountable power. The tech firms, and the market generally, have happily strode into the void left by the decline of religion and other sacred folkways, which used to deploy non-marketized criteria to distinguish between the desire-worthy and the desire-unworthy. Market logic now largely shapes our desires, and digital technology especially does. (While the pluralistic liberal democratic state projects an air of neutrality.) If the tech firms aren't profiting from consumer behavior, they will simply reshape consumer desires. This is why it's worth removing some of the layers that insulate tech firms from democratic pressure: to check their power to nourish desires for things we know aren't the "simple things that actually feel good."
I've been thinking something like this. I especially love "the tech firms, and the market generally, have happily strode into the void" - and I would add "and have been jealously preserving that void, expanding it, and structuring our economy and culture to make it harder and harder to fill otherwise."
It is a bit like climate change. Dont deploy unhelpful binaries of individual V system. The best thing you can do as an individual is to build power with others.
Thanks for your reply. I agree.
I love this: "we shouldn't respond to their diffusion of responsibility downward by diffusing all of our own upward the same way."
Another aspect of the de-politicizing myth of technology, one promulgated publicly and loudly by those with financial stakes in the expansion of specifically digital technology into every nook of our lives, is that technological expansion is inevitable. "It's the future;" "The future is here;" etc. But of course it's a choice. Unfortunately, it's a choice currently being made by those who profit from the expansion, because they're the ones in whom we've indirectly but still collectively vested the power to make the choice for us.
Given that there's a choice to be made, what do we choose? Should we direct our agency toward erecting individual barriers to protect ourselves from being buffeted by forces of which we've relinquished control? Or should we direct our agency toward regaining popular control of those forces? Of course we can and should do both. But which choice holds the promise of a deeper freedom?
I agree with you and Eli’s points whole heartedly, thank you for posting.
I want to wedge something between those options, though, and it is actually to rediscover what is fun and feels good. Pleasure has been so outsourced to corporations, it has been so commodified. Until recently I felt buffeted around between option A: cave and indulge in crap because I’m too tired or B: scrutinize/observe choices through a lens of activism and how it relates to accreting resistance over time. But there is something missing from both, and it is the natural development of a life worth fighting to have in the first place, a life that is fun, and surprising, and delightful. And after so much isolation the last few years, I have come around to identifying my needs for connection so much better than I could before. If they are incidentally a form of resistance, so much the better. If they incidentally lower my “carbon footprint” (feel free to replace that with a term gas companies didn’t invent, too), then so much the better. But after being so manipulated by ads, by the hamster wheel of seeking money and status and elusive stability, I have finally rededicated myself a bit to the pursuit of simple things that actually feel good. I don’t actually think this is as coarse or dumb as I probably make it out to be. It’s something to chew on.
Thanks for your comment. You make your point out to be neither coarse nor dumb. If I may, I'd like to briefly map out where your insight fits in the argument I've been too-sketchily articulating.
It seems to me that "the natural development of a life worth fighting to have in the first place, a life that is fun, and surprising, and delightful" is precisely the point of fighting for a measure of democratic say in the behavior of tech firms and other economic behemoths.
The version of the good life advertised by tech firm marketing agencies is a life of ease, frictionlessness, consumption, and disburdenment. And, indeed, many technologies actually make good on this promise. The problem is that this picture is not in fact a picture of a good life. In ease, frictionlessness, and the rest lie uniformity, predictability, passivity, narcissism. And these are things that precisely undermine the conditions for the possibility of truly deep pleasure — of skillful exercise of judgment and embodied prowess, of lovingly attending to the world and others in it, of fun, of surprise, of delight, and, I would add, of grace, in a suitably wide sense of that word.
The encroachment of the logic of technology threatens precisely "the simple things that actually feel good" (as opposed, I presume, to things that give transitory, superficial feelings of goodness). This encroachment is currently perpetrated by firms with negligible checks on their druthers. We mustn't think that we can customer-revolt our way out of being dominated by an unaccountable power. The tech firms, and the market generally, have happily strode into the void left by the decline of religion and other sacred folkways, which used to deploy non-marketized criteria to distinguish between the desire-worthy and the desire-unworthy. Market logic now largely shapes our desires, and digital technology especially does. (While the pluralistic liberal democratic state projects an air of neutrality.) If the tech firms aren't profiting from consumer behavior, they will simply reshape consumer desires. This is why it's worth removing some of the layers that insulate tech firms from democratic pressure: to check their power to nourish desires for things we know aren't the "simple things that actually feel good."
I've been thinking something like this. I especially love "the tech firms, and the market generally, have happily strode into the void" - and I would add "and have been jealously preserving that void, expanding it, and structuring our economy and culture to make it harder and harder to fill otherwise."
Thank you. Yes, exactly.
It is a bit like climate change. Dont deploy unhelpful binaries of individual V system. The best thing you can do as an individual is to build power with others.