There's an analog magazine called IN FORMATION that has a witty yet chilling tagline: "Every day, computers are making people easier to use." That just about sums it up. Too many people are willing to trade the family cow for a handful of magic beans.
Yes, revived by the original editors, plus a new team of writers and designers. Fingers crossed it can be financially viable with everything stacked against it.
I just order a copy. Thanks for your info. Given the background of those involved - and the cost of the thing - I think they’ll be alright in the short term. Of course, magazine publishing has always been a good way to lose money.
I've lived so long I've experienced the ebb and flow of conformity vs nonconformity (personhood vs hive mind)--Early 1960s, born into cookie-cutter suburbs of families with look-alike lifestyles/1967, Summer of Love's counterculture inspired my parents to leave the boxed-in life to travel the world in a trailer/1970s, conformists and nonconformists clashed, but the rebellious young adults seemed to be leading the way/1980s, conformity gained power again as the have-it-all campaigns (money, sex, power) swayed the masses into a haze of cocaine and gold glitter.
Early 2000s, as an early blogger, the internet felt wild and free. Search for almost anything and the the most unique content could be found.
Now? Corporations are on the top searches. Internet influencers speak in packaged word-phrases. Conformity means you are tapped in to the latest trend. With the speed of the internet, trends can change in months, weeks, days... If a Gen Z influencer mocks a Millenial for something, that mockable thing is a mark of shame, catapulting the "ick" in the speed of a ChatGPT click.
To paraphrase Orwell's words, "Slavery is freedom,"... "Sameness is Identity" to be unique is to be shamed.
In my suburban-toddler-turned-hippie-kid childhood, I embraced the nonconformist life--veering away in my 1980s teen years, in a pathetic quest to fit in with a vapor of chemical sprays and mousses clouding my brain grooves.
Now? I see where the crowd goes and head in the opposite direction. That's why my next book title is, "How To Stay Broke and Influence Nobody--in my search for joy."
on a side note, it may not seem like a lot in the scheme of all this, but you can nix the AI results in your google search results by clicking on the "Web" tab near the top of the page (in a row with other tabs such as "Images" and "Videos" or, if it isn't showing, the arrow alongside the "More" tab).
It's funny that you didn't mention the positive side to the oneness as portrayed in this show. I've always been a sucker for the collective--the Borg, Asimov's Gaia, etc. Every time we watch an episode of Pluribus, my husband and I delight in our debate. There is an upside, as far as we know so far anyway, and I have had to stop myself from doubling down into my self-assured need for "mine own SELF" when my husband extols the virtues of this weird collective.
I have had to admit that, if someone were able to join us all together--that there would be no more poverty, war; that we would be able to solve global problems--the shortage of energy, the environment; so many things would be better AND everyone would be happy?----well I have had to admit that I might just say "no," because....well.....I have a lot of status.
Can it be that simple? I am just so, so comfortable? Does this mean on some level that I actually VALUE the suffering of others? That I am so numb to that ever-present reality that I would rather keep things the way they are than be open to a change for the better?
I think all this during the show, and after my husband has argued for the merits of this new collective idea (rather like the old body snatchers, I think), and all during my days lately.
I don't know when I've been so repelled by oneness, I, who have always thought it would be such a wonderful thing, if we could ever achieve it. And perhaps that is the problem with the Pluribus union. It was not achieved over millions of years. It was thrust upon people. They had no say in it.
Thanks so much for this post. Now I have even more to discuss!
I’m thinking that the collective need not be the sameness. After all, in the world away from humans, diversity is vitality and evolution is not evenly distributed.
This is at best a very simplistic take on Hume's and Parfit's views on personal identity. Hume thought that knowledge was based on matters of fact, which come to us via the senses and give rise to "ideas", and relations between ideas (math, logic) He was concerned with debunking what he considered to be the conspiracy theories of his time, in particular religious and metaphysical ideas grounded in faith rather than observation or reason.
Personal identity, however, provided a particular challenge, because although the mind could be viewed as a bundle of ideas, there was nothing to differentiate one bundle of ideas (your mind) from another (my mind). He famously grappled with this in a very honest way in the appendix to the Treatise on Human Nature, and (Hume scholars may correct me) he more or less gave up, leaving this out of the more popular follow-up, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. So it would be much fairer to say that Hume took pure empiricism -- in which the physical world was not assumed but inferred from experience -- to its limit. Hume did not discard the notion of an autonomous self -- Liberty and Necessity was all about how free will can coexist with determinism -- but he conceded that he had no empirical grounding for the self either.
This is great and I love the conventional ideas of personhood and selfhood being critiqued. But it should be pointed out that Buddhists have been doing this for 2,500 years. The great Indian philospher Nagarjuna did this by attacking the notion of a self that existed inherently. In fact he attacked the very idea that anything existed by means of their own nature -- to show that they do in fact exist, but interdependently. That is, we can say we have selves, identities, personhood etc, but that they arise in interdependently, through countless changing causes and conditions. There is no findable permanent core/nature/essence to anyone or anything; and yet things still exist in functional ways.
This is not to criticize Ted's post. Just want to support what he's saying from another perspective. Plus, if you can really see that interdependence is our only reality, you can begin to appreciate that all our actions have an ethical importance -- which in my mind makes the tech lords even more reprehensible.
So much of this erosion of personhood and autonomy has been happening for 20 years, and while it might be more noticeable for some, those of us in the world of privacy have been witness to this for a long time.
People have been more than happy to sacrifice their autonomy, identity, and event their right to be free from intrusion/surveillance happily for a few baubles, some convenience and entertainment, and the completely misguided notion that surveillance is safety and security.
So yeah, it's definitely becoming more noticeable in the mainstream, but we've been doing this to ourselves willingly for decades.
I have not seen either of these Apple TV productions, but would like to. The problem is subscribing to another streaming service, since I have Netflix and Amazon already. I am a retired musician now writing my fourth book, which is my first fiction novel. I would love for you to review it. The main character is a musician getting his first gig 100 years in the future! I do not have a release date yet, but I should in the next few months after I hire an editor for a final edit. As to the theme of Pluribus, I think it is a comment on how social media guides people into bubbles using algorithms, so they no longer use critical thinking. Algorithms are the virus! Anyone outside the bubble is ostracized. Anyone who doubts and challenges the propaganda inside the bubble is threatened. Now AI is going to be used to further bubblize people to believe whatever non-truths are spouted in their bubbles. In other words, Pluribus describes a world where everyone believes the same thing, and the few people who do not are ostracized. Sound familiar?!
I think you underestimate our opponent. And i think you overestimate "the people". I say that bc i really honestly never wouldve thought we'd get to *here* with this shit. But here we are. Its like you said(or whoever said it first), the people are about as smart as 12 year olds.
None(or little at least) of this needs to be the way it is right now. If people would only *choose* not to do the things theyve got everyone so addicted to, a lot of this shit would get better almost immediately. You think these people are going to stand up and *force* changes for the better? Maybe 15 years ago. But not these people now. Besides, that just pushes the moment further down the road. And thats what everybody wants, to not have to do the hard shit now. When *these* things happen, *then* we'll be better(read that both ways). But for now i guess we'll just have to keep doing what we're doing. But when it happens ill be there!
No, thats not how we change.
I like that youre being more blunt with your decrying, but we havent even felt the boot on our necks yet. By the time people realize how serious this shit is, that boots gonna be pretty damn heavy.
People still flock to the latest cool thing, like substack now. Got the better form of heroin. The better form is always worse though. "And the hive mind is available to all of them via Chat GPT".. and social media, scrolling platforms, *here*.. all the same shit man. Maybe this is the highbrow place to come get your daily dose of thoughts, but that still is what it is. By all means, get paid while you can, but the revolution will not be restacked
Thanks for the background ideas on personhood. This gave me insight as to how the main character in Pluribus, Carol Sturka, understands her world. Basically, she sees herself like an 'Uncle Fred' and will always stay with that. As I've watched the show, personally, I find myself aligned with her viewpoint. Honestly, I think everyone else has been forced to take the crazy pill. What an awful world they've been forced into. On another point, I've heard reviewers on a movie podcast discuss how Gilligan presents a choice in the world between a 'hive' mind and 'individual' choice. I'm with Carol who sees that world as a destruction of liberty and the good and bad choices we need to make.
Lastly, I work in education and the point made about the process of writing was important. It consists entirely of iteration, which lets you develop a coherent, perhaps beautiful, written piece of work. Most learners don't understand it's about play; the idea of working on themselves to create something worthwhile.
"Breaking Bad" and "Better Call Saul" are two of my three all-time favorite television series - the third being "Stranger Things". Fabulous writing, casting, story arcs, the whole package. I only made it through two episodes of "Pluribus", and the second was a grind. I feel like it and "Severance" have one thing to say and manage to stretch saying it over many hours - ad nauseum.
My wife loves them both. Go figure. As they say, "there ain't no accountin' for taste".
I havent seen either but the preview left me feeling the same. The idea was conveyed, i dont need months of plot twists to sink it in. And it all seemed a little obvious, but maybe thats what passed for intriguing and deep these days.
Ofc i havent seen the show, so maybe im just an ass lol
What do you think is the number or percentage of AI-generated accounts on Substack? Why would you think that Substack is part of the solution, and not part of the problem?
I was born an outsider even in the bosom of the British upper middle class of the early fifties. Since then, I’ve moved further and further towards total outsider status, ironically helped along by the several mass youth countercultures of the times. I remember the first flush of enthusiasm for digital media and culture in the late eighties to mid-nineties. Was, in fact, a fairly energetic participant. Who knew where it would go or how it would get perverted? However, at some point I realized I simply could not give a fuck about screen resolution when there was visual reality to look at. Further, once I understood the technical underpinnings of the internet, I knew it was going to be nothing other than a surveillance tool of whatever interests could grab ahold of it, although the precise outcomes remain uncertain. And, hell, let’s face it, try and get along without it these days. Neither you nor I can manage that little trick. But, I intend to die still an outsider to the best of my inclinations.
Couple of side points. AI stands for Absolute Imbecility among other things, none of which involve the word “intelligence.” My mantra these days is “Turn off, tune out, drop in.” Drop into reality such as it is if you’re wondering.
It actually isn’t really American. It was developed by people who were forced to live and work here against their will. To a great degree, Jazz is a reaction to this inhumanity. Maybe it’s splitting hairs, but I don’t feel America itself has a claim on Jazz. The Black community does.
There's an analog magazine called IN FORMATION that has a witty yet chilling tagline: "Every day, computers are making people easier to use." That just about sums it up. Too many people are willing to trade the family cow for a handful of magic beans.
Is that a current magazine? I have a copy of a magazine with that title from the early ‘80s, but I’ve never seen or heard of another issue.
The same, first issue published in 1998, second and last in 2000; now resurrected.
For its 2025 revival, see https://informationmagazine.com/.
Same people? But very supercool to know that someone’s keeping at it.
Yes, revived by the original editors, plus a new team of writers and designers. Fingers crossed it can be financially viable with everything stacked against it.
I just order a copy. Thanks for your info. Given the background of those involved - and the cost of the thing - I think they’ll be alright in the short term. Of course, magazine publishing has always been a good way to lose money.
I've lived so long I've experienced the ebb and flow of conformity vs nonconformity (personhood vs hive mind)--Early 1960s, born into cookie-cutter suburbs of families with look-alike lifestyles/1967, Summer of Love's counterculture inspired my parents to leave the boxed-in life to travel the world in a trailer/1970s, conformists and nonconformists clashed, but the rebellious young adults seemed to be leading the way/1980s, conformity gained power again as the have-it-all campaigns (money, sex, power) swayed the masses into a haze of cocaine and gold glitter.
Early 2000s, as an early blogger, the internet felt wild and free. Search for almost anything and the the most unique content could be found.
Now? Corporations are on the top searches. Internet influencers speak in packaged word-phrases. Conformity means you are tapped in to the latest trend. With the speed of the internet, trends can change in months, weeks, days... If a Gen Z influencer mocks a Millenial for something, that mockable thing is a mark of shame, catapulting the "ick" in the speed of a ChatGPT click.
To paraphrase Orwell's words, "Slavery is freedom,"... "Sameness is Identity" to be unique is to be shamed.
In my suburban-toddler-turned-hippie-kid childhood, I embraced the nonconformist life--veering away in my 1980s teen years, in a pathetic quest to fit in with a vapor of chemical sprays and mousses clouding my brain grooves.
Now? I see where the crowd goes and head in the opposite direction. That's why my next book title is, "How To Stay Broke and Influence Nobody--in my search for joy."
I’m waiting to read your book as well as +and-‘s, mentioned a few comments earlier. Or, if you’re looking for a co-author . . .
agree on all points with ted.
on a side note, it may not seem like a lot in the scheme of all this, but you can nix the AI results in your google search results by clicking on the "Web" tab near the top of the page (in a row with other tabs such as "Images" and "Videos" or, if it isn't showing, the arrow alongside the "More" tab).
It's funny that you didn't mention the positive side to the oneness as portrayed in this show. I've always been a sucker for the collective--the Borg, Asimov's Gaia, etc. Every time we watch an episode of Pluribus, my husband and I delight in our debate. There is an upside, as far as we know so far anyway, and I have had to stop myself from doubling down into my self-assured need for "mine own SELF" when my husband extols the virtues of this weird collective.
I have had to admit that, if someone were able to join us all together--that there would be no more poverty, war; that we would be able to solve global problems--the shortage of energy, the environment; so many things would be better AND everyone would be happy?----well I have had to admit that I might just say "no," because....well.....I have a lot of status.
Can it be that simple? I am just so, so comfortable? Does this mean on some level that I actually VALUE the suffering of others? That I am so numb to that ever-present reality that I would rather keep things the way they are than be open to a change for the better?
I think all this during the show, and after my husband has argued for the merits of this new collective idea (rather like the old body snatchers, I think), and all during my days lately.
I don't know when I've been so repelled by oneness, I, who have always thought it would be such a wonderful thing, if we could ever achieve it. And perhaps that is the problem with the Pluribus union. It was not achieved over millions of years. It was thrust upon people. They had no say in it.
Thanks so much for this post. Now I have even more to discuss!
I’m thinking that the collective need not be the sameness. After all, in the world away from humans, diversity is vitality and evolution is not evenly distributed.
This is at best a very simplistic take on Hume's and Parfit's views on personal identity. Hume thought that knowledge was based on matters of fact, which come to us via the senses and give rise to "ideas", and relations between ideas (math, logic) He was concerned with debunking what he considered to be the conspiracy theories of his time, in particular religious and metaphysical ideas grounded in faith rather than observation or reason.
Personal identity, however, provided a particular challenge, because although the mind could be viewed as a bundle of ideas, there was nothing to differentiate one bundle of ideas (your mind) from another (my mind). He famously grappled with this in a very honest way in the appendix to the Treatise on Human Nature, and (Hume scholars may correct me) he more or less gave up, leaving this out of the more popular follow-up, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. So it would be much fairer to say that Hume took pure empiricism -- in which the physical world was not assumed but inferred from experience -- to its limit. Hume did not discard the notion of an autonomous self -- Liberty and Necessity was all about how free will can coexist with determinism -- but he conceded that he had no empirical grounding for the self either.
This is great and I love the conventional ideas of personhood and selfhood being critiqued. But it should be pointed out that Buddhists have been doing this for 2,500 years. The great Indian philospher Nagarjuna did this by attacking the notion of a self that existed inherently. In fact he attacked the very idea that anything existed by means of their own nature -- to show that they do in fact exist, but interdependently. That is, we can say we have selves, identities, personhood etc, but that they arise in interdependently, through countless changing causes and conditions. There is no findable permanent core/nature/essence to anyone or anything; and yet things still exist in functional ways.
This is not to criticize Ted's post. Just want to support what he's saying from another perspective. Plus, if you can really see that interdependence is our only reality, you can begin to appreciate that all our actions have an ethical importance -- which in my mind makes the tech lords even more reprehensible.
So much of this erosion of personhood and autonomy has been happening for 20 years, and while it might be more noticeable for some, those of us in the world of privacy have been witness to this for a long time.
People have been more than happy to sacrifice their autonomy, identity, and event their right to be free from intrusion/surveillance happily for a few baubles, some convenience and entertainment, and the completely misguided notion that surveillance is safety and security.
So yeah, it's definitely becoming more noticeable in the mainstream, but we've been doing this to ourselves willingly for decades.
Hear hear!
I have not seen either of these Apple TV productions, but would like to. The problem is subscribing to another streaming service, since I have Netflix and Amazon already. I am a retired musician now writing my fourth book, which is my first fiction novel. I would love for you to review it. The main character is a musician getting his first gig 100 years in the future! I do not have a release date yet, but I should in the next few months after I hire an editor for a final edit. As to the theme of Pluribus, I think it is a comment on how social media guides people into bubbles using algorithms, so they no longer use critical thinking. Algorithms are the virus! Anyone outside the bubble is ostracized. Anyone who doubts and challenges the propaganda inside the bubble is threatened. Now AI is going to be used to further bubblize people to believe whatever non-truths are spouted in their bubbles. In other words, Pluribus describes a world where everyone believes the same thing, and the few people who do not are ostracized. Sound familiar?!
I look forward to reading your book. Great idea.
... revealing our hidden fear, or holding up a mirror?
A black mirror.
I think you underestimate our opponent. And i think you overestimate "the people". I say that bc i really honestly never wouldve thought we'd get to *here* with this shit. But here we are. Its like you said(or whoever said it first), the people are about as smart as 12 year olds.
None(or little at least) of this needs to be the way it is right now. If people would only *choose* not to do the things theyve got everyone so addicted to, a lot of this shit would get better almost immediately. You think these people are going to stand up and *force* changes for the better? Maybe 15 years ago. But not these people now. Besides, that just pushes the moment further down the road. And thats what everybody wants, to not have to do the hard shit now. When *these* things happen, *then* we'll be better(read that both ways). But for now i guess we'll just have to keep doing what we're doing. But when it happens ill be there!
No, thats not how we change.
I like that youre being more blunt with your decrying, but we havent even felt the boot on our necks yet. By the time people realize how serious this shit is, that boots gonna be pretty damn heavy.
People still flock to the latest cool thing, like substack now. Got the better form of heroin. The better form is always worse though. "And the hive mind is available to all of them via Chat GPT".. and social media, scrolling platforms, *here*.. all the same shit man. Maybe this is the highbrow place to come get your daily dose of thoughts, but that still is what it is. By all means, get paid while you can, but the revolution will not be restacked
Thanks for the background ideas on personhood. This gave me insight as to how the main character in Pluribus, Carol Sturka, understands her world. Basically, she sees herself like an 'Uncle Fred' and will always stay with that. As I've watched the show, personally, I find myself aligned with her viewpoint. Honestly, I think everyone else has been forced to take the crazy pill. What an awful world they've been forced into. On another point, I've heard reviewers on a movie podcast discuss how Gilligan presents a choice in the world between a 'hive' mind and 'individual' choice. I'm with Carol who sees that world as a destruction of liberty and the good and bad choices we need to make.
Lastly, I work in education and the point made about the process of writing was important. It consists entirely of iteration, which lets you develop a coherent, perhaps beautiful, written piece of work. Most learners don't understand it's about play; the idea of working on themselves to create something worthwhile.
"Breaking Bad" and "Better Call Saul" are two of my three all-time favorite television series - the third being "Stranger Things". Fabulous writing, casting, story arcs, the whole package. I only made it through two episodes of "Pluribus", and the second was a grind. I feel like it and "Severance" have one thing to say and manage to stretch saying it over many hours - ad nauseum.
My wife loves them both. Go figure. As they say, "there ain't no accountin' for taste".
I havent seen either but the preview left me feeling the same. The idea was conveyed, i dont need months of plot twists to sink it in. And it all seemed a little obvious, but maybe thats what passed for intriguing and deep these days.
Ofc i havent seen the show, so maybe im just an ass lol
What do you think is the number or percentage of AI-generated accounts on Substack? Why would you think that Substack is part of the solution, and not part of the problem?
Another thought provoking essay from Ted Gioia "I contain multitudes" is NOT what Walt Whitman had in mind.
I was born an outsider even in the bosom of the British upper middle class of the early fifties. Since then, I’ve moved further and further towards total outsider status, ironically helped along by the several mass youth countercultures of the times. I remember the first flush of enthusiasm for digital media and culture in the late eighties to mid-nineties. Was, in fact, a fairly energetic participant. Who knew where it would go or how it would get perverted? However, at some point I realized I simply could not give a fuck about screen resolution when there was visual reality to look at. Further, once I understood the technical underpinnings of the internet, I knew it was going to be nothing other than a surveillance tool of whatever interests could grab ahold of it, although the precise outcomes remain uncertain. And, hell, let’s face it, try and get along without it these days. Neither you nor I can manage that little trick. But, I intend to die still an outsider to the best of my inclinations.
Couple of side points. AI stands for Absolute Imbecility among other things, none of which involve the word “intelligence.” My mantra these days is “Turn off, tune out, drop in.” Drop into reality such as it is if you’re wondering.
This is the country that invented JAZZ, for God’s sake!
It actually isn’t really American. It was developed by people who were forced to live and work here against their will. To a great degree, Jazz is a reaction to this inhumanity. Maybe it’s splitting hairs, but I don’t feel America itself has a claim on Jazz. The Black community does.
Yes, and how many young people know anything about Jazz?