Political Expectations

It’s always hard writing your first piece of the year. But with the upcoming inauguration, Luigi Mangione, the ramifications of illegal immigration I see behind my home in New York, the safety of our public transportation system... I know that I am witnessing an avoidable decline. That our political expectations are embarrassingly low. And that we’... See more

There’s a joke around “the best minds of my generation were tasked with getting people to click on ads”. At least you can attribute those ads to powering free global communications, information networks, and technical research.

I’d argue that the most creative minds of my generation were told to believe that creating yet another self-satisfying pro... See more

We shifted from cyberpunk manifestos, to corporate networks and the commoditization of the user for economic extraction.

Cyberspace is a black hole. It absorbs energy and personality. And then represents it as an emotional spectacle. It is done by businesses that commodify human interaction and emotion. And we are getting lost in the spectacle.

— an

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Let’s start with the reality that this idea of satiating the internal of an individual is also deeply embedded in the philosophy of internet technologies. That Ayn Rand was, and maintains to be, a philosophical hero that helped to invent the mythos of the self-made Silicon Valley hero that many founders strive to be.

We shifted from cyberpunk manifestos, to corporate networks and the commoditization of the user for economic extraction.

It doesn’t matter what side you are on. There has to be an orientation towards substantiality. That is the language, and thus expectation, we need to reinforce.

Technologist tended to view their world as somewhat insulated, despite having mass impact on culture and society at large. But over the past decade, at minimum, there’s been far more collisions of scenes. Both production oriented and deeply intellectual.

It is not a critical approach towards values, policy, nor the subsequent consequences of these artifacts. We experience our political landscape through the veneer of our “ discourse interfaces” (that’s a Reggie phrase) .

Most directly the movement of pop-up cities / city founding projects. These are as bald as it gets in terms of developing a new politic through the technologist lens.

“The culture” as a phrase, has been unfortunately hijacked by the artistic class to mean the byproducts of their creativity. But this is an incomplete picture of our culture. Culture is the difference between car-centricity and walkable neighborhoods. Culture is the values we place on our food system. Culture is the quality of our public goods and ... See more