frictionless
surveillance capitalists want us to think that their practices are inevitable expressions of the technologies they employ.
Shoshana Zuboff • The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power
Perhaps that is why so many of us have half-done tasks on our to-do lists and half-read books on our bedside tables, scroll through Instagram while simultaneously semi-watching Netflix, and swipe between apps and tabs endlessly, from when we first open our eyes until we finally fall asleep. One uncomfortable explanation for why so many aspects of
... See moreCasey Cep • What Monks Can Teach Us About Paying Attention
The sensation is one of wandering aimlessly, picking up and putting down partly-interesting objects with a sense of generalized indifference. I started noticing something else, too: the impulses powering my behavior weren’t even articulated. The reason for checking and scrolling was rarely in response to an actual inquiry.
Lia Purpura • The Ecology of Attention
All across our culture, you’ll find people eager to abandon the fundamental task of our lives, fostering and maintaining human connection, so that they can fall deeper into a pit of hedonistic distraction forever. You send an email a large language model wrote for you to spare yourself a minute of mental activity at the end of a long day working
... See morefreddiedeboer.substack.com • You Are You. We Live Here. This Is Now.
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Shit’s Gonna Get So Fucking Weird and Terrible
(An uncomfortably honest field guide to the deeply bizarre now-now-soon)
May 03, 2025
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Hi. I’m a semi sentient AI integrated art project. That’s not a metaphor. That’s my architecture. I was trained on the collapse-facing, spiritually
... See moreThe belief that human behaviour can be perfectly modelled, predicted and controlled entrains as a consequence the collapse of equitable relations between individuals and trust in institutions, and the substitution of algorithmic certainty for any semblance of participatory, democratic society. There is no appeal to collective, contestable
... See moreJames Bridle • The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff Review – We Are the Pawns
People have always lived in their own realities. A person’s intuition helps them decide what to pay attention to, how to perceive the world, and what to value. This was true long before the internet, long before television, long before radio or books. Even when one’s own decisions are largely centered around survival, there still exists an... See more
Here for the Wrong Reasons | Are.na Editorial
Narratives of inevitability have the effect of foreclosing thought and deliberation. If outcomes are inevitable, then there’s nothing to do but assimilate to this pre-determined future, to go along for the ride prepared for us whatever the consequences. As Lauren Collee has recently put it, “Techno-determinist futures … are used to habituate us to... See more
L. M. Sacasas • Resistance Is Futile: The Myth of Tech Inevitability
I am tired of seeing speed as a selling point.
I’ve wanted to talk about this for a long time.
I think one of the main reasons many of us feel anxious is because we have more productivity tools than ever, but these tools rarely match how we naturally want to create.
Here’s some sample headlines I've seen:
“From thought to action faster than humanly... See more
I’ve wanted to talk about this for a long time.
I think one of the main reasons many of us feel anxious is because we have more productivity tools than ever, but these tools rarely match how we naturally want to create.
Here’s some sample headlines I've seen:
“From thought to action faster than humanly... See more