the techno-social environment
It’s the social system technology is embedded in that matters
the techno-social environment
the way that our world – digitally mediated, utterly consumed by capitalism – makes communication about morality very easy but makes actual moral living very hard.
The I in the Internet
What defines orality as a cognitive and cultural trait is not vocal performance, but its opposition to literacy, which forms the dichotomy “environmental/tribal immersion vs. detachment.” Similar to the condition of primary orality, digital media enable environmental immersion.
Andrey Mir • The Digital Reversal. Thread-saga of Media Evolution
The more benefits a network provides, the more it enslaves its users.
Three factors keep us on a given platform: its monopolistic aptitude, its habit-forming design, and the fact that users can earn a return on their investment only on the platform they’re invested in. Much like a genie enslaved to his lamp, users cannot escape these magical apps.
Three factors keep us on a given platform: its monopolistic aptitude, its habit-forming design, and the fact that users can earn a return on their investment only on the platform they’re invested in. Much like a genie enslaved to his lamp, users cannot escape these magical apps.
Andrey Mir • The platform paradox
the multi-personal nature of our digital presence. We are forced to be digital multi-persons by the niche design of the platforms, as they seek to extract more of our data and attention by making us exercise the various forms of self-representation.
Andrey Mir • The platform paradox
self-representations in order to co-produce the digital mirror-world.
Where we had once been free to be ourselves online, we were now chained to ourselves online, and this made us self-conscious. Platforms that promised connection began inducing mass alienation.
The I in the Internet
The network is less a tool than a habitation, less an apparatus than an environment. We don’t just use it to get things done. We are, as Adorno foresaw, incorporated into it as components. We’re nodes, continuously receiving and transmitting signals. The ethos of the system is one of documentation and representation. We’re all jointly engaged in... See more
All the Little Data
When looking at the Mirror World, it can seem obvious that millions of people have given themselves over to fantasy, to make-believe, to playacting. The trickier thing, the uncanny thing, really, is that’s what they see when they look at us. They say we live in a “clown world,” are stuck in “the matrix” of “groupthink,” are suffering from a form of
... See moreNaomi Klein • Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World
We live in a mega-scale corporate capitalist economy, and in such a setting technology is never used to save time. It’s used to speed up production and consumption in order to expand the system. The basic rule is this: technology doesn't make our lives easier. It makes them faster and more crammed with stuff.
Brett Scott • Tech Doesn’t Make Our Lives Easier. It Makes Them Faster
The Database dramatically expands access to information, challenging the authority of even the most venerable professional weavers of Narrative. Official narratives are just one more datapoint, one more entry in the Database, one way among many of generating a path through the entries.