the techno-social environment
It’s the social system technology is embedded in that matters
the techno-social environment
Bits of information provide neither meaning nor orientation. They do not congeal into a narrative. They are purely additive. From a certain point onward, they no longer inform — they deform. They can even darken the world. This puts them in opposition to truth. Truth illuminates the world, while information lives off the attraction of surprise,... See more
NOEMA • All That Is Solid Melts Into Information
the web as we knew it is shoved off the page, a decades-old online civilization of websites reduced to training data for slick chatbots.
John Herrman • Will Google’s AI Plans Destroy the Media?
The breakdown in the old agreements about reality is now the most significant reality, and the world can perhaps best be explained in terms of conflicting and often incompatible narratives.
If you don’t have your counterparty’s trust — or piggyback on someone who does — an exchange of ideas can’t even begin.
Casually, trust is like a currency in that way.
Casually, trust is like a currency in that way.
Mike Elias • Epistemic Reserve Notes
The Faustian bargain of the digital age—free or cheap digital conveniences in exchange for our data—was only ever explained to us after it was already a done deal. And it represents an enormous and radical shift not only in how we live but also, far more importantly, in what our lives are for. We are all mine sites now, data mine sites, and despite
... See moreNaomi Klein • Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World
With the proliferation of digital speech, communication reversed from information to affirmation. We post to reaffirm our standing in the digital tribe.
Andrey Mir • The Digital Reversal. Thread-saga of Media Evolution
But they have nonetheless grown up with an acute consciousness of having an externalized double—a digital double, an idealized identity that is partitioned from their “real” selves and that serves as a role they must perform for the benefit of others if they are to succeed. At the same time, they must project the unwanted and dangerous parts of
... See moreNaomi Klein • Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World
Much of what we do is immediately authenticated as we do it, stored as data, classified or scored on some sort of scale, and deployed in real time to modulate some outcome of interest – usually, the behaviour of a person, or a machine, or an organisation.
The sovereign individual and the paradox of the digital age | Aeon Essays
... See moreThis rearrangement of social and economic conditions around the pursuit of attention is, I'm going to argue, a transformation as profound as the dawn of industrial capitalism and the creation of wage labor as the central form of human toil. Attention now exists as a commodity in the same way labor did in the early years of industrial capitalism.
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