the techno-social environment
It’s the social system technology is embedded in that matters
the techno-social environment
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
It has blurred the distinctions between categories of information—distinctions of form, register, sense, and importance—that the epistemic architecture of the analog era preserved and even accentuated. Content has collapsed, as our adoption of the drab, generic term content to refer to all forms of expression testifies. Everything now has to fit
... See moreNicholas Carr • Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart
semi‐public parlors where people choose their company and set their own rules, spaces that prioritize continuity over reach and coherence over chaos. People will show up not to go viral, but to be seen in context. None of this is about escaping the social internet, but about reclaiming its scale, pace, and purpose.
The Last Days Of Social Media | NOEMA
This current manifestation of the internet and consumer technology is insidiously powerful because of the way that it can mimic these loops that evolved for other things and were necessary for our survival. They’re now essentially being co-opted by a sort of fake system. The tech systems have gotten so good at mimicking these ancient reward
... See moreMichael Easter • Scarcity Brain
Contentment
robhorning.substack.com
... 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.
The
"Clout" is the values-free currency of the always-online age — both a substitute for hard cash and a conduit to it. - Naomi Klein
Politics is fandom — indeed, everything is fandom — because everything is mediated. Most of what we know, feel, and act on is almost exclusively delivered to us through screens, images, text. In practice, there is no clear break between “real life” and “media.” We experience reality the way we experience fiction. Fandom is the organizing principle... See more