? Is technology or culture the problem?
Of course, things have not quite worked out this way. As the late nineteenth-century French sociologist Émile Durkheim perceived, the flipside of free-floating autonomy is anomie — a society without any authoritative norms. Pried from closed communities, many people suffer from pathologies of isolation and purposelessness. Family breakdown, drug
... See morenoemamag.com • Surveillance Capitalism vs. The Surveillance State - NOEMA
The trouble with error is that we have a natural tendency to dismiss it. When Kevin Dunbar analyzed the data from his in vivo studies of microbiology labs, one of his most remarkable findings was just how many experiments produced results that were genuinely unexpected. More than half of the data collected by the researchers deviated significantly
... See moreSteven Johnson • Where Good Ideas Come From
(Jono from Sketchplanations).
Never before in history have so many people been under the gaze of so many strangers. Humans evolved in small groups, defined by kinship: those we knew, knew us. And our imaginative capabilities allowed us to know strangers—kings and queens, heroes of legend, gods above—all manner of at least partly mythic personalities to whom we may have felt as... See more
Chris Hayes • On the Internet, We’re Always Famous
“What I try to focus on is not to try to stop the march of technological progress. Instead, I try to run faster. If Amazon knows you better than you know yourself, then the game is up.” – Yuval Noah Harari
Paul Bogard’s 2013 The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light is probably about as a good a survey of the consequences of light pollution as you’re likely to find. Bogard traces the rise of the regime of artificial lighting and its less than benign consequences for both humans and non-humans, from the
... See moreL. M. Sacasas • What Did We Lose When We Lost the Stars? - The Convivial Society
As we have seen in the previous theses, our digital environment:
Regulates our lives towards a smaller number of paths purposely designed by others rather than trails more fortuitous and exploratory.
Builds up a monolithic authentic self rather than a lush set of mutually-enriching contextual identities.
Is heavily focused on categorising people,