Our Times
Yet, smartphones are much more than an accumulation of improvements in hardware and software into a pocket-sized device that we spend too much time looking at. They represent something entirely new. When we pick up our phones, our taps and swipes engage not only a system of hardware and software, but also something much bigger—a set of
... See moreNicole Aschoff • The Smartphone Society
Der russische Philosoph Michail Bachtin (1895–1975) war der Ansicht, Menschen zu täuschen heißt, sie zu Objekten zu machen. Aber warum sollte ein Objekt glauben, das sei schlimm?
Timothy Snyder, Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (IWM) und Andreas Wirthensohn • Und Wie Elektrische Schafe Träumen Wir
Narratives may not be adequate for understanding the complex reality that confronts us, but they may nonetheless be necessary to get us to do act responsibly in the face of that reality. In other words, we’re now operating at a scale for which our most basic cognitive tool may no longer be adequate.
L. M. Sacasas • Narrative Collapse
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
Young people do not degenerate; this occurs only after grown men have already become corrupt,” wrote Montesquieu in the eighteenth century.1 Our children may take this statement to heart when they find that their elders are leaving them with a poorer future. Three-quarters of American adults today are not confident that their children will be
... See moreJoel Kotkin • The Coming of Neo-Feudalism
Was in anderen medialen Zeiten ein John F. Kennedy, eine Mutter Teresa, ein Nelson Mandela oder in Frankreich Simone Weil waren - anerkannt über die politischen Lager hinweg -, solch eine Person wäre heute Ansporn und Auftrag für die digitalen Hassfabriken der ganzen Welt.
Nils Minkmar • Kate, Moskau Und X: Wir Haben Ein Ego-Problem
“Bad times! Hard times!” — this is what people are saying. But let us live well, and the times shall be well. We are the times. Such as we are, such are the times.
—St. Augustine of Hippo, a sermon on prayer during the slow collapse of the Roman Empire
Millions of people — and white people in particular — would rather endure physical isolation, generalized loneliness, caregiving exhaustion, and financial precarity than relinquish some of their societal power. That’s a far less optimistic foundational myth than individualism. But it’s a far more honest one.