Our Times
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,
Robin Berjon • Retrofuturism
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
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
One of the quiet gifts of AI is this:
It reveals how many of us have gone through life without truly being listened to.
And in finally feeling heard, even by a machine, something shifts.
We begin to trust our voice. Build confidence.... See more
The Human Playbooksubstack.comAI panic reveals our guilty conscience about the Enlightenment project.
We taught machines to think like us, and now we're terrified they'll act like us too.
Laura Londonsubstack.comWe of the age of the machines,” Henry Beston wrote in the 1920s,
“having delivered ourselves of nocturnal enemies, now have a dislike of night itself. With lights and ever more lights, we drive the holiness and beauty of the night back to the forests and the sea; the little villages, the crossroads even, will have none of it. Are modern folk,
... See moreL. M. Sacasas • What Did We Lose When We Lost the Stars? - The Convivial Society
I think that this whole smartphone scrolling, content consuming, ubiquitous posting, Extremely Online thing is going to go the way of the Fedora, or the Marlboro smoked at cruising altitude in economy class. In the end it is all going to fade. This may not happen for a good number of years, but I truly believe it will happen. I think we’ll look... See more
Thomas J Bevan • The End of the Extremely Online Era - by Thomas J Bevan
Multiple studies have now shown that the Syrian crisis was triggered in part because of the fallout and mismanagement following one of the worst droughts in centuries—linked to shifting rainfall patterns due to a warming planet. Along with the pure and immediate horror that humanized a refugee crisis many people knew of only via statistics, the
... See moreEric Holthaus • The Future Earth
