Our Times
We 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
Other drugs that are not considered to be harmful and are used regularly—caffeine, for example—are accepted as enjoyable accoutrements to life, as helping us get along with, or at the very least bear, our daily tasks. Social media is not just accepted—it’s also seen as something functionally beneficial, something that not only supports but also
... See moreit • Using - Damage
So floriert oberhalb einer relativ niedrigen Einkommensschicht fast überall da, wo beschleunigter Konsum zur Normalität geworden ist, eine nichtssagende Nettigkeit – und zwar nicht nur in bestimmten sozialen Schichten, Berufs- oder Altersgruppen. Paul Valéry glaubte schon in den zwanziger Jahren vorauszusehen, dass die technokratische Zivilisation
... See moreJonathan Crary und Thomas Laugstien • 24/7
I actually think there is far too little panic (or better yet, apprehension) about AI. I even see many Christian friends speak enthusiastically about it as a “helpful tool” rather than an alien agent. I first noticed about 10 years ago that one way to get a machine to pass the Turing Test is to make it more human-like, but perhaps the easier method... See more
John Halbigsubstack.comNarratives 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
The dawn of the third millennium is characterized by an enormous difficulty in imagining the future. We fear the worst. There is no longer expectation, or an opening to the future. Rather, the future seems closed: in the best-case scenario, it is destined to reproduce the past, reiterating it in a present that appears in the trappings of a future
... See moreDonatella Di Cesare und David Broder • Immunodemocracy
Schlick also understood that his call to playfulness was not a self-help psychological switch that can be turned on and off. It also requires structural change to do away with work that is ‘mechanical, brutalising, degrading’ or work that serves to ‘produce only trash and empty luxury’. This means that capitalism, which subjects workers to severe
... See more