Sure, there's "far more to our problems than our smartphones".
But the tendency to delegate our humanity to "the Machine" is behind a huge chunk of our overall problems - and this includes our smartphones, our schemes and technologies for living in general, and even states and legal systems as technologies (i.e. making them stiff and bureucratic and inhuman).
"But if there are demons, there must also be angels. To riff off a recent sighswoon tweet: if God is truly in everything, then God is in the machine too".
God permeates in everything - but God's way is not in everything. If it was, all of universe and life and moral choices would be an slop without any reason to prefer one or the other.
To continue your religious metaphor: God being truly in everything, is in Hell too. But somebody else runs that domain - and its results are the products of that other person's schemes, not God's. Same for AI.
Hmn ... this oral history you're seeking, I think, Kat, is the same as Max Weber's notion of "Verstehen", which might be translated as an understanding of the internal motivations of actors in a situation as they move from state to state, i.e., "what they were thinking" .
This feels highly coincidental, because just yesterday, 14 days before due date, I realized the issue with my media ethnography bachelors thesis is that I didnt even talk to anyone. I saw all the meanings in front of me, as I am half part of the group Im looking into, but I found no way to connect the dots. Reading this is very reassuring, thank you! Off to dialogues I go!
Really? I might take you up on the offer! Even though I started with a clearer goal than ever before, I now feel like nothing makes sense anymore 🙄 whats your preferrable way to converse, dms here on substack?
"I sense that same energy in Luigi Mangione. Not a “socialist folk hero,” but a guy who learned the word “agentic” and believed that health insurance practices were an obstacle to each person maximizing his or her potential.”
I think, in a way, this is implicitly extremely supportive of the assassin and his nihilistic cult. You said yourself that "that energy" is akin to a cup of coffee. Do you feel invigorated when talking about other cold-blooded murderers? Maybe show some empathy for the victim, the kids that lost a father, the wife who lost a husband, instead of (again) trying to turn this subhuman into a martyr via linguistic masturbation.
He is not you, or anyone else's savior, and "fixing health insurance" is not a panacea. That assassin is not Robin Hood. This piece is not journalism.
I don't think right wing identity politics is always recognized as such. Until about 15 years ago the "view from nowhere" was really just the view of white middle class America.
The left went too far by over-emphasizing identity, true. and the backlash was predictable. But the most of the right won't even admit that they're engaging in identity politics.
So it's worth at least labelling it. There's a big difference between Nikki Hailey, Vivek Ramaswamy and the groypers. Hailey is out because Trump un-personed her. Vivek is still hanging on, but the groyper types would happily to kick him out too.
“Internet history is oral history.” Agree. When I joined Tumblr in 2012, I had already noticed something *weird* was happening with gender, and so I *started* on that platform curious about that topic specifically. And so I delved into Tumblr’s offerings from 2012 until I deactivated my account at the end of 2015. Lately, I’ve been finding myself wishing I’d taken screenshots, to try to explain it, but then thinking, “Well, it wouldn’t really do that much good, would it, without the context of being on the site, and experiencing it as it was?”
There simple is no "one history" of anything when we discuss the internet. Obviously that's true for all types of History, but especially when we're talking about the lived history of using a website or engaging in a fan culture: so for example MySpace, early YouTube or LiveJournal, the experience was from the very beginning totally shattered into so many different types of fandom and subculture that a single "experience" isn't possible to document. That's a cool thing, but also a challenge.
Yes! You're reminding me of a tweet I saw chastising specific fans for being upset about something when they did XYZ and it's like--those are probably not the same fans. Fan bases are vast, and there are different subgroups that behave in different ways and have different norms and often war/spar with one another, because people will conflate it all into one unified blob.
Exactly, if anything I think our experience with the internet is MORE homogenized now. Because everyone is using about 7 different massive websites instead of the myriad of websites, forums and proto-social medias like Google Groups and Livejournal back in the day.
Sure, there's "far more to our problems than our smartphones".
But the tendency to delegate our humanity to "the Machine" is behind a huge chunk of our overall problems - and this includes our smartphones, our schemes and technologies for living in general, and even states and legal systems as technologies (i.e. making them stiff and bureucratic and inhuman).
"But if there are demons, there must also be angels. To riff off a recent sighswoon tweet: if God is truly in everything, then God is in the machine too".
God permeates in everything - but God's way is not in everything. If it was, all of universe and life and moral choices would be an slop without any reason to prefer one or the other.
To continue your religious metaphor: God being truly in everything, is in Hell too. But somebody else runs that domain - and its results are the products of that other person's schemes, not God's. Same for AI.
Hmn ... this oral history you're seeking, I think, Kat, is the same as Max Weber's notion of "Verstehen", which might be translated as an understanding of the internal motivations of actors in a situation as they move from state to state, i.e., "what they were thinking" .
This feels highly coincidental, because just yesterday, 14 days before due date, I realized the issue with my media ethnography bachelors thesis is that I didnt even talk to anyone. I saw all the meanings in front of me, as I am half part of the group Im looking into, but I found no way to connect the dots. Reading this is very reassuring, thank you! Off to dialogues I go!
Let me know if you need any help!
Really? I might take you up on the offer! Even though I started with a clearer goal than ever before, I now feel like nothing makes sense anymore 🙄 whats your preferrable way to converse, dms here on substack?
"I sense that same energy in Luigi Mangione. Not a “socialist folk hero,” but a guy who learned the word “agentic” and believed that health insurance practices were an obstacle to each person maximizing his or her potential.”
I think, in a way, this is implicitly extremely supportive of the assassin and his nihilistic cult. You said yourself that "that energy" is akin to a cup of coffee. Do you feel invigorated when talking about other cold-blooded murderers? Maybe show some empathy for the victim, the kids that lost a father, the wife who lost a husband, instead of (again) trying to turn this subhuman into a martyr via linguistic masturbation.
He is not you, or anyone else's savior, and "fixing health insurance" is not a panacea. That assassin is not Robin Hood. This piece is not journalism.
It’s not journalism, it’s a blog post, but you also are misconstruing the meaning, presumably on purpose
I don't think right wing identity politics is always recognized as such. Until about 15 years ago the "view from nowhere" was really just the view of white middle class America.
The left went too far by over-emphasizing identity, true. and the backlash was predictable. But the most of the right won't even admit that they're engaging in identity politics.
So it's worth at least labelling it. There's a big difference between Nikki Hailey, Vivek Ramaswamy and the groypers. Hailey is out because Trump un-personed her. Vivek is still hanging on, but the groyper types would happily to kick him out too.
“Internet history is oral history.” Agree. When I joined Tumblr in 2012, I had already noticed something *weird* was happening with gender, and so I *started* on that platform curious about that topic specifically. And so I delved into Tumblr’s offerings from 2012 until I deactivated my account at the end of 2015. Lately, I’ve been finding myself wishing I’d taken screenshots, to try to explain it, but then thinking, “Well, it wouldn’t really do that much good, would it, without the context of being on the site, and experiencing it as it was?”
We should do an interview! But yes, I have the same thought. I probably DO have screenshots from my own real time usage on my XHD.
Sure, I’d be up for it!
Nowadays I take tons of screenshots; it’s the new scrapbooking. 😛
I agree! That's funnily enough this blog's slogan.
There simple is no "one history" of anything when we discuss the internet. Obviously that's true for all types of History, but especially when we're talking about the lived history of using a website or engaging in a fan culture: so for example MySpace, early YouTube or LiveJournal, the experience was from the very beginning totally shattered into so many different types of fandom and subculture that a single "experience" isn't possible to document. That's a cool thing, but also a challenge.
Yes! You're reminding me of a tweet I saw chastising specific fans for being upset about something when they did XYZ and it's like--those are probably not the same fans. Fan bases are vast, and there are different subgroups that behave in different ways and have different norms and often war/spar with one another, because people will conflate it all into one unified blob.
Exactly, if anything I think our experience with the internet is MORE homogenized now. Because everyone is using about 7 different massive websites instead of the myriad of websites, forums and proto-social medias like Google Groups and Livejournal back in the day.