Daily Writing
linguistic entrenchment Ⅲ: digitally defined
Where do we turn for news in the world, truth about life, and connection to other people?
Information, worldview, community. We seek these through the gentle clicks and haptics of our keyboards. Through the glow of a screen on a Google search. Through the infinite scroll of a media distributor’s feed.
The internet is our culture’s principal mode of knowing about itself.
The implications of this idea are multifarious…
How the internet presents the world becomes the model for how the world presents itself.
The internet created social media platforms to “connect the world.” Instead of connecting the world, it created a new one that incentivizes “connection” through parasocial relationships. Even those we know offline are commoditized in this alternate reality as “likes” and “friends” through simple, dopamine-releasing design features. This reductionism seeps into our interactions with nature, travel, and learning. The model for online growth prompts users to ransack their experiences for whatever content available.
How the internet licenses truth becomes the way truth seeks to be licensed.
The destruction of context, doxxing of characters, and denial of grounds to have a conversation have reached a heightened prevalence in public discourse. From its early days, the internet proffered answers to infinite queries through one-line searches and, in return, one-line answers. Hyperlinks add to the mess as they propel readers through a series of strung-together texts to gain only that information necessary to understand their original probe from the barest extraneous details.
The syntax of the internet is speed and always has been. Efficiency is the goal that devours competitors who race to create the (next) fastest micro-processor or software bump. This is the conduit truth must travel to reach each pair of bored, inattentive, sluggish eyes. This same channel eviscerates dialogue. As the medium dictates the message, so too does the prudent user find themselves at odds with any attempts at serious, analytical discussion.
How the internet interacts with its constituents becomes the way its constituents interact with each other.
We are torn asunder from locality to centrality. Forgetting our sense of home, globalization and the internet age lure us from good-faith communication and tight-knit community in tandem. We’ve all felt it. Increasing hostility across ideological lines. Decreasing tethers to common points of connection. The subtle impression that the device and network in our pocket knows us better than the person across the table ever could. We await Cupid’s Kiss from convenience-tech that caused the slumber from which some never wake. Like Psyche in her mythological slumber, we become “a corpse asleep” drifting down a digital Styx…
linguistic entrenchment Ⅱ
Innovations in spreadsheets were designed by colonialists to measure the time of slave workers and optimize productivity. The clock was created by monastic devotees intent on fixing their time around prayer. In Phaedrus, Plato writes of an Egyptian king, Thamus, appraising the work of a god of science and magic:
Theuth, my paragon of inventors, the discoverer of an art is not the best judge of the good or harm which will accrue to those who practice it. So it is in this; you, who are the father of writing, have out of fondness for your off-spring attributed to it quite the opposite of its real function…
Today, spreadsheets power businesses, small and large, to spread wealth, create infrastructure, and manage the production of new parts of culture. The clock dictates a rhythm of work that relentlessly oppresses both ends of the wealth gap.
Not even those who invent a technology can be assumed to be reliable prophets…
- Neil Postman
If history is written by the victor, what should we know about our tools? Could those who gained mastery first have shaped language that circles them? How did the dissemination of access to innovation change our perspective on it?
Ford pioneered to demonstrate mastery of the stopwatch. His use of Fredrick Taylor’s time-motion studies created a new playbook for industrialization still in use today. Time became money in his conception. And this idea trickled down to play out its hand throughout the rest of western society for a century…
linguistic entrenchment
You must first dig the roots to chop the tree…
At the root of most ideas is language. We find ourselves entrenched in ways of doing because of our ways of speaking. This is largely because of the obvious: we can’t have discourse without language. So many parts of culture are shaped by definitions that have settled into the sub-strata of societal norms. “Time is money”, “money is power,” “seeing is believing.” These are accepted not because of their veracity, but because of repetition.
When we reach for answers, we look to the practical, present, and pervasive. Meanwhile, the thoughtful, true, and time-tested lay unused in a history book or philosophical treatise. In the midst of uncertainty or crisis, to which do we turn?
The dangerous race of technology is worsened by language that is itself part of the problem. This cycle persists because of the nature of technology. Postman argues that, “because of its lengthy, intimate, and inevitable relationship with culture, technology does not invite a close examination of its own consequences.” An innocuous malady entrenches language that perpetuates a willful ignorance.
Death begets death begets death…
Vicious cycles are defined by their titular adjective. There is a cruelty to falling into a pit with slippery edges of our own making. By its nature, information glut increases everyday. Without barriers, language models “improve” to sow more misinformed or shallow data throughout the internet. Exponentials we see daily extend our struggle through the chasm of understanding.
The betrayal of provenance we embrace should be a reminder of what is essential. Language is essential. It’s also what we make of it, so we must remake those parts warped by our folly into something better.
Forgetting is essential to learning,
just as exhaling is essential to breathing.
Breathe out, then in.
Find the self,
then lose it once again.- Pierce Brown
resistance and dreams
What do you want?
Because dreams are essential to create a life. Think about it. Meditate upon it.
Where are you getting your vision of what philosophers have commonly called, “the good life”?
We all receive a vision of what we want our life to be from somewhere. We are passed down a vision from our parents or a story we read when we were younger. We find teachers along the way who endow us with their wisdom for the journey. We hear about injustice and create counter-narratives to strive towards.
Throughout the lives of many who are privileged enough, we ask this question and we choose. We choose to pursue the vision we have crafted with everything in us. Or we choose to ignore the relentless pull of our dreams in favor of mediocrity or complacency. Right now, you’re choosing. Choosing to fight for what you believe or lie down in the face of resistance.
Many of us wake up one day and find a false vision painted for us by technology. We see our decisions and habits have formed us in a direction we do not want to go. Our life is not in line with the hope we once had. Our day is filled with reductive or downright harmful nonsense. The lull of technological innovation trends humanity toward comfort and inaction. We stall out as our machines throttle on.
In the midst of this realization, responses vary. Many allow resistance to continue to wash over them and dictate their choices. They see it continue to run their lives fully unaffected by the novel truth they once knew. Resistance becomes the song they sing with the constant refrains we all know too well (I won’t remind you).
The incredibly lucky among us, though, find people. They discover that to their left and their right are others who, in spite of resistance pounding on their door, wake up everyday for something. Whether it be a vision, a dependent, an injustice, or a wonder, they fight to bring their visions to life and bring others along for the ride.
If you find yourself as one of those who lucked out, who was truly blessed enough to have someone nearby clinging on for both of your dear lives, fight. Fight resistance because the dream is worth it.
Technology is resistance, people are dreams.
analog tech
We’re in the midst of a great upheaval and advance in the use of digital technology.
Language models are embedded ad nauseam into tools that, daily, transform the worlds of work, art, and philosophy. With each newly released API, we argue for more reliance on computers and their accoutrements. With every billion dollar investment, we chart a path further from the world of those antithetical technologies that, for so long, intentionally gave us less than we knew we could want.
A polaroid cannot be uploaded to the cloud for safe-keeping. Nor can a record player skip to a specific song with ease and exactitude. A typewriter has no backspace. And a cinematic projector does not have streaming services built-in for your viewing pleasure…
These (alongside journals, analog watches, and radios) are the last bastion of an age dying a prolonged death. Their charm now only appeals to hipster Zoomers and die-hard Boomer’s as the lure of digital superpowers entice the majority. These tools are called antiquated and inefficient.
Interestingly, the argument against every one of those is also the reason for it. (Just as Michael Scott said his weaknesses are that, “I work too hard, I care too much, and sometimes I can be too invested in my job”).
A polaroid is made sacred by its singular, tactile nature. A vinyl listener enjoys the effort and experience of the whole album. A typewriter discourages confusion between the edit and the creation. The projector forces movie-goers to place greater value on the film as a piece of art and not a commodity…
These designs are enriching. They bring us back to ourselves and abuse us of the notion that we can be gods.
But we may be at risk of losing these gems entirely. As the printed word has decreased in cultural and economic value in our time, these analog technologies are seen as less “productive” or “practical” and simply as luxury items. We have inherited the insatiable craving to upgrade all our tools and “pour water in already-thin soup.” More and more innovation on the tech-scape hemorrhages our focus from work on the ever-growing problem-scape. Digital tech rushes along the path of increased integration and activation with no heed to externalities and no concerns about the purpose of infinite growth.
In its wake stands the world of analog, often only sought after for its nostalgia or aesthetic, never its utility. In today's world of instantly immersive experiences and personally automated interactions, analog tech is a fly in the ointment, a crack in the canvas, as Doyle might say. Record players and typewriters are quirky oddities at best, clunky clutter at worst. With unlimited access to crystal clear audio, the practice of setting a record and dropping a needle seems ineffectual and cumbersome. A lack of spellcheck and a 'backspace' key is impractical, so a notebook pales in comparison to its feature-rich descendant in numerous software forms.
Aesthetic, nostalgia, and awareness are ephemeral qualities that matter in the face of all-consuming digital machines. Convenience has proven to be fatal, multi-tasking a lie, and productivity a fleeting end in itself. The tactile, "realer than real, truer than true", beautifully imperfect nature of these now antiquated tools is on offer to us. The cost is a paradigm shift.
Analog tech can be defined, though it has never been of enough worth to do so, as a tool that differs from digital technology because of two vital factors: friction and restriction.
Friction is a trait we have been conditioned to believe is bad. In actuality, it is neutral.
In popular habit-forming literature, some of the best advice has to do with decreasing friction to lower a task's startup cost. Place your running shoes by the bed, lay a book atop your nightstand. The design of your environment in these examples diminishes friction to produce smooth and reliable on-ramps for new habits.
The same advice cautions its readers to increase friction around habits they want to rewrite. Avoid keeping sugar-filled foods in the pantry, leave your phone outside your bedroom at night. These are road-blocks to bingeing foods and entertainment that typically do not net positive in our lives. Friction is a tool to be applied or removed as needed.
A smartphone, like all digital technologies, is coded on the promise of efficient and effective operation. We know a Google search will bring an answer to our screens within milliseconds. We send text messages with the expectation and desire that our need to connect with another soul will be met rapidly.
What we don't often do on digital technology is deeply mull through and analyze information for nuance and wisdom. The invention of the search bar and Search Engine Optimization created a new language to permeate our online interactions. We all have developed a natural understanding of how to manipulate a browser window for the information we need. Very quickly, I can find 9 summations of Tolstoy's War and Peace that detail the author's thoughts on classicism and wealth without ever having to encounter the man himself. Nicholas Carr writes about the shape our minds have taken and the loss we feel only three decades into our hubris. "O'Shea, a philosophy major, doesn't see any reason to plow through chapters of text when it takes but a minute or two to cherry-pick the pertinent passages using Google Book Search." Reduced friction for supra-human ability (but we'll return to this idea in a moment).
The world constructed around us is filled with conveniences to numb us in the dull moments. Streaming Netflix and Podcasts increase our streaming hours and replace analog tech like the projector and books. Spotify and Apple Music have increased our listening hours, but decreased the number of us proficient in playing the instruments receding further into the background.
With the ability to choose from age-old or day-old art, entertainment, and information, we are quick to believe stories of our supremacy in the natural order. Enter, restriction.
A typewriter only types. A record player won’t play CD’s or stream Apple Music. A journal will stay empty until you put in the work to manually write in your thoughts.
These are features. The temptation to prefer that which provides multiple functions is strong. Our world praises multi-tasking. We load iPads with every imaginable app and call it “simplicity” despite its form and ethos contradicting this move. We are tricked into an ephemeral power that is not our’s.
It’s hard to stand in the way of this “innovation” and say an old way is better. Freedom is not contemporarily defined by limitation but by the obliteration of boundaries. But it is those who find freedom in less, restraint, and austerity that realize they have access to a host of “features” through virtue, presence, and perspective.
Restriction and friction are not commonly held aloft as note-worthy. Not many see the value in venturing down their beaten path. But does Frost not implore us in this direction? What would it take for you to return to the conclusion that loss is gain and less is more? What would it take to risk the road less traveled?
a cancerous garden
“The uncontrolled growth of technology destroys the vital sources of humanity…” - Neil Postman
Gardening is the grounded art of taking what needs attention and cultivating something fresh from something inert. It is a beautiful expression of so many metaphors and allusions to the human heart and spirit. The patience, care, and knowledge required for this task represents what many have recognized in the struggle for meaning. The cardinal virtues are those qualities that theologians and philosophers have told us we must guard, prune, and nourish to produce fruit. These parts of us are essential to right living.
Technology’s growth can be described in two ways. A cancerous growth finds weakened areas of the body to attach to as it sucks away at life, slowly atrophying what was once vibrant and clean. A plant’s growth, absent a gardener, rewilds a space to create an ecosphere of life fit for all kinds of other plants and animals to thrive within. The parallel between these two metaphors is that they are both biomes unfit for human life.
Today, we find ourselves in a world of technological progress that has planted deep roots and sprouted weeds. Social media has inadvertently effected more than just our social lives. It has been a detriment to our reasoning and sense-making, political struggles and unity, and our lifestyles and health. We collectively witness our time slip from the hourglass never to return. We know the dangers of investing too much of ourselves to an online mirage that hides from the fact that our growth as a species is stunted. Yet we persist.
Neither a gardener nor a surgeon has appeared to prune the overgrowth. Every technology brings with it a new set of privileges, laws, and social norms that should be interrogated and pruned as needed.
We should be conscious of this fact: the platforms we use everyday have been linked directly to the mental health crisis we are facing in the west today, and frighteningly little has been done to curtail these harms.
We are playing in a toxic environment, pretending our gas mask doesn’t have a leak.
We are hoping the smoke won’t kill our lungs while taking a bigger draught.
the banality of more
What does it mean when you find an exponent atop impermanence?
We’ve entered an era of new-school platforms where Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram no longer hold all the cards. Through scandals, missteps, and market share losses, the monopoly seems to be loosening as user’s attention is directed elsewhere online. People may still hold accounts with the giants, but they are increasingly likely to step one foot in a different direction, for ill and for good.
To experience moments captured by friends and influencers, trendy apps like BeReal, Journal, and Vero have appeared. Public discourse alternatives to the toxicity of Musk’s misadventure have proliferated with apps like Mastodon, BlueSky, and Threads. Discord and Reddit still hold large audiences captive with their community and information-centric approach to media. TikTok and Lemon8 continue to engineer scarily persuasive algorithmic content for the masses.
Every one of these apps adds time, attention, and data to the arsenals in the Valley. Each one subtracts time, attention, and data from our lives, making them less meaningful and more full of meandering.
Our itinerant use of these platforms is a formative part of who we become. We place precious life-energy into a digital persona that dies within a hype cycle or, worse, metastasizes throughout our online presence to create a false reality we can begin to believe.
As more social media options emerge, as both our inputs and outputs online increase, as the way we interact with the internet becomes increasingly more trivial and banal, what will be left of our minds and hearts inside this new world? Will we continue to engage in more digital spaces that dilute our contribution and identities? Or will we start to create authentic places that encourage our humanity and creativity?
quid est veritas?
2023 is the year photo and video evidence are no longer proof for belief.
The first wave looked like a swaggy pope, robo-cats, and a deep-fake Tom Cruise.
The second wave saw falsified bombings, sextortion victims, and disinformation at large.
With an election around the corner, what will the third wave entail? Does our coverage of wars in Ukraine and Yemen accurately depict the conflict, protagonists, and antagonists? How can a public figure fight the tide of hate from an off-color, falsified recording purporting their prejudiced character traits? Will the next “Tidepod challenge” be one that more than simply uneducated and attention-seeking teens try?
These are part of the dangers of democratizing access to a weapon of mass destruction. The companies leaking language models are unable to vigilantly police bad actor’s use of emerging tools. The fight to understand and regulate AI is already underway in congress, and the stakes are clear: the breakdown of liberal democracy and the extinction of our current way of life.
More fundamental to what the fight for AI represents is a question of truth.
What is truth in a world where our five senses can no longer be trusted?
The morosely comforting truth is that we’ve been nearly at this point for a long time. We shifted our thinking circa 2008. The internet introduced us to the idea of bots and false facing. We quickly understood that not everything online is vetted by editors, publicists, and the library of Congress. Our social media personas are just that-
“personas.”
[1734] nn. pl. outer or assumed aspects of character.
Now that images, videos, and recordings require a tale of provenance (on a scale of accessibility unseen in history), our habits around consuming media must shift again. We must become better at two things to avoid falling prey to mistruth and emotional manipulation:
indifference and contextualization.
Billions of dollars and thousands of engineers lie in wait behind your computer’s screen to ensnare your attention. The so-called economy has perfected techniques and models that permeate our lives. A viral dance video appears next to a politically charged rant, but we fail to ask why, much less comprehend the disjointed nature of such a sequence. Our brain, fully immersed in primal emotions of joy, amusement, intrigue, or attraction receive an ice plunge-like shock into the harsh realities of disgust, distrust, rage. This rapid pendulum swing of emotions breaks down our reasoning. No longer are we being fed “harmless” entertainment but the machinations of a polarization engine that elongates our latitude of acceptance.
There is a balm in an unlikely place for us. The Ignatian order of spiritually encourages an unattached-ness in decision-making processes where emotions and biases create tension. This “Ignatian Indifference” has equal merit in the realm of our judgement of media. Step back. As we scroll, our limbic system fires on all cylinders from the dopamine rush each video triggers. When the twist comes, and we feel our fight or flight (most commonly “fight” will be activated as it increases engagement and TOS- time on screen) responses activate, we can choose to be indifferent. Begin an examination with analytical and undisturbed thoughts. Don’t jump straight to an emotional response, even if it’s only unspoken.
(Of course, this is far easier said than done. None of us are emotionally regulated and spiritually wise enough to be on these platforms yet we choose to engage them regardless.)
When indifference is found, we must begin an investigation. Every news article, piece of media, and social post is affixed within a unique ecology. Hyperlinks abound in our content in a literal and metaphorical sense. You can’t read an op-ed on record-breaking summer heat without asking a certain set of questions. Who is writing this? Why are they writing it? Which of my emotions, if any, are being tampered with by the writer? Is this event/idea/news even possible given what I know about the affair? Who sent me this and how reliable/gullible are they?
Very quickly our analysis leads to telling answers about the veracity of content we stumble upon. The student in each of us taps into a learned behavior to check sources, a skill we rapidly developed just this past century. The deconstruction of today’s activist finds new fodder if they are willing to pause for context. The tools we need are available but latent in this realm of our lives. Contextualization could save us all from jumping to the island of conclusions where so many get washed away.
This may be the year truth can’t be found in a picture, but it doesn’t mean it can’t be found at all. When a Roman governor asked the itinerant Nazarene, “what is truth?” he desired no answer, for to a chronic worshipper of sensual impulses, the question didn’t matter. Does it matter to you?
a trivial culture
"We were keeping our eye on 1984. when the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares..."
The year is now 2023. Almost 40 years since Orwell's prophecy expired and a perpendicular one fully rendered. We are caught up amidst hype cycles and disruptive innovations. We have accommodated our lives to the plug and screen. In Neil Postman's time, the screen was large, the plug stationary. Today, the screen is pocketable, ubiquitous, and targeting each user’s unique brain patterns. What this shift indicates has only been uncovered by very few willing to admit their own culpability in the state of the world.
"But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another- slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World..."
Huxley paints a picture of a self-enslaved people. He envisions a world where we have come to love our captivity. We struggle even to see the point of breaking our chains because it's more convenient, clean, and nice to simply wear them. The savagery that would overtake us without the protection of our bonds and narcotics terrifies our addled minds.
Are we not the same, in our love of the very technologies that undo our capacities to think?
"What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one... Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture..."
A prudent observer of cultural trends and idiosyncrasies discerns the truth. What Postman did to elucidate this and excavate it for an age dedicating itself wholly to the first-wave of entertainment technology, the TV, has been lost. We are in a moment where we need to proceed, in his words, "with eyes wide open." The mental health crisis, political polarization, misinformation, digital addiction, overwork, environmental degradation- all problems correlated to the improper use of digital technology in one way or another. This ever-growing list of potentially catastrophic risks is easier to access in our minds today because of the internet. In spite of its persistence, have we become too trivial to make meaningful progress on any one of these? Does distraction rule us with more power than discipline? Are we so incapacitated that the solutions of the online era are blockaded by their harms?
"...we are in a race between education and disaster... For in the end, Huxley was trying to tell us that what afflicted the people in Brave New World was not that they were laughing instead of thinking, but that they did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking..."
what's the cost?
The focal point of all technological innovation for two decades has been the computer. The condensation of focused engineering and dreaming, the smartphone- a "bicycle for the mind" promised to change the world and usher in a new era of prosperity and connection.
It’s too easy to overstate how much this promise came to fulfillment, so I leave the conflicting diatribes and sermons to those concerned with the direction our species will venture en masse. My concern is you. What does the mass adoption and subsequent integration of the smartphone into all of human life signal for the average Jen and Joe?
Researcher and entrepreneur Andy Crouch unpacks the loaded offer technology presents as a diminished tradeoff. Tech begins with the opportunity that "now you'll be able to" and ends with the hidden caveat of "you'll no longer be able to" and "now you'll have to." These terms and conditions are the unseen expectations of our lives. They are the beliefs that become entrenched as access and connection make way for distraction and addiction. We think of the constellation of connections that make up our social spheres and find ourselves bound to a digital etiquette of "staying in-touch,” replying to long-lost friends, and fielding potential spam and DM inquiries. These things are not inherently bad, they are new. And novelty, in any part of our lives, should invite interrogation.
Social media creates a cognitive load unknown to man until the 21st century. "You’ll no longer be able to” maintain anonymity and keep your life private from the world. For the first time in history, families put their kids on display for millions, unaware of the long-term ramifications. We have instigated self-surveillance behind closed doors and willingly offered ourselves as court jesters for the masses. In efforts to “bring the world closer together,” we have brought down walls which were previously vital to the functioning of democracies and societies at large. Propriety and discretion, once taken for granted, are obliterated in a digital ecosphere unkind to nuance and understanding. Dogpiles, doxxing, and detritus from digital deconstruction abound.
Now, this is a rather cynical view of “influencer culture” and the dangers therein, but it’s one I feel is already justified by a rising response from Gen Z to platforms like TikTok and distrust in devices. An increasingly common story is that of the pioneer high-schooler ditching their iPhone for more paired-down options. The trade-off is clear: prioritize in-person, non-digital interactions by introducing friction and restriction through a simplified interface.
Exchanges like these are subjective. Every life is unique. Circumstances and lifestyles dictate a person’s need and reception to the adoption of any kind of technology. What’s important is circumspection- are we aware of what we will lose? Do we understand what is required of us? Is every innovation worth each cost?
richly nourished
I’m going to cheat here and write about writing again. The daily blog is a practice in noticing. The trouble with noticing, I’ve found, is that it takes a while to “boot-up,” so to speak. My awareness muscles are cold. The past few months have dulled my senses for preparing each morning’s practice. On a normal week in this rhythm, I would have an abundance of ideas, quotes, arguments, and novelties to share. The dailies practically write themselves in a season of plenty.
Then there are seasons of transition. A path arrests me with new styles, new interests, and new leanings. My usual entries begin to shift in a direction wholly unexpected and uncomfortable, and it takes time to adjust my thinking and habits for this kind of work.
Currently, this looks like a shift from technology to philosophy. My work has always been littered with philosophical ideas and influences, but, as of late, has donned a new mask entirely obsessed with the abstract. More than that, my inputs from the realms of technology have shifted. Instead of consuming news and history and analyses of technological changes, my feed is entirely devoted to news. I’m swimming in innovation.
This problem is common for us today because of the newly minted twenty-four hour news cycle, instantly accessible internet, and invasive marketing schemes of tech companies. Getting sucked in is the new normal. But despite its ability to lend us a grasp of cultural conversations, this rhythm leads not to wisdom, but to ignorance. One can easily read all there is to know about the current month’s happenings that fly by in a week having not amounted to anything. It takes and gives greater strength to look back and understand those things which shape cultures eternally. History and philosophy, comparative religions and natural phenomena.
These things lend themselves to the cultivation of an ordered mind and virtuous heart. Thinking and writing on these leads to a level of depth unmet by doing the same with current events. A daily practice requires more. It demands more. Writing from abundance is only possible when nourished by rich sources.
notice more fractals
Fractals are infinite permutations of complexity. They are repeating sequences of lines of code that define a thing. They tell a story that gets deeper with every double-take and every return.
We often fail to notice the fractals that walk by us constantly. People with idiosyncrasies and dreams, formative habits and trauma-informed pasts. The closer you look, the more their name evolves. ‘Worrier.’ ‘Zealot.’ ‘Friend.’ There are patterns unseen to explore should we look.
Characters in a book often go through journeys of understanding. They create constellations of connections that inform their perspective and indoctrinate them into relationships of depth with their fellow fictions. Sherlock Holmes famously could look at a person and see their untold story. His sense of presence in the world of Doyle gives definition to the existence of fractals in us all.
Experts appear around works of art, commerce, and science because of the fractal effect. A piece begins with a simple premise. It is traced by instruments, language, and emotions. Only those eager enough to chase its premise around a tree find its repetition written in the patterns uncovered.
The question of time becomes relevant when the practicality of these thoughts are interrogated. How is one expected to find the time to dig so thoroughly into the soil of these shapes? Time is not infinite, where these are. The struggle to find fractals and unlock hidden mysteries is left undone by all in the end. The path leads to greater, not full understanding. Augustine of Hippo taught us that when we say “I love you”, we’re really saying “I want you to be.” For those seeking to know, their pursuit is a resounding statement of “I want you to be. Keep existing, so I can see your depths.” This in turn relates that which can change a heart on a dime and turn a heart of stone: love.
a new refrain
You must remind yourself: your audience is one, the work is the end, failure is the path.
I’ve always thought writing to be a primal thing for me, but if that were true the opposite statement would manifest. Writing is the highest form of thought. At present, I’m resuscitating my thinking from the pit. I remember what I once wrote, I see what I now read, and I cringe. The reminder is that I write because I have to, and I write for the person I am becoming.
The practice has always fit the identity. Right now, I am no writer. I strove for my creation to be finished while forgetting the need to create. There is no work without the practice for the practice is the end. In order to reengage the process that can propel me to this end, I shun looking back and let my mind draw out it’s meanderings, let the muse provide its song.
The path may be made of stones that look the same, but their quality differs tellingly with every step. If I choose to walk this path again, my vision will deceive me. Progress is not seen in hindsight, but in constancy. So too will my art’s strength be measured in each moment I create it rather than in every time I look back at it. This romantic view leads through blind ignorance to shepherd in transformation.
The path, the work, and the audience all point ahead. I follow.
the internet: ecosystem, engine, escape
The internet is all three.
We find inputs around which to orient ourselves for "nourishment". These our feeds.
We find tools to accelerate our actions and answer our questions. These our browsers.
We find opiates to numb ourselves amidst a torrent of identityless "others" in this pool. These our content.
You see, not only did the internet result in a change of these 3 E's, but it created new categories for them. New barriers and pitfalls, languages and psychologies, rules and rewards.
It created a new ecosystem within which, without virtues or a guide, we revert to a war of all against all. It created an engine without which we have become unable to understand, reason, or engage the world. It created an escape that takes us farther away from our humanity than we've ever gone.
A perfectly analogous relationship is to the vast exploration of space we peek over the cusp of. Astronauts experience a disembodied realization of their untethered souls from the earth. A whole new landscape is laid before them with fundamental laws in an altered state. An engine of philosophy and progress, space presents us with reasons to strive or spiral in whatever direction our bias directs. Escape from a so-called sinking ship, framed in wonder and excitement when the reality, though inspiringly beautiful, is cold and dark.
Like this exploration, the fledgling internet age has so much on offer. Offered and accepted. We must be aware, the integration of the web into our lives is a full remodel of the human experience. We are not just encumbered by internet accoutrements, but engrossed within its whimsy.
Carr writes about hyperlinking thinking (the irony of what I'm about to do is not lost on me), Smith about binary re-identification, and Dyson about time as an illusion in the digital world. All are certain of one thing:
In the last 20 years of computing technology and the internet working upon humankind, it is hard to say we are evolved in any way.
technology and ecology
“The world is a complex, interconnected, finite, ecological–social–psychological–economic system . We treat it as if it were not, as if it were divisible, separable, simple, and infinite. Our persistent, intractable global problems arise directly from this mismatch.”
~ Donella Meadows
Herein lies a fundamental truth we need to understand about technology:
New technologies do not simply add or subtract, rather they change everything. Technological change is ecological in nature. The environment technology is introduced into is fundamentally altered from the substrata to the heavens.
When stone tools were invented, we didn’t just have neanderthals plus stone tools. We had an entirely reinvented man because of stone tools. When Virtual Reality was invented, we didn’t just have American culture plus VR- we now have a reinvented Meta-minded man because of VR (one not distant from dystopian Ready Player One author and screenwriter Ernst Cline imagined).
The advances made by these innovations are well and good, but they are distractions; candy sprinkled by Hansel and Gretel’s witch to distract from manufactured harm.
What we must consider when bringing new technologies to the market is not what this tech can do for us, but what this tech can do to us? What are the changes following this technologies introduction? What parts of life are adjusted or completely disrupted because of this technology?
The invention of lanterns altered our relationship to work and sleep. The printing press altered society’s educational development. The smartphone has changed the way we socialize, do work, consume information, date, travel, play, and generally live.
Why is this so important?
If we are to adopt new, inventive “tools” into our ecosystem, we must do so “with our eyes wide open” (as Neil Postman was fond of saying) while a technology plays out its hand and does what its design dictates. We can’t know consequences from a technology before its release, yes, and we must allow technology to evolve in the environment it enters, also yes, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be more aware of the things under threat from new entrants.
Proceeding with eyes wide open requires asking more questions. It requires an inquisitively thorough and cautious perspective that is currently underrepresented in creative technology circles. Let’s keep being curious…
economies and ethics of scale
Each January around the post-Christmas settling, tech companies announce (or serendipitously leak) their lineup for the coming year: software updates, “improved” smartphone models, new desk or laptops, fancy tablets, and stylish wearables to anticipate. The tragedy of this time is that no one is looking forward to getting a new gadget as much as they are excited about getting rid of an old one...
This cycle, made ludicrous by the mid-year color refresh Big Tech and fueled by the planned obsolescence of phone throttling paired with intentionally low manufacturing quality, is a net negative for society.
Nature suffers. No longer are we attuned to changing seasons as much as the changing release dates of technology. We imbibe with impunity the drug of more as islands of waste pile higher for the sake of a 9% screen size increase or a sharper quality image of progressively more trivial, and cliche photographs.
Community suffers. With subtle, chosen differences in device appearance, tech companies provide upgraders with visible status symbols to (unconsciously or overtly) lord their purchases over peers who haven't rushed to their carrier for an upgrade.
Society suffers. Attracted by the promise of new and better, we trade a piece of ourselves for convenience and quality of life. We lock our lives deeper within the identities this technology happily provides us. We become comfortable within the metaworld that looks more and more like our own as the blurred lines progress faster than our understanding of them…
...And the cycle continues. We buy, we consume, we dump, and we buy again.
Why would we assume there was any other way in the system we've built upon such competitive economic incentives?
What would an alternative to a silicon valley gold-digger look like?
How would a healthy growth model unfold in markets and across the globalized world?
Where would humane designers go to build the sorts of tech that valued our attention, cognition, and emotions?
Where once an economy produced only those inventions that were mass-marketable because of their attraction, we see a new economic incentive emerge that places the user back at the center of a holistically, healthily, humanely-designed industry.
Light. Punkt. Mudita.
Tech designed differently. Tech designed to last, to improve community, to end “the tyranny of more.” Tech designed without the incentive to distract us and keep us captive to it’s whimsy. Tech designed to catalyze a more humane future.
But we need more…
These few show us only the beginnings of a world where ethics-centered startups are able to profitably produce good tech with humane values. There are still economies and ethics of scale that are barriers to entry in production, marketing, and design.
For the economies of scale we see no path to financial success for ethical tech. Too few of us are able to break from Silicon Valley to choose healthier paths. Humane tech companies can’t cost effectively produce their innovations without the fast user acquisition that tech unicorns see because of their unethical marketing and design tactics. They fall short of their needs. They struggle to scale.
For the ethics of scale, res ipsum loquitor as humane tech suffers from a conscience absent 99% of the average tech groups. To buy back shares in the attention economy, Tragedy of the Commons-type incentives are required. No distraction-free tech can, on principle, advertise to markets that would be susceptible to purchasing their products. Your tactics of scale are bound by your ethics.
You could assume that scaling issues would limit these companies from ever reaching a critical mass. Many see the entrance of new players as something unnecessary in an already crowded space. More believe redemption for technology does not lay in the hands of these few change-makers with a restriction-filled market.
But it is true, as Wendell Berry writes, that the aims of capitalistic tools of industrialization can enrich and empower the few (for a while), but they will sooner or later ruin us all… So without a system and technology rebuild upon new incentives and ethics, our softwares and devices will crumble from their base.
shovel or axe?
“When some remote ancestor of ours invented the shovel, he became a giver: he could plant a tree…
When the axe was invented, he became a taker: he could chop it down…”- Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac
Shovel or axe?
In this reflection, Leopold’s influence is the philosophical determinism and free-will debates that shaped thought for centuries.
His concern is with the offloading of responsibility by the division of labor we have created.
This disconnect prevents us from seeing a determinist’s worst fears take the reins…
Determinism is the philosophy that, succinctly stated, says,
“We shape our tools and they in turn shape us.”
- Marshall McLuhan, Father of many deterministic ideas about technology and media theory
Taken at face value, determinism implies that any technology when loosed in society can reach a state beyond programmable control.
Most determinists have hopeless views about a technology after its creation. We unwittingly created an axe with immense societal influence. Our government’s attempt to control this emergent Technopoly is equivalent to a hand grasping a river’s rapids.
What some (namely me) choose to accept is the opening assertion from McLuhan:
We shape our tools…
We have the power to ensure our tools are not chopping all the time:
We can shape them in ways that promote communal thriving. We can use them to preserve and protect historicity and cultural artifacts. We can harness their gifts to create beauty and hone our crafts. We can come together to refine education systems for the promotion of global connection.
We can become developers of a new kind of technology that won’t represent the interests of profit and corporate thriving. These, instead, can embody the qualities the shovel represents. Generosity, integrity, wisdom.
black box
The world made complex by technology will become simple again.
A core tenant of speculative fiction is technology’s eventual hiddenness behind a layer of reality. Its purpose: to reduce the cognitive load of knowledge workers and engineers, while bringing focus to work and life.
Like Ford crafting the model-T line, we’re beginning to realize civilization’s most valuable commodity. Cal Newport in his book, A World Without Email, writes that, “in Ford’s world, the workers were dispensable (supremely valuing output), while in the knowledge world, our brains are the source of all value.”
The Information Age of torrential inundation has to transform into an Age of Understanding. Understanding simplifies the data flood and leads to wisdom. To get there, we need to clear cluttered desktops.
Think about Clarke’s third law: “any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic.” The way we send emails today follows a process incomprehensible for a person plucked out of the 60’s who ran information through complicated tube systems to receive physical mail.
“Black box simplification” is inevitable.
We already see it in small ways. You have no idea how the black box (literal and figurative) you’re reading this on functions, but you’re still competent to access information. And while it still has a complex interface that confounds some who were not born into an iSociety, its base functions become simpler and more efficient each year.
This learning curve leads to another pillar the field of ethical technology hoists- accessibility for those on the periphery. All this complexity and overload only serves a purpose if we perpetuate it on an equitable plane.
The Center for Humane Technology established baseline conditions for humane technology to enter society:
Humane technology narrows the gap between the powerful and the marginalized instead of increasing that gap.