2016 — 2022
Archive
-
Life’s a Glitch
2022-09-01The non-apocalypse of Y2K obscures the lessons it has for the present
Life’s a Glitch
Life’s a Glitch2022-09-01The non-apocalypse of Y2K obscures the lessons it has for the present
-
Who Can It Be Now
2022-08-29On social platforms, the “fluid self” is not a rejection of personal branding but another manifestation of it
Who Can It Be Now
Who Can It Be Now2022-08-29On social platforms, the “fluid self” is not a rejection of personal branding but another manifestation of it
-
Colony Collapse
2022-08-25God games like Civilization and The Sims offer a fantasy of control based on miniaturization, giving us little ant hills to rule over. But they are also premised on the idea that we too are ants and should try to emulate their efficient “societies”
Colony Collapse
Colony Collapse2022-08-25God games like Civilization and The Sims offer a fantasy of control based on miniaturization, giving us little ant hills to rule over. But they are also premised on the idea that we too are ants and should try to emulate their efficient “societies”
-
Dreaming in Color
2022-08-18Satoshi Kon’s movies, which paralleled the rise of social media, explore the surreal meeting of interiority and public life
Dreaming in Color
Dreaming in Color2022-08-18Satoshi Kon’s movies, which paralleled the rise of social media, explore the surreal meeting of interiority and public life
-
Hold the Line
2022-08-15Media technology is not a modern antidote to older, vernacular modes of information transmission. Folklore instead thrives through these new channels, helping explain and assimilate new technologies into our everyday lives.
Hold the Line
Hold the Line2022-08-15Media technology is not a modern antidote to older, vernacular modes of information transmission. Folklore instead thrives through these new channels, helping explain and assimilate new technologies into our everyday lives.
-
Our Friend the Atom
2022-08-11The aesthetics of the Atomic Age helped whitewash the threat of nuclear disaster
Our Friend the Atom
Our Friend the Atom2022-08-11The aesthetics of the Atomic Age helped whitewash the threat of nuclear disaster
-
Entangled Intelligence
2022-08-08In our engagement with machines, we can still decenter ourselves as arbiters of mind and the meaning of life on Earth. This, and not reproducing capitalism or expanding human domination, could be what technology helps humans achieve.
Entangled Intelligence
Entangled Intelligence2022-08-08In our engagement with machines, we can still decenter ourselves as arbiters of mind and the meaning of life on Earth. This, and not reproducing capitalism or expanding human domination, could be what technology helps humans achieve.
-
The Writing on the Wall
2022-08-04When all recordings are also hauntings
-
Wrong Road
2022-08-01The auto industry used political leverage to remake the physical world and embed future demand for its products, despite their self-evident destructiveness. Now the tech world is trying the same trick with phones and apps
Wrong Road
Wrong Road2022-08-01The auto industry used political leverage to remake the physical world and embed future demand for its products, despite their self-evident destructiveness. Now the tech world is trying the same trick with phones and apps
-
Posthuman Architecture
2022-07-28Home today is less a protective shelter but an embodied interface
Posthuman Architecture
Posthuman Architecture2022-07-28Home today is less a protective shelter but an embodied interface
-
Delivering People
2022-07-25The business model of media depends on making audiences, not content. Audiences are the contested site where media companies, advertisers, and the ratings companies that intercede between them struggle over how attention can be standardized, measured, and sold.
Delivering People
Delivering People2022-07-25The business model of media depends on making audiences, not content. Audiences are the contested site where media companies, advertisers, and the ratings companies that intercede between them struggle over how attention can be standardized, measured, and sold.
-
Never-Ending Story
2022-07-21To the technophobe, the screen and the book are opposed; but if one is an insular virtual world, so is the other
Never-Ending Story
Never-Ending Story2022-07-21To the technophobe, the screen and the book are opposed; but if one is an insular virtual world, so is the other
-
Syllabus for the Internet: Telematic Society
2022-07-18Vilém Flusser’s theory of photography anticipated our current society in many ways, capturing how we become data processors for an overarching social system. But the blind spots in his theory can help us see the risks inherent in his style of seductive techno-prophecy
Telematic Society
Telematic Society2022-07-18Vilém Flusser’s theory of photography anticipated our current society in many ways, capturing how we become data processors for an overarching social system. But the blind spots in his theory can help us see the risks inherent in his style of seductive techno-prophecy
-
Blame It on the Game
2022-07-14Right-wing ideologues are happy to see the violence they stoke attributed to video games
Blame It on the Game
Blame It on the Game2022-07-14Right-wing ideologues are happy to see the violence they stoke attributed to video games
-
Speaking in Stickers
2022-07-11The use of WeChat in China is virtually mandatory and presumably monitored, which has driven a range of indirect forms of communication. Stickers, one prominent example, represent a front in a normalized, everyday struggle against opaque platform logic as well as other forms of surveillance.
Speaking in Stickers
Speaking in Stickers2022-07-11The use of WeChat in China is virtually mandatory and presumably monitored, which has driven a range of indirect forms of communication. Stickers, one prominent example, represent a front in a normalized, everyday struggle against opaque platform logic as well as other forms of surveillance.
-
Fidelity Angst
2022-07-06On the audiophile’s hopeless search for perfect sound
-
Inside Voice
2022-06-30Amid housing affordability crises, domesticity vlogs — from apartment tours to cottagecore to “day in my life” videos — offer consolation by conceiving home not as property but as a feeling. But this can also reify “home” into a predictable, rarefied aesthetic
Inside Voice
Inside Voice2022-06-30Amid housing affordability crises, domesticity vlogs — from apartment tours to cottagecore to “day in my life” videos — offer consolation by conceiving home not as property but as a feeling. But this can also reify “home” into a predictable, rarefied aesthetic
-
Still the Same
2022-06-27Nineteenth-century critiques of technology show how longstanding the current concerns are
Still the Same
Still the Same2022-06-27Nineteenth-century critiques of technology show how longstanding the current concerns are
-
New Sensation
2022-06-23The military use of haptics technology includes ideological indoctrination
New Sensation
New Sensation2022-06-23The military use of haptics technology includes ideological indoctrination
-
Fair Game
2022-06-21Commonly used by researchers and journalists, data scraping dislodges data from one context and forces it into another, where we no longer control in any way how that data is used, what meanings are inferred from it, and whether its extended uses are accurate
-
Belly Up
2022-06-16Wellness discourse taps into longstanding associations between intuition and the gut
-
Waste Not
2022-06-13A new plastic composting gadget not only offers the same false promise that “convenient” consumer technology marketed to individual households can fix Earth’s interlocking ecological crises; it also exemplifies tech developers’ troubling fantasy of “defeating” decay
-
Influencer Creep
2022-06-09Self-documenting and self-branding are becoming basic not just to “influencing” but to all forms of work. The mark of influencer creep is the on-edge feeling that you have not done enough for social media platforms: that you can be more on trend, more authentic, more responsive — always more.
Influencer Creep
Influencer Creep2022-06-09Self-documenting and self-branding are becoming basic not just to “influencing” but to all forms of work. The mark of influencer creep is the on-edge feeling that you have not done enough for social media platforms: that you can be more on trend, more authentic, more responsive — always more.
-
What Next
2022-06-06The pandemic spawned years of sweeping predictions about the “next thing” — either a radically changed society, or a total return to “normal.” The fact that neither has come to pass has created a sense of exhaustion with prediction itself. But commentators can’t resist predicting future trends, even if these predictions have become increasingly marginal and absurd
What Next
What Next2022-06-06The pandemic spawned years of sweeping predictions about the “next thing” — either a radically changed society, or a total return to “normal.” The fact that neither has come to pass has created a sense of exhaustion with prediction itself. But commentators can’t resist predicting future trends, even if these predictions have become increasingly marginal and absurd
-
Temporal Belonging
2022-06-01Our relationship to time is presumed to be in crisis, disrupted by digital technology. But “natural time” is difficult to define, even while additional technologies — including SAD Lamps, blue-light filters, and platforms like BeReal — promise to help users calibrate their rhythms with an imagined standard. In seeking an objective sense of time, we ignore the fact that time is fundamentally relative
Temporal Belonging
Temporal Belonging2022-06-01Our relationship to time is presumed to be in crisis, disrupted by digital technology. But “natural time” is difficult to define, even while additional technologies — including SAD Lamps, blue-light filters, and platforms like BeReal — promise to help users calibrate their rhythms with an imagined standard. In seeking an objective sense of time, we ignore the fact that time is fundamentally relative
-
How to Eat the Future
2022-05-26Jane McGonigal is famous for presenting a positive case for video games and how gamification can get results. Her new book Imaginable implausibly claims that we can fix the future by imagining harder, without considering the ideology that shapes such visions
How to Eat the Future
How to Eat the Future2022-05-26Jane McGonigal is famous for presenting a positive case for video games and how gamification can get results. Her new book Imaginable implausibly claims that we can fix the future by imagining harder, without considering the ideology that shapes such visions
-
Home Icons: Tea Towel
2022-05-23Unlike other materials — such as textiles, which can be refashioned for new uses — electronic waste is often both materially and conceptually inflexible. This is why, when they outlive their intended purpose, our devices so often end up in the trash. But what if that very inflexibility could give them an afterlife as objects?
Tea Towel
Tea Towel2022-05-23Unlike other materials — such as textiles, which can be refashioned for new uses — electronic waste is often both materially and conceptually inflexible. This is why, when they outlive their intended purpose, our devices so often end up in the trash. But what if that very inflexibility could give them an afterlife as objects?
-
Influencers and Anti-Fans
2022-05-19“Anti-fan” communities have formed around condemning influencers for both creating an unachievable ideal and failing to live up to it. The influencers, targeted with everything from verbal abuse to death threats, become scapegoats for the status quo’s structural inequalities
Influencers and Anti-Fans
Influencers and Anti-Fans2022-05-19“Anti-fan” communities have formed around condemning influencers for both creating an unachievable ideal and failing to live up to it. The influencers, targeted with everything from verbal abuse to death threats, become scapegoats for the status quo’s structural inequalities
-
Love Is a Stranger
2022-05-16Sniffies, the hookup platform, sets itself apart from apps like Grindr by invoking the concept of cruising — a practice that is anarchic, serendipitous, and in-person, occurring outside the hegemonic structure. The term conjures a nostalgia for the bygone days of gay liberation, which is supposedly an antidote to the sterility of dating apps
Love Is a Stranger
Love Is a Stranger2022-05-16Sniffies, the hookup platform, sets itself apart from apps like Grindr by invoking the concept of cruising — a practice that is anarchic, serendipitous, and in-person, occurring outside the hegemonic structure. The term conjures a nostalgia for the bygone days of gay liberation, which is supposedly an antidote to the sterility of dating apps
-
Magic Numbers
2022-05-12So-called SpiritualTok — mediums, astrologers, tarot readers, Reiki healers and other creators — impute supernatural powers to algorithmic sorting to boost their own metrics. But treating “the algorithm” as a kind of divinity fundamentally obfuscates the nature of its power
Magic Numbers
Magic Numbers2022-05-12So-called SpiritualTok — mediums, astrologers, tarot readers, Reiki healers and other creators — impute supernatural powers to algorithmic sorting to boost their own metrics. But treating “the algorithm” as a kind of divinity fundamentally obfuscates the nature of its power
-
Hard to See
2022-05-09If trauma seems ubiquitous online, that’s because it has become the authentic experience par excellence — uniquely able to hold our gaze and compel us to keep watching. This casual misuse shouldn’t distract from the fact that “trauma” refers to a real mode of experience that demands seriousness, but we need to unpack the ways it has become synonymous with “the real”
Hard to See
Hard to See2022-05-09If trauma seems ubiquitous online, that’s because it has become the authentic experience par excellence — uniquely able to hold our gaze and compel us to keep watching. This casual misuse shouldn’t distract from the fact that “trauma” refers to a real mode of experience that demands seriousness, but we need to unpack the ways it has become synonymous with “the real”
-
Kids’ Stuff
2022-05-05The main strategy of the children’s culture industry — transforming free play into a mania for collectibles and “commoditoys” — has been adopted by crypto startups, whose toy-like aesthetics are necessary for a digital asset class backed by nothing more than flows of sentiment.
Kids’ Stuff
Kids’ Stuff2022-05-05The main strategy of the children’s culture industry — transforming free play into a mania for collectibles and “commoditoys” — has been adopted by crypto startups, whose toy-like aesthetics are necessary for a digital asset class backed by nothing more than flows of sentiment.
-
Sneak Peeks
2022-05-02The social app BeReal promises respite from the pressure to perform, but its gimmick of forced spontaneity merely refines it in an effort to re-enchant the practice of posting to platforms. Obedience to the platform’s rules doesn’t cancel competition for clout among its users.
Sneak Peeks
Sneak Peeks2022-05-02The social app BeReal promises respite from the pressure to perform, but its gimmick of forced spontaneity merely refines it in an effort to re-enchant the practice of posting to platforms. Obedience to the platform’s rules doesn’t cancel competition for clout among its users.
-
Masters of the Userverse
2022-04-28A fantasy life of push-button convenience and technological coddling is just as much a “virtual world” as any metaverse. With the gig economy as their operating system, these “userverses” isolate consumers from each other and protect the exploitive system tech companies and venture capital have built.
Masters of the Userverse
Masters of the Userverse2022-04-28A fantasy life of push-button convenience and technological coddling is just as much a “virtual world” as any metaverse. With the gig economy as their operating system, these “userverses” isolate consumers from each other and protect the exploitive system tech companies and venture capital have built.
-
Speech Bubbles
2022-04-25So far, audio-based social apps have not had major success. Perhaps this is because the human voice has contrasting associations: intimacy, on one hand; and the public-facing self, on the other. However, we should be vigilant: both associations operate on the notion that there is something “pure” about spoken forms of communication, and both are highly co-optable
Speech Bubbles
Speech Bubbles2022-04-25So far, audio-based social apps have not had major success. Perhaps this is because the human voice has contrasting associations: intimacy, on one hand; and the public-facing self, on the other. However, we should be vigilant: both associations operate on the notion that there is something “pure” about spoken forms of communication, and both are highly co-optable
-
Insomniac Technologies
2022-04-21Although sleep wearables seem to promote rest, what they actually promote is rest reconfigured as productivity. A properly-charged wearable is always awake, acting as a sort of surrogate, low-level consciousness that keeps running and recording even while you temporarily abdicate your own
Insomniac Technologies
Insomniac Technologies2022-04-21Although sleep wearables seem to promote rest, what they actually promote is rest reconfigured as productivity. A properly-charged wearable is always awake, acting as a sort of surrogate, low-level consciousness that keeps running and recording even while you temporarily abdicate your own
-
New Normal
2022-04-18As algorithms are deployed across society to assess and predict behavior, older modes of control based on normativity are in eclipse. The way we experience control has changed accordingly — it registers more in terms of “vibes” and “cringe” — as have the ways it can be resisted, not through revaluing antinormative behavior but through extending care-oriented practices like mutual aid.
New Normal
New Normal2022-04-18As algorithms are deployed across society to assess and predict behavior, older modes of control based on normativity are in eclipse. The way we experience control has changed accordingly — it registers more in terms of “vibes” and “cringe” — as have the ways it can be resisted, not through revaluing antinormative behavior but through extending care-oriented practices like mutual aid.
-
Chimp City
2022-04-14The sales pitch of “Web3” depends on its having its own aesthetic to counter the “Instagrammability” aesthetic that social media has spawned. But all crypto can generate is self-referential hype and boiler-room sales pressure to sustain its many Ponzi schemes
Chimp City
Chimp City2022-04-14The sales pitch of “Web3” depends on its having its own aesthetic to counter the “Instagrammability” aesthetic that social media has spawned. But all crypto can generate is self-referential hype and boiler-room sales pressure to sustain its many Ponzi schemes
-
Suspension of Belief
2022-04-11Images of suffering compel a reaction. “Crisis actor” conspiracy theories show that it’s sometimes easier to claim they are “fake” than to respond appropriately, or to deal with the cognitive dissonance of not knowing how to respond at all
Suspension of Belief
Suspension of Belief2022-04-11Images of suffering compel a reaction. “Crisis actor” conspiracy theories show that it’s sometimes easier to claim they are “fake” than to respond appropriately, or to deal with the cognitive dissonance of not knowing how to respond at all
-
Target Practice
2022-04-07Against the self-reinforcing metaphor of communication as penetration — the hypodermic needle by which information can be injected into other people’s minds — other scholars have offered alternative framings that emphasize reciprocity and collaboration.
Target Practice
Target Practice2022-04-07Against the self-reinforcing metaphor of communication as penetration — the hypodermic needle by which information can be injected into other people’s minds — other scholars have offered alternative framings that emphasize reciprocity and collaboration.
-
Feel for You
2022-04-04Reaction videos are pleasantly numbing — they ease the constant pressure to “react” to people and events online. This sort of content arrives to us pre-metabolized: all we have to do is absorb it
Feel for You
Feel for You2022-04-04Reaction videos are pleasantly numbing — they ease the constant pressure to “react” to people and events online. This sort of content arrives to us pre-metabolized: all we have to do is absorb it
-
Prosperity Gospel
2022-03-31The NFT hype is not about present-day utility or novelty but an experience of collective faith in an age of taxing isolation. Web3 provides an optimistic story about a future to believe in, and NFTs act as frames for these emotions, serving as sacred spaces for a community of believers.
Prosperity Gospel
Prosperity Gospel2022-03-31The NFT hype is not about present-day utility or novelty but an experience of collective faith in an age of taxing isolation. Web3 provides an optimistic story about a future to believe in, and NFTs act as frames for these emotions, serving as sacred spaces for a community of believers.
-
Naming Storms
2022-03-28To refer to a disaster by name is to be guided by an imaginative infrastructure that sets these events apart as exceptional. This reaffirms the normalcy that has been excepted. But disasters increasingly exceed our capacity to contain them in a title
Naming Storms
Naming Storms2022-03-28To refer to a disaster by name is to be guided by an imaginative infrastructure that sets these events apart as exceptional. This reaffirms the normalcy that has been excepted. But disasters increasingly exceed our capacity to contain them in a title
-
Tipping the Scale
2022-03-24Stafford Beer, a cyberneticist who worked with Chile’s socialist government, sought to find a balance between scale and individual autonomy in large social systems. His works sets an example for how we might accept responsibility for the internet and make it reflect the fullness of our humanity rather than reduce us to Like/Subscribe/Share cogs.
Tipping the Scale
Tipping the Scale2022-03-24Stafford Beer, a cyberneticist who worked with Chile’s socialist government, sought to find a balance between scale and individual autonomy in large social systems. His works sets an example for how we might accept responsibility for the internet and make it reflect the fullness of our humanity rather than reduce us to Like/Subscribe/Share cogs.
-
Balance of Terrors
2022-03-21Amid renewed anxieties about the prospect of nuclear war, we might consider the Cold War theorist Günther Anders, who argued there is nothing wrong with fearing the worst-case scenario — in fact, we must fear the worst. We ignore it at our peril
Balance of Terrors
Balance of Terrors2022-03-21Amid renewed anxieties about the prospect of nuclear war, we might consider the Cold War theorist Günther Anders, who argued there is nothing wrong with fearing the worst-case scenario — in fact, we must fear the worst. We ignore it at our peril
-
Roving Eyes
2022-03-17Adding a networked surveillance camera to a work truck takes all the problems and incipient paranoia that comes with Ring doorbell cameras and makes them mobile. Fear and distrust can be imported into any neighborhood.
Roving Eyes
Roving Eyes2022-03-17Adding a networked surveillance camera to a work truck takes all the problems and incipient paranoia that comes with Ring doorbell cameras and makes them mobile. Fear and distrust can be imported into any neighborhood.
-
Tale Spin
2022-03-14For many years, readers have loved to declare the death, or demotion, of narrative itself. What this tells us is that the fate of narrative is yet another narrative. What makes it such a compelling one?
-
Taking Stock
2022-03-10“Creator” has emerged as an all-purpose aspirational descriptor for people who make internet content. It seems to promise a work life of artistic autonomy, but in practice it subjects workers to algorithmic control and exploits them to the point of burnout.
Taking Stock
Taking Stock2022-03-10“Creator” has emerged as an all-purpose aspirational descriptor for people who make internet content. It seems to promise a work life of artistic autonomy, but in practice it subjects workers to algorithmic control and exploits them to the point of burnout.
-
What Lies Beneath
2022-03-07Our online spaces are littered with ruins, dead websites, and broken links. The attempt to conceal this chaos creates a creeping sense of unease, but by looking at it directly, we become more alert to the mechanisms used to conceal it; and to the internet’s ultimate mortality
What Lies Beneath
What Lies Beneath2022-03-07Our online spaces are littered with ruins, dead websites, and broken links. The attempt to conceal this chaos creates a creeping sense of unease, but by looking at it directly, we become more alert to the mechanisms used to conceal it; and to the internet’s ultimate mortality
-
Can’t Touch This
2022-03-03While the “goggles and gloves” model of virtual reality has lingered in our cultural imagination since the 1980s, haptics devices probably won’t ever live up to the idea that they can replicate physical contact. They could, however, implement a simplified version of touch subject to quantification and surveillance.
Can’t Touch This
Can’t Touch This2022-03-03While the “goggles and gloves” model of virtual reality has lingered in our cultural imagination since the 1980s, haptics devices probably won’t ever live up to the idea that they can replicate physical contact. They could, however, implement a simplified version of touch subject to quantification and surveillance.
-
True Lies
2022-02-28YouTube gives the viewer the sense that they — and they alone — are always in the process of “authoring” their own experience. Conspiracy media, like those in the lineage of Loose Change, can easily leverage this sense of authorship, making us feel like we’re playing a far more active role than we actually are
True Lies
True Lies2022-02-28YouTube gives the viewer the sense that they — and they alone — are always in the process of “authoring” their own experience. Conspiracy media, like those in the lineage of Loose Change, can easily leverage this sense of authorship, making us feel like we’re playing a far more active role than we actually are
-
False Futurism
2022-02-24Tech companies present the metaverse as an irresistible paradigm shift akin to the move from desktop to mobile computing. Or they present it as a challenge to the limitations of physical reality itself. In practice, it’s just a struggle among those companies for a larger cut of the profits from the same old business models
False Futurism
False Futurism2022-02-24Tech companies present the metaverse as an irresistible paradigm shift akin to the move from desktop to mobile computing. Or they present it as a challenge to the limitations of physical reality itself. In practice, it’s just a struggle among those companies for a larger cut of the profits from the same old business models
-
Search Party
2022-02-22Google has kept its “I’m Feeling Lucky” button as a whimsical artifact of its past. As the company’s power has grown, however, the button has taken on a manipulative function, conjuring a sense of autonomy within Google’s bullpen, hearkening back to a deceptive sense of freedom
Search Party
Search Party2022-02-22Google has kept its “I’m Feeling Lucky” button as a whimsical artifact of its past. As the company’s power has grown, however, the button has taken on a manipulative function, conjuring a sense of autonomy within Google’s bullpen, hearkening back to a deceptive sense of freedom
-
Condition Critical
2022-02-17Using AI to diagnose conditions like autism is not simply a matter of automating the same kinds of diagnostics used by clinicians. The definition of the condition itself is always contested terrain. AI developers may believe their work is apolitical, but inevitably they become key players in a political struggle over how care is conceived and distributed.
Condition Critical
Condition Critical2022-02-17Using AI to diagnose conditions like autism is not simply a matter of automating the same kinds of diagnostics used by clinicians. The definition of the condition itself is always contested terrain. AI developers may believe their work is apolitical, but inevitably they become key players in a political struggle over how care is conceived and distributed.
-
Silent Partner
2022-02-14Relationship apps teach us ways of loving that privilege efficiency over depth, quantifiability over knowledge, and success over joy. They sanctify the institution of the “couple,” while shrinking down the experience of love until it conforms to neoliberal rhythms
Silent Partner
Silent Partner2022-02-14Relationship apps teach us ways of loving that privilege efficiency over depth, quantifiability over knowledge, and success over joy. They sanctify the institution of the “couple,” while shrinking down the experience of love until it conforms to neoliberal rhythms
-
Magic Carpets
2022-02-10Hype about the metaverse and virtual reality propose screens as a mode of escape from physical environments. But it is far more likely that new kinds of screens will be implemented in physical environments to reshape our experience within them.
Magic Carpets
Magic Carpets2022-02-10Hype about the metaverse and virtual reality propose screens as a mode of escape from physical environments. But it is far more likely that new kinds of screens will be implemented in physical environments to reshape our experience within them.
-
Property Values
2022-02-07The pre-crash housing bubble was abetted by propaganda about an “ownership society” that linked personal property to autonomy but in practice widened inequality. The Web3 hype has seized upon similar rhetoric and is yielding similar results, only now it’s conflated with ideals of collective ownership that deserve to be considered apart from the speculative mania of crypto
Property Values
Property Values2022-02-07The pre-crash housing bubble was abetted by propaganda about an “ownership society” that linked personal property to autonomy but in practice widened inequality. The Web3 hype has seized upon similar rhetoric and is yielding similar results, only now it’s conflated with ideals of collective ownership that deserve to be considered apart from the speculative mania of crypto
-
Vivid Hues
2022-02-03Asked what color the internet is, different generations would give different answers. This question is more meaningful than it seems: giving the internet a color gives us a coherent, if mutable sense of what it is, and a better way to critique it.
Vivid Hues
Vivid Hues2022-02-03Asked what color the internet is, different generations would give different answers. This question is more meaningful than it seems: giving the internet a color gives us a coherent, if mutable sense of what it is, and a better way to critique it.
-
Routine Care
2022-01-31Robots are being used more and more to provide elder care, often as a means to assuage social isolation and loneliness. Critics find this dehumanizing, but that may stem from their seeing the robot as replacing human care rather than serving as a medium for conducting it.
Routine Care
Routine Care2022-01-31Robots are being used more and more to provide elder care, often as a means to assuage social isolation and loneliness. Critics find this dehumanizing, but that may stem from their seeing the robot as replacing human care rather than serving as a medium for conducting it.
-
Syllabus for the Internet: W.G. Sebald
2022-01-27While nominally a fiction writer, W.G. Sebald’s work remains theoretically prescient. Long before social media, he understood the suspicious anxiety inherent to learning about the world over social media. His works embrace this unease, accepting the unreliability of all individual sources, but also the obligation to make sense of them.
W.G. Sebald
W.G. Sebald2022-01-27While nominally a fiction writer, W.G. Sebald’s work remains theoretically prescient. Long before social media, he understood the suspicious anxiety inherent to learning about the world over social media. His works embrace this unease, accepting the unreliability of all individual sources, but also the obligation to make sense of them.
-
Found Images
2022-01-24Images were once too scarce to be deployed rhetorically; they seemed to be more documentary by default. Now communicating continually with images is common, which generates a nostalgia for when images could speak something other than what the photographer meant to say
Found Images
Found Images2022-01-24Images were once too scarce to be deployed rhetorically; they seemed to be more documentary by default. Now communicating continually with images is common, which generates a nostalgia for when images could speak something other than what the photographer meant to say
-
Careless Whispers
2022-01-19Much concern has been raised around teens spreading misinformation on TikTok. But fear, and a sense of abandonment by the authorities, can drive compulsive behavior online. Young people — facing just as many threats as adults, but with less power to protect themselves — are just as susceptible to this as their elders.
Careless Whispers
Careless Whispers2022-01-19Much concern has been raised around teens spreading misinformation on TikTok. But fear, and a sense of abandonment by the authorities, can drive compulsive behavior online. Young people — facing just as many threats as adults, but with less power to protect themselves — are just as susceptible to this as their elders.
-
Seeing Without Looking
2022-01-13Sidewalk Toronto is dead, but its legacy is instructive. It shows that surveillance systems aren’t so much documenting as producing a desired reality — and that erasing these images, rather than increasing privacy, only makes that constructed reality harder to audit
Seeing Without Looking
Seeing Without Looking2022-01-13Sidewalk Toronto is dead, but its legacy is instructive. It shows that surveillance systems aren’t so much documenting as producing a desired reality — and that erasing these images, rather than increasing privacy, only makes that constructed reality harder to audit
-
Money-Go-Round
2022-01-10Proponents of “Web3” often claim that their crypto-based platforms will eliminate some of the problems associated with conventional social media. It will replace big tech companies with decentralized systems, replace the drive for virality with a commitment to community. But Web3 remains entirely dependent on existing platforms to attract users, and rely on the same dubious incentives to build hype.
Money-Go-Round
Money-Go-Round2022-01-10Proponents of “Web3” often claim that their crypto-based platforms will eliminate some of the problems associated with conventional social media. It will replace big tech companies with decentralized systems, replace the drive for virality with a commitment to community. But Web3 remains entirely dependent on existing platforms to attract users, and rely on the same dubious incentives to build hype.
-
New Feelings: Nostalgia for Nostalgia
2022-01-06Watching old movies reveals a chasm between seemingly once-possible “off-grid” experiences and the continuous connectivity that persists today, arching between childhood and later stages of life. The way our timelines excavate our own pasts for us not only makes remembering from a distance less possible — no longer are we narrators remembering a singular bygone era — but contemporary storytelling too is morphing away from the “closed chapter” adventure into narratives that takes this sustained connectivity into account.
Nostalgia for Nostalgia
Nostalgia for Nostalgia2022-01-06Watching old movies reveals a chasm between seemingly once-possible “off-grid” experiences and the continuous connectivity that persists today, arching between childhood and later stages of life. The way our timelines excavate our own pasts for us not only makes remembering from a distance less possible — no longer are we narrators remembering a singular bygone era — but contemporary storytelling too is morphing away from the “closed chapter” adventure into narratives that takes this sustained connectivity into account.
-
Conversations about technology tend to be dominated by an optimistic faith in technological progress. There is endless encouragement to think about all of the exciting benefits of new technology, but significantly less attention paid to the ways things might go spectacularly wrong. That’s where Paul Virilio comes in.
Inventing the Shipwreck
Inventing the Shipwreck2022-01-03Conversations about technology tend to be dominated by an optimistic faith in technological progress. There is endless encouragement to think about all of the exciting benefits of new technology, but significantly less attention paid to the ways things might go spectacularly wrong. That’s where Paul Virilio comes in.
-
Make a Wish
2021-12-20Those who view “real life” as distinct from images might prefer to believe that undocumented experience is the “truth.” They might suggest that experiences contrived to produce photogenic images are false, an “as-if” experience, LARPing in the pejorative sense. But the life they are describing — a way of being in the world that is untouched by performativity and projection — is the biggest LARP of all.
Make a Wish
Make a Wish2021-12-20Those who view “real life” as distinct from images might prefer to believe that undocumented experience is the “truth.” They might suggest that experiences contrived to produce photogenic images are false, an “as-if” experience, LARPing in the pejorative sense. But the life they are describing — a way of being in the world that is untouched by performativity and projection — is the biggest LARP of all.
-
The Great Offline
2021-12-16The concept of “the offline” is deeply enmeshed with that of “wilderness.” Both concepts offer a fantastical escape from the hazards of a globalized world. But in setting up a binary between the corrupted, digital self, and the pure, disconnected self, they both perpetuate a hazardous logic.
The Great Offline
The Great Offline2021-12-16The concept of “the offline” is deeply enmeshed with that of “wilderness.” Both concepts offer a fantastical escape from the hazards of a globalized world. But in setting up a binary between the corrupted, digital self, and the pure, disconnected self, they both perpetuate a hazardous logic.
-
White Balance
2021-12-13Beauty filters like “Belle” are praised for providing better representation. But the underlying technologies are historically steeped in bias, which raises the question: Is this sort of representation desirable in the first place?
White Balance
White Balance2021-12-13Beauty filters like “Belle” are praised for providing better representation. But the underlying technologies are historically steeped in bias, which raises the question: Is this sort of representation desirable in the first place?
-
Passion Play
2021-12-09In the early 2000s, optimistic commentators expected the internet to generate a more participatory culture, in which fans gained more control over the entertainment properties they were invested in emotionally. But participation is not an intrinsically positive force: It has since become a means of fostering overinvestment, obsession, and frustration — volatile social energies with unpredictable social consequences
Passion Play
Passion Play2021-12-09In the early 2000s, optimistic commentators expected the internet to generate a more participatory culture, in which fans gained more control over the entertainment properties they were invested in emotionally. But participation is not an intrinsically positive force: It has since become a means of fostering overinvestment, obsession, and frustration — volatile social energies with unpredictable social consequences
-
Hall Monitors
2021-12-06After school shootings, the surveillance industry mobilizes to sell school districts on more intensive monitoring schemes that they claim could help prevent future tragedies. But rather than successfully predict future crime and protect kids, increased surveillance in schools targets students of color for exclusionary discipline
Hall Monitors
Hall Monitors2021-12-06After school shootings, the surveillance industry mobilizes to sell school districts on more intensive monitoring schemes that they claim could help prevent future tragedies. But rather than successfully predict future crime and protect kids, increased surveillance in schools targets students of color for exclusionary discipline
-
License to Ill
2021-12-02Communities can form around illnesses that are ignored, or contested, by outside authorities. Havana syndrome differs from other contested illnesses: not only for its proposed cause, but for the massive institutional investment in its narrative
License to Ill
License to Ill2021-12-02Communities can form around illnesses that are ignored, or contested, by outside authorities. Havana syndrome differs from other contested illnesses: not only for its proposed cause, but for the massive institutional investment in its narrative
-
Same Old
2021-11-29For decades, popular imaginings of the future have promised difference, but delivered more of the same — recycling technical functions but also, more perniciously, their underlying social relations
-
Yesterday Once More
2021-11-22To help users make sense of massive volumes of content, streaming services rely on recommendation algorithms, which depend in turn on breaking both content and consumers down into component variables. This process manifests as a new kind of nostalgia — a continuous repacking of past pleasure in new permutations rather than an impossible desire to return to a “better” time and place.
Yesterday Once More
Yesterday Once More2021-11-22To help users make sense of massive volumes of content, streaming services rely on recommendation algorithms, which depend in turn on breaking both content and consumers down into component variables. This process manifests as a new kind of nostalgia — a continuous repacking of past pleasure in new permutations rather than an impossible desire to return to a “better” time and place.
-
Head Games
2021-11-18The concept of “telepathy” appeals to tech consumers and tech CEOs for different reasons: consumers are wooed with the idea of seamless, clearer and more intimate communication; to CEOs, telepathy represents a more complete form of surveillance
Head Games
Head Games2021-11-18The concept of “telepathy” appeals to tech consumers and tech CEOs for different reasons: consumers are wooed with the idea of seamless, clearer and more intimate communication; to CEOs, telepathy represents a more complete form of surveillance
-
You Are Here
2021-11-15Paper maps positioned the viewer outside the territory mapped, but mapping apps situate the viewer within the map, not only as a blue dot at the center but also in terms of what information is displayed. The subjective dimension of maps has become more pronounced; they have become more manipulative in telling you where as well as how to go.
You Are Here
You Are Here2021-11-15Paper maps positioned the viewer outside the territory mapped, but mapping apps situate the viewer within the map, not only as a blue dot at the center but also in terms of what information is displayed. The subjective dimension of maps has become more pronounced; they have become more manipulative in telling you where as well as how to go.
-
The Machine Breaks
2021-11-11Rocky IV is not only a film about the Cold War; it’s a film about robots: Drago (the robotic human) and SICO (the humanoid robot), and also Rocky himself, who must disavow his dependence on technology to assert an idea of himself as humanity’s last hope against cyborg-ization.
The Machine Breaks
The Machine Breaks2021-11-11Rocky IV is not only a film about the Cold War; it’s a film about robots: Drago (the robotic human) and SICO (the humanoid robot), and also Rocky himself, who must disavow his dependence on technology to assert an idea of himself as humanity’s last hope against cyborg-ization.
-
New Feelings: Reality Disappointment
2021-11-08The concept of a “normal” on the other side of Covid has merged with the concept of a “real world” beyond the screen — ridiculous but emotionally convenient. After so much loss and disruption, to feel “normal” would be much stranger than whatever it is we feel.
Reality Disappointment
Reality Disappointment2021-11-08The concept of a “normal” on the other side of Covid has merged with the concept of a “real world” beyond the screen — ridiculous but emotionally convenient. After so much loss and disruption, to feel “normal” would be much stranger than whatever it is we feel.
-
Life in the Fast Lane
2021-11-04Micro-mobility devices like scooters and e-bikes were supposed to replace cars, but in practice they often reinforce the excesses of car culture: They intensify the confusion and clutter on existing roadways without reducing the total number of miles traveled. The micro-mobility industry is still a capitalist industry, intent on maximizing use and profit at the expense of sustainability.
Life in the Fast Lane
Life in the Fast Lane2021-11-04Micro-mobility devices like scooters and e-bikes were supposed to replace cars, but in practice they often reinforce the excesses of car culture: They intensify the confusion and clutter on existing roadways without reducing the total number of miles traveled. The micro-mobility industry is still a capitalist industry, intent on maximizing use and profit at the expense of sustainability.
-
Endless Nameless
2021-11-01Gender online is no longer something that is witnessed so much as something that is felt. Memes that seem merely playful at first open up new ways of defining and embodying gender, returning the means of construction to users — as something less like a binary characteristic, or even an item in a list of options, and more like a “mood” or a “vibe.”
Endless Nameless
Endless Nameless2021-11-01Gender online is no longer something that is witnessed so much as something that is felt. Memes that seem merely playful at first open up new ways of defining and embodying gender, returning the means of construction to users — as something less like a binary characteristic, or even an item in a list of options, and more like a “mood” or a “vibe.”
-
Now You See It
2021-10-28Anti-surveillance makeup that imitates the contrasting stripes of dazzle camouflage is as perennially popular as it is impractical. It plays into a fantasy of an individualistic fashion statement serving as effectual tech resistance, while perpetuating the neoliberal insistence on “personal responsibility” as the response to every crisis.
Now You See It
Now You See It2021-10-28Anti-surveillance makeup that imitates the contrasting stripes of dazzle camouflage is as perennially popular as it is impractical. It plays into a fantasy of an individualistic fashion statement serving as effectual tech resistance, while perpetuating the neoliberal insistence on “personal responsibility” as the response to every crisis.
-
Long before smartphones and social media, the social critic Lewis Mumford put a name to the way that complex technological systems offer a share in their benefits in exchange for compliance. He called it a “bribe.” The danger, as Mumford wrote, is that “once one opts for the system no further choice remains.”
The Magnificent Bribe
The Magnificent Bribe2021-10-25Long before smartphones and social media, the social critic Lewis Mumford put a name to the way that complex technological systems offer a share in their benefits in exchange for compliance. He called it a “bribe.” The danger, as Mumford wrote, is that “once one opts for the system no further choice remains.”
-
Real Talk
2021-10-21The voice is thought to have a privileged relationship with the body, and by extension the self — it is connected with the most fundamental aspects of who we believe ourselves to be. For that reason, its severance from the body, and mobility through space or across social media, can feel particularly unsettling.
Real Talk
Real Talk2021-10-21The voice is thought to have a privileged relationship with the body, and by extension the self — it is connected with the most fundamental aspects of who we believe ourselves to be. For that reason, its severance from the body, and mobility through space or across social media, can feel particularly unsettling.
-
False Positivism
2021-10-18Given the scale of problems the world faces, it’s tempting to look to “planetary computing” and “data-driven governance” for solutions: AI models that can take in data at a global scale and intervene with solutions that won’t require further debate or political negotiation. But such models would neglect local knowledge and inevitably enact unimaginable and unpredictable forms of oppression
False Positivism
False Positivism2021-10-18Given the scale of problems the world faces, it’s tempting to look to “planetary computing” and “data-driven governance” for solutions: AI models that can take in data at a global scale and intervene with solutions that won’t require further debate or political negotiation. But such models would neglect local knowledge and inevitably enact unimaginable and unpredictable forms of oppression
-
The Parent Trap
2021-10-13The “biogenetic turn,” exemplified by the rise of consumer DNA testing, risks placing genetics at the center of selfhood, and all it might involve. This shift has led to more of the public misunderstanding genes as the essence of identity, challenging decades of activism and scholarship, and undermining progressive conceptions of family.
The Parent Trap
The Parent Trap2021-10-13The “biogenetic turn,” exemplified by the rise of consumer DNA testing, risks placing genetics at the center of selfhood, and all it might involve. This shift has led to more of the public misunderstanding genes as the essence of identity, challenging decades of activism and scholarship, and undermining progressive conceptions of family.
-
The Great Beyond
2021-10-07The social media profiles of the dead persist after they are gone. They have become pilgrimage sites for mourners who come to them and post messages addressed directly to the deceased, in second person, as if they were a portal to them. This amounts to a mainstreaming of a form of public mourning that had been marginalized to seances and encounters with psychics, in which speaking to the dead is seen as an ongoing open conversation.
The Great Beyond
The Great Beyond2021-10-07The social media profiles of the dead persist after they are gone. They have become pilgrimage sites for mourners who come to them and post messages addressed directly to the deceased, in second person, as if they were a portal to them. This amounts to a mainstreaming of a form of public mourning that had been marginalized to seances and encounters with psychics, in which speaking to the dead is seen as an ongoing open conversation.
-
Smooth Operator
2021-10-04The ubiquitous presence of touchscreens in airports, doctor’s offices, and other sites of modern life is explained by their status as stand-ins for progress. They are monuments to technology, which provide a sense of physicality, even while doing little for the consumer.
Smooth Operator
Smooth Operator2021-10-04The ubiquitous presence of touchscreens in airports, doctor’s offices, and other sites of modern life is explained by their status as stand-ins for progress. They are monuments to technology, which provide a sense of physicality, even while doing little for the consumer.
-
Chat History
2021-09-30Slack is not just a workplace app, but a workplace drama written by its users. This drama mainly consists of endless banalities that only one’s employer can read in total, and in which we are all doomed to play a predetermined role. A new novel attempts to redeem this gibberish, while reproducing, in fantastical terms, the feeling of using Slack.
Chat History
Chat History2021-09-30Slack is not just a workplace app, but a workplace drama written by its users. This drama mainly consists of endless banalities that only one’s employer can read in total, and in which we are all doomed to play a predetermined role. A new novel attempts to redeem this gibberish, while reproducing, in fantastical terms, the feeling of using Slack.
-
Nameless Feeling
2021-09-27Vibes are often seen as feelings that can’t be explained or narrativized; they instead emerge from chance concatenations of stimuli and cohere as a mood. Not coincidentally, this is basically how machine-learning models work, surfacing statistical correlations that can’t be explained in terms of causality but are nonetheless usable in algorithmic recommendations or predictions. Vibes are feelings imputed algorithmically, divorced from causes or consequences; emotions rendered useless for action.
Nameless Feeling
Nameless Feeling2021-09-27Vibes are often seen as feelings that can’t be explained or narrativized; they instead emerge from chance concatenations of stimuli and cohere as a mood. Not coincidentally, this is basically how machine-learning models work, surfacing statistical correlations that can’t be explained in terms of causality but are nonetheless usable in algorithmic recommendations or predictions. Vibes are feelings imputed algorithmically, divorced from causes or consequences; emotions rendered useless for action.
-
Nature Fakers
2021-09-23The transcendent view of nature — which severs the natural world from the world of human affairs — has long been standard in Western art and entertainment. This view makes it easy for us to neglect and exploit the world around us. In this moment, it is critical to engage with these representations, and imagine new ways of seeing in the Anthropocene.
Nature Fakers
Nature Fakers2021-09-23The transcendent view of nature — which severs the natural world from the world of human affairs — has long been standard in Western art and entertainment. This view makes it easy for us to neglect and exploit the world around us. In this moment, it is critical to engage with these representations, and imagine new ways of seeing in the Anthropocene.
-
Doctor’s Orders
2021-09-20Vaccine refusal can’t be understood outside the context of the broader medicalization of society: how health has been construed as a universal ground truth that can override or sideline the need for politics rather than being recognized as a form of politics itself. If it appears that all power rests with medicine, it may seem to some individuals that the only way to manifest and express their power is through self-diagnosis and self-medicating.
Doctor’s Orders
Doctor’s Orders2021-09-20Vaccine refusal can’t be understood outside the context of the broader medicalization of society: how health has been construed as a universal ground truth that can override or sideline the need for politics rather than being recognized as a form of politics itself. If it appears that all power rests with medicine, it may seem to some individuals that the only way to manifest and express their power is through self-diagnosis and self-medicating.
-
Shadow of a Doubt
2021-09-16The idea of “living with Covid” means inhabiting a position that is fundamentally unstable — accepting that we do not know what the future will look like, or whether a “return to normal” is even what we’re trying for. Ultimately, it requires us to give up the idea of closure in favor of a truer ambiguity.
Shadow of a Doubt
Shadow of a Doubt2021-09-16The idea of “living with Covid” means inhabiting a position that is fundamentally unstable — accepting that we do not know what the future will look like, or whether a “return to normal” is even what we’re trying for. Ultimately, it requires us to give up the idea of closure in favor of a truer ambiguity.
-
Home Icons: The World’s Most Beautiful Brush
2021-09-13Beauty technologies are often judged by their results. Like other tech gadgets, however, their meaning lies as much in their designs, their histories, and the performance of their use. Beauty can be thought of as a process, not an end — the opposite of optimization.
The World’s Most Beautiful Brush
The World’s Most Beautiful Brush2021-09-13Beauty technologies are often judged by their results. Like other tech gadgets, however, their meaning lies as much in their designs, their histories, and the performance of their use. Beauty can be thought of as a process, not an end — the opposite of optimization.
-
Take Me Away
2021-09-09Compared to earlier technologies of escape, parasociality offers something closer to direct interaction — a more powerful illusion of connection. Parasocial escapism is not so much a retreat from intimacy into consumerism, but a way of consuming intimacy as a product
Take Me Away
Take Me Away2021-09-09Compared to earlier technologies of escape, parasociality offers something closer to direct interaction — a more powerful illusion of connection. Parasocial escapism is not so much a retreat from intimacy into consumerism, but a way of consuming intimacy as a product
-
I’m Not There
2021-09-07For those who came of age with the social internet, a long digital trail lingers behind one’s every move. Memes that riff on the idea of “not being perceived” get at something deeper than they seem to: namely, a vision of the internet free from compulsory body awareness
I’m Not There
I’m Not There2021-09-07For those who came of age with the social internet, a long digital trail lingers behind one’s every move. Memes that riff on the idea of “not being perceived” get at something deeper than they seem to: namely, a vision of the internet free from compulsory body awareness
-
Bad Metaphors: Conspiracy Wall
2021-09-02The “conspiracy wall” meme offers a cinematic interpretation of how conspiracies spread. However, it is ultimately misleading: those who subscribe to the kinds of theories peddled by Alex Jones and the like are not looking for logical explanations, but rather for permission to feel how they want to feel
Conspiracy Wall
Conspiracy Wall2021-09-02The “conspiracy wall” meme offers a cinematic interpretation of how conspiracies spread. However, it is ultimately misleading: those who subscribe to the kinds of theories peddled by Alex Jones and the like are not looking for logical explanations, but rather for permission to feel how they want to feel
-
Standard Evasions
2021-08-30The U.S. Department of Commerce is developing an approach to defining people’s trust in AI. But rather than define trustworthy systems with respect to their consequences or differential impacts, it focuses on how they are perceived by “users” (not whom they are used on) and does not bother to ask if the systems themselves are worth trusting.
Standard Evasions
Standard Evasions2021-08-30The U.S. Department of Commerce is developing an approach to defining people’s trust in AI. But rather than define trustworthy systems with respect to their consequences or differential impacts, it focuses on how they are perceived by “users” (not whom they are used on) and does not bother to ask if the systems themselves are worth trusting.
-
Ted Talks
2021-08-26Ted Kaczynski’s most significant contribution to the work of 20th century anti-industrial thinkers is the fact of the bombings. In refusing to grapple with that, contemporary apologists fail to capture a difficult truth: that the decision to uplift his message roughly vindicates his conviction that violence was an ugly but effective medium
Ted Talks
Ted Talks2021-08-26Ted Kaczynski’s most significant contribution to the work of 20th century anti-industrial thinkers is the fact of the bombings. In refusing to grapple with that, contemporary apologists fail to capture a difficult truth: that the decision to uplift his message roughly vindicates his conviction that violence was an ugly but effective medium
-
Trust Me, You Want This
2021-08-23Host-read ads on podcasts — when the hosts ad-lib and joke around with the copy provided by sponsors — are a kind of “parasocial” advertising, in that they use the sense of intimacy and pseudo-friendship podcasts produce to overcome the listener’s defense mechanisms against marketing. Joking around with the ads makes those ads integral to the sense of community that listeners derive from podcasts and the sense of belonging they generate.
Trust Me, You Want This
Trust Me, You Want This2021-08-23Host-read ads on podcasts — when the hosts ad-lib and joke around with the copy provided by sponsors — are a kind of “parasocial” advertising, in that they use the sense of intimacy and pseudo-friendship podcasts produce to overcome the listener’s defense mechanisms against marketing. Joking around with the ads makes those ads integral to the sense of community that listeners derive from podcasts and the sense of belonging they generate.
-
Home Spun
2021-08-19Women’s home-based work is often invisible and undervalued. This has been the case for much of its history, and today it includes platform labor. Reconsidering more feminized, pink-collar forms of online work helps broaden the definition of “tech worker,” which is still often perceived in narrow, masculinist terms.
Home Spun
Home Spun2021-08-19Women’s home-based work is often invisible and undervalued. This has been the case for much of its history, and today it includes platform labor. Reconsidering more feminized, pink-collar forms of online work helps broaden the definition of “tech worker,” which is still often perceived in narrow, masculinist terms.
-
Worn Out
2021-08-16The stereotype of tech people is that they are indifferent to fashion, dressing in austere uniforms to signal how they don’t have time for it. But what they don’t have time for is the idea of a commons that fashion, as a collective investment in public display, can stand for. When public space is privatized and digitized, tech companies are eager to sell fashion as customization.
Worn Out
Worn Out2021-08-16The stereotype of tech people is that they are indifferent to fashion, dressing in austere uniforms to signal how they don’t have time for it. But what they don’t have time for is the idea of a commons that fashion, as a collective investment in public display, can stand for. When public space is privatized and digitized, tech companies are eager to sell fashion as customization.
-
Speaking for the Past
2021-08-12To make engaging with the stories of Holocaust survivors more “interactive,” a new project uses machine learning analysis to process an audience’s questions to synthesize answers out of a survivor’s pre-recorded testimony. But this “solution,” in blurring the lines between simulation and reality, disrupts our understanding of the past and undermines how we perceive the survivors themselves.
Speaking for the Past
Speaking for the Past2021-08-12To make engaging with the stories of Holocaust survivors more “interactive,” a new project uses machine learning analysis to process an audience’s questions to synthesize answers out of a survivor’s pre-recorded testimony. But this “solution,” in blurring the lines between simulation and reality, disrupts our understanding of the past and undermines how we perceive the survivors themselves.
-
Moving in Stereo
2021-08-09It’s obvious that Peloton sells a kind of self-optimization — exercise as time discipline. But Spotify (a streaming service like Peloton) also trains listeners in how to attune emotionally to states (or vibes) that employers have deemed productive or speculatively valuable.
Moving in Stereo
Moving in Stereo2021-08-09It’s obvious that Peloton sells a kind of self-optimization — exercise as time discipline. But Spotify (a streaming service like Peloton) also trains listeners in how to attune emotionally to states (or vibes) that employers have deemed productive or speculatively valuable.
-
Syllabus for the Internet: Labors of Love
2021-08-05In a society that conflates work with identity, the fear that one’s job could become obsolete is fear for one’s very self. Consider the work of Ivan Illich, who advocated, among other things, for “the right to useful unemployment” — the freedom to pursue non-economic means of living.
Labors of Love
Labors of Love2021-08-05In a society that conflates work with identity, the fear that one’s job could become obsolete is fear for one’s very self. Consider the work of Ivan Illich, who advocated, among other things, for “the right to useful unemployment” — the freedom to pursue non-economic means of living.
-
An Accumulation of Nameless Energies
2021-08-02Phones are often treated as though they have disrupted how museums operate, causing them to radically alter themselves to accommodate the phone’s implications. But the inverse is also true: the way of seeing promoted by museums has shaped the way we have come to use phones, to capture “visual interest” and strip it of its original context.
An Accumulation of Nameless Energies
An Accumulation of Nameless Energies2021-08-02Phones are often treated as though they have disrupted how museums operate, causing them to radically alter themselves to accommodate the phone’s implications. But the inverse is also true: the way of seeing promoted by museums has shaped the way we have come to use phones, to capture “visual interest” and strip it of its original context.
-
Castle in the Cloud
2021-07-29The new players in real estate operate much like Spotify, Netflix, and other platforms that charge a subscription for temporary access to more than you could ever buy outright. Unlike Netflix and Spotify, however, the platformized real estate industry has the power to determine where and how we live.
Castle in the Cloud
Castle in the Cloud2021-07-29The new players in real estate operate much like Spotify, Netflix, and other platforms that charge a subscription for temporary access to more than you could ever buy outright. Unlike Netflix and Spotify, however, the platformized real estate industry has the power to determine where and how we live.
-
Reconnected
2021-07-26The internet’s early history is often misremembered as a time when decentralization allowed for a more genuine form of sociality, free from corporate and commercial pressures. But this misplaced nostalgia not only overlooks how free-market ideology drove the internet’s development; it also ignores the more centralized alternatives that were directed from the start by a different kind of politics
Reconnected
Reconnected2021-07-26The internet’s early history is often misremembered as a time when decentralization allowed for a more genuine form of sociality, free from corporate and commercial pressures. But this misplaced nostalgia not only overlooks how free-market ideology drove the internet’s development; it also ignores the more centralized alternatives that were directed from the start by a different kind of politics
-
Is It My Body
2021-07-22More and more, paranormal tech horror centers around stories of possession: a self taken over by forces that are external to it and yet deeply familiar. These films speak to the sense that the 21st century body is inescapably hybrid, possessed not only by the ecological non-human, but also by the technological non-human.
Is It My Body
Is It My Body2021-07-22More and more, paranormal tech horror centers around stories of possession: a self taken over by forces that are external to it and yet deeply familiar. These films speak to the sense that the 21st century body is inescapably hybrid, possessed not only by the ecological non-human, but also by the technological non-human.
-
Fixing to Die
2021-07-19There is always a new “incident” to report of how a tech company’s product led to some instance of harm — algorithmic bias or intensified surveillance reproducing social injustice, gig economy platforms prompting abusive labor practices, disinformation leading to violence, and on and on. Reform seems insufficient, so what lessons can tech criticism draw from abolition movements?
Fixing to Die
Fixing to Die2021-07-19There is always a new “incident” to report of how a tech company’s product led to some instance of harm — algorithmic bias or intensified surveillance reproducing social injustice, gig economy platforms prompting abusive labor practices, disinformation leading to violence, and on and on. Reform seems insufficient, so what lessons can tech criticism draw from abolition movements?
-
Eye of the Storm
2021-07-15Street View offers a reflection of the everyday social relations of pandemic life. It is insufficient in all the ways we might expect: lacking in narrative, devoid of intimacy, filtered through a screen. But its flatness reflects a feeling associated with 2020, and this is the record we have.
Eye of the Storm
Eye of the Storm2021-07-15Street View offers a reflection of the everyday social relations of pandemic life. It is insufficient in all the ways we might expect: lacking in narrative, devoid of intimacy, filtered through a screen. But its flatness reflects a feeling associated with 2020, and this is the record we have.
-
Nothing Personal
2021-07-12The idea of a “professional managerial class” emerged from a 1970s analysis that sought to assess the rise and function of middle managers and the degree to which they could be politically mobilized. Recently, it has become a pejorative directed at tech and media people who are prominent in “the discourse” and are held to be steering it toward self-serving conflicts. But demonizing this class won’t undo the socioeconomic structures that produce it.
Nothing Personal
Nothing Personal2021-07-12The idea of a “professional managerial class” emerged from a 1970s analysis that sought to assess the rise and function of middle managers and the degree to which they could be politically mobilized. Recently, it has become a pejorative directed at tech and media people who are prominent in “the discourse” and are held to be steering it toward self-serving conflicts. But demonizing this class won’t undo the socioeconomic structures that produce it.
-
Bad Metaphors: Digital Footprint
2021-07-08The “digital footprint” metaphor lulls people into a false sense of control over their digital representations, removing attention from the networked and institutionally driven operations that largely shape digital impressions. Instead, the “digital wake” — as in, the churn and ripple created as a boat moves through the water — might provide a more fruitful, and politically useful metaphor for thinking about digital data flows.
Digital Footprint
Digital Footprint2021-07-08The “digital footprint” metaphor lulls people into a false sense of control over their digital representations, removing attention from the networked and institutionally driven operations that largely shape digital impressions. Instead, the “digital wake” — as in, the churn and ripple created as a boat moves through the water — might provide a more fruitful, and politically useful metaphor for thinking about digital data flows.
-
Luxury Surveillance
2021-07-06Tracking devices like fitness trackers and smartwatches are a form of external surveillance, strikingly similar to ankle monitors. Users who choose to wear them are proclaiming something about their privilege: They can opt in to “luxury surveillance” because they are already aligned with social power, and their acceptance of it extends a more intensive net of surveillance over everyone.
Luxury Surveillance
Luxury Surveillance2021-07-06Tracking devices like fitness trackers and smartwatches are a form of external surveillance, strikingly similar to ankle monitors. Users who choose to wear them are proclaiming something about their privilege: They can opt in to “luxury surveillance” because they are already aligned with social power, and their acceptance of it extends a more intensive net of surveillance over everyone.
-
Why Can’t We Be Friends
2021-07-01Friendship is not an unchanging concept; changing economic conditions and technological possibilities facilitate different demands for connection and structures of belonging. “Parasociality” — feeling an unreciprocated intimacy with media personalities — is one such structure of belonging, but its asymmetry always tilts into economic exploitation or explosive fan rage. The same media forms that nurture that rage are also capable of amalgamating it into a potent force of social disruption.
Why Can’t We Be Friends
Why Can’t We Be Friends2021-07-01Friendship is not an unchanging concept; changing economic conditions and technological possibilities facilitate different demands for connection and structures of belonging. “Parasociality” — feeling an unreciprocated intimacy with media personalities — is one such structure of belonging, but its asymmetry always tilts into economic exploitation or explosive fan rage. The same media forms that nurture that rage are also capable of amalgamating it into a potent force of social disruption.
-
On Techno-Orientalism
2021-06-28Social media accounts by white users pretending to be Asian represent a mutation in the logic of appropriation. The Asian body, historically reduced in the white Western imaginary as machine-like, is held up by the emerging techno-culture as an uncanny cyborg ideal.
On Techno-Orientalism
On Techno-Orientalism2021-06-28Social media accounts by white users pretending to be Asian represent a mutation in the logic of appropriation. The Asian body, historically reduced in the white Western imaginary as machine-like, is held up by the emerging techno-culture as an uncanny cyborg ideal.
-
Duty Bound
2021-06-24Multiplayer games like Call of Duty: Warzone are blatant propaganda, but it feels like there are ways to play them “critically,” reaping the positive social and collaborative benefits while supposedly filtering out the ideological effects. However, these games are designed to operate beyond the explicit and rational, and the more you play, and the more deliberately you marshal your psychic defenses, the more susceptible you risk becoming to these other persuasive mechanisms
Duty Bound
Duty Bound2021-06-24Multiplayer games like Call of Duty: Warzone are blatant propaganda, but it feels like there are ways to play them “critically,” reaping the positive social and collaborative benefits while supposedly filtering out the ideological effects. However, these games are designed to operate beyond the explicit and rational, and the more you play, and the more deliberately you marshal your psychic defenses, the more susceptible you risk becoming to these other persuasive mechanisms
-
Send in the Clouds
2021-06-21Drawing on the libertarian vision of “charter cities,” venture capitalists aim to re-establish the city as a commodity produced from scratch: “urban life” as a product available without the bother of actual urban communities, politics, or commons. This fantasy is being used to place pressure on existing cities, forcing them to compete in the lifestyle market rather than provide a just and stable municipality for citizens.
Send in the Clouds
Send in the Clouds2021-06-21Drawing on the libertarian vision of “charter cities,” venture capitalists aim to re-establish the city as a commodity produced from scratch: “urban life” as a product available without the bother of actual urban communities, politics, or commons. This fantasy is being used to place pressure on existing cities, forcing them to compete in the lifestyle market rather than provide a just and stable municipality for citizens.
-
Cozy Tech
2021-06-17In tech design, a turn from sleek metal and glass to cozy textiles serves an ideological purpose: making consumer technologies, with all their surveillant properties, feel like a natural, intimate feature of home.
-
Name of the Game
2021-06-14“Influencer” and “creator” aren’t really different jobs, but the opposition of the two terms helps structure a variety of hierarchies: Less experienced or female content producers or competitors are more likely to be “influencers,” while “creators” testify to the economic generativity of social media platforms and entrepreneurial opportunities for audiences.
Name of the Game
Name of the Game2021-06-14“Influencer” and “creator” aren’t really different jobs, but the opposition of the two terms helps structure a variety of hierarchies: Less experienced or female content producers or competitors are more likely to be “influencers,” while “creators” testify to the economic generativity of social media platforms and entrepreneurial opportunities for audiences.
-
Body Talk
2021-06-10Social media train us to go through life in constant anticipation of a potential audience. That’s as true for sex as it is for friendship, travel, eating, and “being oneself.” The spectacularization of sex, for those who don’t have it professionally, might seem like a new frontier for public living. But within this immersion lies the possibility of a perfect privacy.
Body Talk
Body Talk2021-06-10Social media train us to go through life in constant anticipation of a potential audience. That’s as true for sex as it is for friendship, travel, eating, and “being oneself.” The spectacularization of sex, for those who don’t have it professionally, might seem like a new frontier for public living. But within this immersion lies the possibility of a perfect privacy.
-
Emergency Breaks
2021-06-07Techno-utopianism has held longstanding appeal to the left, both as a means of keeping faith alive and of deflecting familiar critiques. As Gavin Mueller writes in his new book, however, this strain of thinking is deeply flawed. Is breaking machines the better way to build a better world?
Emergency Breaks
Emergency Breaks2021-06-07Techno-utopianism has held longstanding appeal to the left, both as a means of keeping faith alive and of deflecting familiar critiques. As Gavin Mueller writes in his new book, however, this strain of thinking is deeply flawed. Is breaking machines the better way to build a better world?
-
Meme Finance
2021-05-28Real Life is taking a week off. In the meantime we’ve brought together a few of our recent articles on what we are calling “meme finance.” These articles address how social media dynamics have combined with speculative markets to raise the profile of new kinds of financial instruments, like NFTs and cryptocurrencies, as well as […]
Meme Finance
Meme Finance2021-05-28Real Life is taking a week off. In the meantime we’ve brought together a few of our recent articles on what we are calling “meme finance.” These articles address how social media dynamics have combined with speculative markets to raise the profile of new kinds of financial instruments, like NFTs and cryptocurrencies, as well as […]
-
Patently Harmful
2021-05-27The idea that the present should always be sacrificed at the altar of future innovation, and that this should guide IP, dates roughly to the 1960s, not to eternity. These decisions can be made differently. Neoliberal prerogatives of privatization need not be treated as immutable or even logical on their own terms.
Patently Harmful
Patently Harmful2021-05-27The idea that the present should always be sacrificed at the altar of future innovation, and that this should guide IP, dates roughly to the 1960s, not to eternity. These decisions can be made differently. Neoliberal prerogatives of privatization need not be treated as immutable or even logical on their own terms.
-
The Weaponization of Care
2021-05-24Protection, direction, influence, and even management can easily be perceived as aligned with “care,” if not inseparable from it. Be it for our children, partners, or property, surveillance promises peace of mind — that we can think of ourselves as better caregivers. But when “care” is used to account for, rationalize, and promote surveillance technologies that ultimately cause vastly more harm than good, this amounts to care’s weaponization.
The Weaponization of Care
The Weaponization of Care2021-05-24Protection, direction, influence, and even management can easily be perceived as aligned with “care,” if not inseparable from it. Be it for our children, partners, or property, surveillance promises peace of mind — that we can think of ourselves as better caregivers. But when “care” is used to account for, rationalize, and promote surveillance technologies that ultimately cause vastly more harm than good, this amounts to care’s weaponization.
-
As You Were
2021-05-20The idea that a person’s total potential could be quantified and reproduced by algorithm — without agency — reinforces the sense of futility characteristic of neoliberal capitalism, and which can worsen depression in the first place
As You Were
As You Were2021-05-20The idea that a person’s total potential could be quantified and reproduced by algorithm — without agency — reinforces the sense of futility characteristic of neoliberal capitalism, and which can worsen depression in the first place
-
Future Myopia
2021-05-17Previous generations considered future peoples disposable, while at the same time idealizing them as saviors. Confronting the ghosts of the past, how do we prepare to look the future in the eye?
Future Myopia
Future Myopia2021-05-17Previous generations considered future peoples disposable, while at the same time idealizing them as saviors. Confronting the ghosts of the past, how do we prepare to look the future in the eye?
-
Match Games
2021-05-13Dating apps have become part of the infrastructure of the social world, and crafting a profile for one of them is a rite of passage into a certain kind of social visibility. But the algorithms that drive them force us to balance our desire for intimacy with the desire for publicity. They feed on the romantic illusions that they dismantle at the same time.
Match Games
Match Games2021-05-13Dating apps have become part of the infrastructure of the social world, and crafting a profile for one of them is a rite of passage into a certain kind of social visibility. But the algorithms that drive them force us to balance our desire for intimacy with the desire for publicity. They feed on the romantic illusions that they dismantle at the same time.
-
The Sounds of Silence
2021-05-10“Synaesthetic” technologies — from instruments that seem to draw sound from plants to smart cities — promise to “translate” the nonhuman world, facilitating a deeper interactivity. What they really do is force the world to “speak” to us in our own language, while commodifying connection itself.
The Sounds of Silence
The Sounds of Silence2021-05-10“Synaesthetic” technologies — from instruments that seem to draw sound from plants to smart cities — promise to “translate” the nonhuman world, facilitating a deeper interactivity. What they really do is force the world to “speak” to us in our own language, while commodifying connection itself.
-
Play to Lose
2021-05-03Phenomena like crypto, NFTs and meme stocks have been touted in some quarters as a democratization of finance, allowing ordinary people to participate in speculative markets and use them to their own ends. But these practices are not foundational to a sustainable and equitable society; they mainly offer a feeling of revenge to help compensate for the otherwise helpless feeling of being financialized against one’s will.
Play to Lose
Play to Lose2021-05-03Phenomena like crypto, NFTs and meme stocks have been touted in some quarters as a democratization of finance, allowing ordinary people to participate in speculative markets and use them to their own ends. But these practices are not foundational to a sustainable and equitable society; they mainly offer a feeling of revenge to help compensate for the otherwise helpless feeling of being financialized against one’s will.
-
All Skies Are Gray
2021-04-29This essay explores the chasm between the data-heavy objectivity of weather prediction apps and our experience of the weather day to day. Weather apps create a soothing aesthetic of reliable information, dulling the feelings of helplessness and uncertainty intensified by climate change.
All Skies Are Gray
All Skies Are Gray2021-04-29This essay explores the chasm between the data-heavy objectivity of weather prediction apps and our experience of the weather day to day. Weather apps create a soothing aesthetic of reliable information, dulling the feelings of helplessness and uncertainty intensified by climate change.
-
In the Mood
2021-04-26Ambient works once sought to intervene in an existing environment and re-attune one’s relationship to it — they function like augmented reality. Ambience videos on YouTube (think “lo-fi hip hop radio” or ” Rainy Night Coffee Shop Ambience”) are more like virtual reality, promising an off-the-shelf escape from the environment you’re in. Ambience ceases to be something shared and becomes instead something consumed.
In the Mood
In the Mood2021-04-26Ambient works once sought to intervene in an existing environment and re-attune one’s relationship to it — they function like augmented reality. Ambience videos on YouTube (think “lo-fi hip hop radio” or ” Rainy Night Coffee Shop Ambience”) are more like virtual reality, promising an off-the-shelf escape from the environment you’re in. Ambience ceases to be something shared and becomes instead something consumed.
-
Appropriate Measures
2021-04-22“Appropriate technology” was a movement beginning in the late 1960s that aimed to shift the emphasis from mass technology to smaller-scale, affordable technologies, informed and targeted to local needs and customs. Many of its ideas are as relevant today. So is one of its major shortcomings: why would we rely on technology to mitigate the harm technology does?
Appropriate Measures
Appropriate Measures2021-04-22“Appropriate technology” was a movement beginning in the late 1960s that aimed to shift the emphasis from mass technology to smaller-scale, affordable technologies, informed and targeted to local needs and customs. Many of its ideas are as relevant today. So is one of its major shortcomings: why would we rely on technology to mitigate the harm technology does?
-
Paid in Full
2021-04-19With the advent of the internet, some predicted that intellectual property would become outmoded, but this has turned out to be backward. Instead it has allowed for the conception of everything as IP. Anything can become “content,” which now means anything can be conceived as a speculative instrument, as with NFTs. Web 2.0 — the “participatory web” of social media platforms and user-generated content — is being subsumed by what’s called Web3, an initiative to build blockchains and payment protocols into the internet’s fundamental architecture.
Paid in Full
Paid in Full2021-04-19With the advent of the internet, some predicted that intellectual property would become outmoded, but this has turned out to be backward. Instead it has allowed for the conception of everything as IP. Anything can become “content,” which now means anything can be conceived as a speculative instrument, as with NFTs. Web 2.0 — the “participatory web” of social media platforms and user-generated content — is being subsumed by what’s called Web3, an initiative to build blockchains and payment protocols into the internet’s fundamental architecture.
-
New Feelings: Seen By
2021-04-15Social media platforms offer visibility features that show who is “lurking” on you. Because they offer the smallest possible units of attention — literally, “seen by” — they offer unlimited possibilities for narrativizing and mythologizing our relationships with others
-
Hello Goodbye
2021-04-12Technologies that write text for us aim to eliminate ambiguity from communication and make it more efficient. But the more popular these technologies become, the more they place all text under suspicion of being lazily produced, without any sincere human effort or intention behind it. Rather than becoming clearer, it becomes utterly inscrutable.
Hello Goodbye
Hello Goodbye2021-04-12Technologies that write text for us aim to eliminate ambiguity from communication and make it more efficient. But the more popular these technologies become, the more they place all text under suspicion of being lazily produced, without any sincere human effort or intention behind it. Rather than becoming clearer, it becomes utterly inscrutable.
-
Money for Nothing
2021-04-08NFTs are made to seem intricate, innovative, and complicated, but they are merely a new manifestation of a very old form: the financial bubble. The crypto-driven machinery by which NFTs are supposed to acquire their value disguises the dispossession that all forms of capitalist accumulation entail. The value of crypto (and apps) is not in electricity but in the human labor they displace and appropriate.
Money for Nothing
Money for Nothing2021-04-08NFTs are made to seem intricate, innovative, and complicated, but they are merely a new manifestation of a very old form: the financial bubble. The crypto-driven machinery by which NFTs are supposed to acquire their value disguises the dispossession that all forms of capitalist accumulation entail. The value of crypto (and apps) is not in electricity but in the human labor they displace and appropriate.
-
They’re Just Like Us
2021-04-06Each age brings a new format for speculating about celebrity affairs, and over the decades, gossip has found new ways to justify its own existence. In recent years, the nastiness that marked early-aughts gossip has seemed retrograde. But the pursuit of sensitive gossip might be a vain one.
They’re Just Like Us
They’re Just Like Us2021-04-06Each age brings a new format for speculating about celebrity affairs, and over the decades, gossip has found new ways to justify its own existence. In recent years, the nastiness that marked early-aughts gossip has seemed retrograde. But the pursuit of sensitive gossip might be a vain one.
-
Home Icons: Unwanted Corkpull
2021-04-01The origins of everyday household junk are uncanny in their endlessness and inscrutability. This encourages a kind of object orthorexia: alone at home amid possessions one can’t easily be rid of, it is easy to obsess over the extractive beginnings and horrid afterlives of cheap objects
Unwanted Corkpull
Unwanted Corkpull2021-04-01The origins of everyday household junk are uncanny in their endlessness and inscrutability. This encourages a kind of object orthorexia: alone at home amid possessions one can’t easily be rid of, it is easy to obsess over the extractive beginnings and horrid afterlives of cheap objects
-
A Shopper’s Heaven
2021-03-29“Convenience” is often discussed as though it is what consumers naturally demand — a way for them to save time and energy. But convenience and its logic of efficiency as an end in itself derives from the imperatives of production at scale. To misread “convenience” as our own desire, we must be brought to misrecognize the vast logistical landscape that makes “frictionless consumption” possible and that is slowly devouring the countryside.
A Shopper’s Heaven
A Shopper’s Heaven2021-03-29“Convenience” is often discussed as though it is what consumers naturally demand — a way for them to save time and energy. But convenience and its logic of efficiency as an end in itself derives from the imperatives of production at scale. To misread “convenience” as our own desire, we must be brought to misrecognize the vast logistical landscape that makes “frictionless consumption” possible and that is slowly devouring the countryside.
-
Middle Management
2021-03-25The ideal of design as politics, as encoded in movements like “design thinking,” operates just like political centrism. It relies on the fantasy that innovative design solutions could eliminate ideological conflict and change the world by merely shuffling around its parts.
Middle Management
Middle Management2021-03-25The ideal of design as politics, as encoded in movements like “design thinking,” operates just like political centrism. It relies on the fantasy that innovative design solutions could eliminate ideological conflict and change the world by merely shuffling around its parts.
-
Calculating Instruments
2021-03-22Crowdsourcing is often presented as novel, but its history precedes the advent of digital computing. The history of “human computing” — using the division of labor to solve complex math problems — shows how crowdsourcing fits into a longer pattern of deskilled, invisible, and exploited work.
Calculating Instruments
Calculating Instruments2021-03-22Crowdsourcing is often presented as novel, but its history precedes the advent of digital computing. The history of “human computing” — using the division of labor to solve complex math problems — shows how crowdsourcing fits into a longer pattern of deskilled, invisible, and exploited work.
-
Home Icons: Starter Table Saw
2021-03-18Woodworking — and crafting more generally — holds appeal as something outside of the everyday experience of capitalism. This mode of thinking has a long history, one traditionally more concerned with middle-class discontents than the material conditions of capitalism itself.
Starter Table Saw
Starter Table Saw2021-03-18Woodworking — and crafting more generally — holds appeal as something outside of the everyday experience of capitalism. This mode of thinking has a long history, one traditionally more concerned with middle-class discontents than the material conditions of capitalism itself.
-
Faces of Histories
2021-03-15When image-manipulation tools like the recent “Deep Nostalgia” gain notoriety, they are often described as either “cool” or “creepy.” But such privileged reactions sidestep the expropriation involved in representing people without consent, and the way such transgressions disproportionately affect marginalized people.
Faces of Histories
Faces of Histories2021-03-15When image-manipulation tools like the recent “Deep Nostalgia” gain notoriety, they are often described as either “cool” or “creepy.” But such privileged reactions sidestep the expropriation involved in representing people without consent, and the way such transgressions disproportionately affect marginalized people.
-
Anonymous Landscapes
2021-03-11The images that come preinstalled on devices aim for a generic appeal that could appeal to any user without being too distracting. Often images of landscapes, they evoke a collective appeal, a well-being in ordinary belonging, that transfers to the device itself. But landscape imagery also taps into longstanding ideas of dominion and mastery — of human transcendence from environments that we exploit rather than inhabit. This is a dangerous way to think by default.
Anonymous Landscapes
Anonymous Landscapes2021-03-11The images that come preinstalled on devices aim for a generic appeal that could appeal to any user without being too distracting. Often images of landscapes, they evoke a collective appeal, a well-being in ordinary belonging, that transfers to the device itself. But landscape imagery also taps into longstanding ideas of dominion and mastery — of human transcendence from environments that we exploit rather than inhabit. This is a dangerous way to think by default.
-
Source Material
2021-03-08Supply studies attempts to distill and make legible the global networks that manufacture and deliver our electronics, and form the infrastructure that organizes our society. It provides a crucial lens for understanding the real origins, and the real impacts, of our devices, whose complexity obfuscates their harm.
Source Material
Source Material2021-03-08Supply studies attempts to distill and make legible the global networks that manufacture and deliver our electronics, and form the infrastructure that organizes our society. It provides a crucial lens for understanding the real origins, and the real impacts, of our devices, whose complexity obfuscates their harm.
-
Main Character Energy
2021-03-04Since the pandemic began, there have been a rash of posts that emphasize embracing a certain “main character energy” — a way of conveying an impression of inner depth when we mostly appear to each other on screens. These have their roots in the fantasy of living in the movie of your own life that cinema has worked hard to establish and which has become harder to sustain under the conditions of social media, where we are routinely confronted by our marginality in the lives of others.
Main Character Energy
Main Character Energy2021-03-04Since the pandemic began, there have been a rash of posts that emphasize embracing a certain “main character energy” — a way of conveying an impression of inner depth when we mostly appear to each other on screens. These have their roots in the fantasy of living in the movie of your own life that cinema has worked hard to establish and which has become harder to sustain under the conditions of social media, where we are routinely confronted by our marginality in the lives of others.
-
Star Power
2021-03-01Tech companies tie their origin stories to scientific master-narratives of the earth and the universe. By co-opting the totalizing authority of astrophysics and scientific cosmology — the “purest” and most conceptual of the sciences — they naturalize their own role in shaping earth’s futures.
Star Power
Star Power2021-03-01Tech companies tie their origin stories to scientific master-narratives of the earth and the universe. By co-opting the totalizing authority of astrophysics and scientific cosmology — the “purest” and most conceptual of the sciences — they naturalize their own role in shaping earth’s futures.
-
The Presence of the Original
2021-02-26The underlying aim of NFTs is to empty content of whatever it contains that makes it circulate and reduce instead to a moment of property, an assertion of the self who owns it over its potential social significance. That is, NFTs make the social significance of any digital artifact the simple fact that it can be owned and valued. Cash is king.
The Presence of the Original
The Presence of the Original2021-02-26The underlying aim of NFTs is to empty content of whatever it contains that makes it circulate and reduce instead to a moment of property, an assertion of the self who owns it over its potential social significance. That is, NFTs make the social significance of any digital artifact the simple fact that it can be owned and valued. Cash is king.
-
Goon Squads
2021-02-25Two issues marked the release of last year’s most hyped game, Cyberpunk 2077’s: its racist, transphobic marketing campaign; and the exploitive labor conditions under which it was made. These must be understood not as independent problems but intrinsically related: Transphobia’s profitability can help instill labor discipline; exploitive labor conditions allow fascist gender politics to flourish more broadly.
Goon Squads
Goon Squads2021-02-25Two issues marked the release of last year’s most hyped game, Cyberpunk 2077’s: its racist, transphobic marketing campaign; and the exploitive labor conditions under which it was made. These must be understood not as independent problems but intrinsically related: Transphobia’s profitability can help instill labor discipline; exploitive labor conditions allow fascist gender politics to flourish more broadly.
-
Family Scanning
2021-02-22Parents must watch their children, while surveillance is conventionally associated with state power and its abuses. But in tracing the history of child monitoring and its technologies, we can see that these two forms of observation are less distinct than they appear
Family Scanning
Family Scanning2021-02-22Parents must watch their children, while surveillance is conventionally associated with state power and its abuses. But in tracing the history of child monitoring and its technologies, we can see that these two forms of observation are less distinct than they appear
-
Socialized Streaming
2021-02-16Music is a public good: It brings people together, it provides an outlet, an archive, and reflects the tenor of society at any given moment. We don’t currently conceptualize universal access to music as a public good, to be managed in the public interest with public funding. We should. We should think about socializing music streaming.
Socialized Streaming
Socialized Streaming2021-02-16Music is a public good: It brings people together, it provides an outlet, an archive, and reflects the tenor of society at any given moment. We don’t currently conceptualize universal access to music as a public good, to be managed in the public interest with public funding. We should. We should think about socializing music streaming.
-
The Glint
2021-02-11To advertise the idea of better picture quality or basic desirability, marketers often make recourse to the “glint” — an elusive flash reflecting off surfaces to convey a product’s enhanced presence. This glint figures the idea of having our attention captured without specifying what captured it; it intimates in a flash that we’ve already seen what we want and know why we want it.
The Glint
The Glint2021-02-11To advertise the idea of better picture quality or basic desirability, marketers often make recourse to the “glint” — an elusive flash reflecting off surfaces to convey a product’s enhanced presence. This glint figures the idea of having our attention captured without specifying what captured it; it intimates in a flash that we’ve already seen what we want and know why we want it.
-
TikTok Face
2021-02-08On TikTok, users “emojify” their faces — abstracting facial expressions into blank, universal icons that nonetheless provide a hit of personality, and estranging the most basic and embodied mode of communication from the body
TikTok Face
TikTok Face2021-02-08On TikTok, users “emojify” their faces — abstracting facial expressions into blank, universal icons that nonetheless provide a hit of personality, and estranging the most basic and embodied mode of communication from the body
-
Map Quest
2021-02-04Older open world games, at their best, offered “cognitive maps” of contemporary capitalism. Today’s open worlds — even when they take inspiration from anti-capitalist literary genres like cyberpunk — are more like gig economy platforms, offering “freedom” in the form of being able to choose among an endless series of tedious tasks.
Map Quest
Map Quest2021-02-04Older open world games, at their best, offered “cognitive maps” of contemporary capitalism. Today’s open worlds — even when they take inspiration from anti-capitalist literary genres like cyberpunk — are more like gig economy platforms, offering “freedom” in the form of being able to choose among an endless series of tedious tasks.
-
Mirror of Your Mind
2021-02-01When algorithmic feeds beginning showing users content pertaining to specific health conditions, users will likely feel as though they are being diagnosed with them. Within social media’s systems of self-differentiation, every kind of content can be understood as a symptom. Identity becomes a kind of chronic disease that is constantly trying to cure itself.
Mirror of Your Mind
Mirror of Your Mind2021-02-01When algorithmic feeds beginning showing users content pertaining to specific health conditions, users will likely feel as though they are being diagnosed with them. Within social media’s systems of self-differentiation, every kind of content can be understood as a symptom. Identity becomes a kind of chronic disease that is constantly trying to cure itself.
-
Home Icons: SAD Lamp
2021-01-28The SAD lamp is a technology that claims to provide us with the sunlight we miss during the winter months, treating Seasonal Affective Disorder. While its benefits are unclear, it is part of an overarching attempt to calibrate the human body through science to a perfect synchronicity with the rhythms of nature. SAD lamps tap into our desire to believe in ourselves as part of wider ecologies, and also position consumer goods as necessary mediators of this relationship
SAD Lamp
SAD Lamp2021-01-28The SAD lamp is a technology that claims to provide us with the sunlight we miss during the winter months, treating Seasonal Affective Disorder. While its benefits are unclear, it is part of an overarching attempt to calibrate the human body through science to a perfect synchronicity with the rhythms of nature. SAD lamps tap into our desire to believe in ourselves as part of wider ecologies, and also position consumer goods as necessary mediators of this relationship
-
Future Schlock
2021-01-25Tech companies were once quick to deploy utopian rhetoric about how they could solve the world’s problems, but this has been revealed as mainly an alibi for the pursuit of profit and monopoly — a dystopia for everyone else. To escape will require utopian thinking premised on a different set of values, exemplified by organized resistance to tech’s hegemony.
Future Schlock
Future Schlock2021-01-25Tech companies were once quick to deploy utopian rhetoric about how they could solve the world’s problems, but this has been revealed as mainly an alibi for the pursuit of profit and monopoly — a dystopia for everyone else. To escape will require utopian thinking premised on a different set of values, exemplified by organized resistance to tech’s hegemony.
-
Command and Control
2021-01-21Board games have long been used to simulate war, serving as an aspect of military training. But as researchers at the Rand Corporation would determine, the most effective simulations were not the most accurate depictions of war but the most traumatic experience of stakes. At the same time, the terms in which war has been re-created in games have subsequently shaped how actual war is mediated, conducted, and perceived.
Command and Control
Command and Control2021-01-21Board games have long been used to simulate war, serving as an aspect of military training. But as researchers at the Rand Corporation would determine, the most effective simulations were not the most accurate depictions of war but the most traumatic experience of stakes. At the same time, the terms in which war has been re-created in games have subsequently shaped how actual war is mediated, conducted, and perceived.
-
Recommended Writing
2021-01-19Predictive text AI upholds a view of human communication as mathematical and mundane, exerting an insidious influence on the way we communicate, and the way we think about communication itself.
Recommended Writing
Recommended Writing2021-01-19Predictive text AI upholds a view of human communication as mathematical and mundane, exerting an insidious influence on the way we communicate, and the way we think about communication itself.
-
Screen Memories
2021-01-14Like the snapshot, the screenshot is a way of metabolizing the world around us, framing intimate spaces that are controlled, nevertheless, by outside parties. Counterintuitively, it provides a brief escape from computational logic.
Screen Memories
Screen Memories2021-01-14Like the snapshot, the screenshot is a way of metabolizing the world around us, framing intimate spaces that are controlled, nevertheless, by outside parties. Counterintuitively, it provides a brief escape from computational logic.
-
The Safety Dance
2021-01-11The practice of influencers is not some marginal form of social media marketing but a form of cultural production and a mode of self-employment that is becoming paradigmatic. Algorithmic tools designed to determine influencers’ “brand safety” — essentially their ability to work — reproduce existing forms of discrimination, linking “safety” and profitability with whiteness. Soon all workers may be subject to such scrutiny.
The Safety Dance
The Safety Dance2021-01-11The practice of influencers is not some marginal form of social media marketing but a form of cultural production and a mode of self-employment that is becoming paradigmatic. Algorithmic tools designed to determine influencers’ “brand safety” — essentially their ability to work — reproduce existing forms of discrimination, linking “safety” and profitability with whiteness. Soon all workers may be subject to such scrutiny.
-
Rank and File
2021-01-04This essay is about the note-taking app Roam, and the consequences of life conceived as an endless process of annotation. Like other productivity apps, Roam can seem to do the work of synthesizing your stray thoughts into a larger, more coherent structure. But the very ease with which that index is generated makes it not only unwieldy at scale, but begins to circumscribe your thinking instead of adapting to it.
Rank and File
Rank and File2021-01-04This essay is about the note-taking app Roam, and the consequences of life conceived as an endless process of annotation. Like other productivity apps, Roam can seem to do the work of synthesizing your stray thoughts into a larger, more coherent structure. But the very ease with which that index is generated makes it not only unwieldy at scale, but begins to circumscribe your thinking instead of adapting to it.
-
Bad Metaphors: Startup “Cults”
2020-12-17It’s common to hear startups or tech company cultures described as “cultish.” But using “cult” as a pejorative not only imports a dehumanizing and carceral line of critique; it also separates the companies being critiqued from the larger historical and political forces that shape them.
Startup “Cults”
Startup “Cults”2020-12-17It’s common to hear startups or tech company cultures described as “cultish.” But using “cult” as a pejorative not only imports a dehumanizing and carceral line of critique; it also separates the companies being critiqued from the larger historical and political forces that shape them.
-
The Organic Myth
2020-12-14The myth of “organic” experience has been sold by tech companies for almost two decades to differentiate between advertising’s “paid reach” and the other kinds of content that appear in one’s feed. This suggests that everything that happens on a platform is naturally ordered, as if once you removed the ads, what would remain is a garden of wildflowers. But the rhythms of media consumption are designed and induced; they don’t simply happen.
The Organic Myth
The Organic Myth2020-12-14The myth of “organic” experience has been sold by tech companies for almost two decades to differentiate between advertising’s “paid reach” and the other kinds of content that appear in one’s feed. This suggests that everything that happens on a platform is naturally ordered, as if once you removed the ads, what would remain is a garden of wildflowers. But the rhythms of media consumption are designed and induced; they don’t simply happen.
-
Easy Answers
2020-12-10Search engines foster the illusion that every question has a retrievable answer. This creates a false sense of understanding, and obscures the certainty of uncertainty, reducing knowledge itself to that which Google can provide.
Easy Answers
Easy Answers2020-12-10Search engines foster the illusion that every question has a retrievable answer. This creates a false sense of understanding, and obscures the certainty of uncertainty, reducing knowledge itself to that which Google can provide.
-
The Zoom Gaze
2020-12-07As Zoom shifts the nature of the relationship between viewing and being viewed, it also shifts our awareness of it: It makes us more conscious of how visibility is mediated by technologies in general. Right now, it is imperative that we consider what the Zoom gaze accomplishes — whose perspective it seeks to naturalize, whose subjectivity it centers, and what it conditions us to see.
The Zoom Gaze
The Zoom Gaze2020-12-07As Zoom shifts the nature of the relationship between viewing and being viewed, it also shifts our awareness of it: It makes us more conscious of how visibility is mediated by technologies in general. Right now, it is imperative that we consider what the Zoom gaze accomplishes — whose perspective it seeks to naturalize, whose subjectivity it centers, and what it conditions us to see.
-
Emotional Rescue
2020-12-03We think of media as means for transmitting information, assuming that information’s freedom is intrinsically and positively correlated with our own. In reality, media are — and have always been — primarily about affect: they are ways of cocooning ourselves, providing freedom from pain and discomfort. This misconception has had disastrous consequences.
Emotional Rescue
Emotional Rescue2020-12-03We think of media as means for transmitting information, assuming that information’s freedom is intrinsically and positively correlated with our own. In reality, media are — and have always been — primarily about affect: they are ways of cocooning ourselves, providing freedom from pain and discomfort. This misconception has had disastrous consequences.
-
Loyalty Tests
2020-11-30Subscription services often hinge not on a better deal but on an escape from having to make deals. Rather than falsely describing a transactional arrangement as a matter of loyalty (as with “loyalty programs”), subscriptions impose a kind of loyalty without requiring a transaction at all. But transactionality offered a kind of freedom — of an anonymous, ephemeral exchange — that is disappearing from a connected world.
Loyalty Tests
Loyalty Tests2020-11-30Subscription services often hinge not on a better deal but on an escape from having to make deals. Rather than falsely describing a transactional arrangement as a matter of loyalty (as with “loyalty programs”), subscriptions impose a kind of loyalty without requiring a transaction at all. But transactionality offered a kind of freedom — of an anonymous, ephemeral exchange — that is disappearing from a connected world.
-
Are You Afraid of the Dark?
2020-11-23Like all technologies, light reflects much larger expressions of power, carving up a whole architecture of visibility that shapes the ways our lives are led at night, providing shelter for some and a harmful, even deadly, exposure for others.
Are You Afraid of the Dark?
Are You Afraid of the Dark?2020-11-23Like all technologies, light reflects much larger expressions of power, carving up a whole architecture of visibility that shapes the ways our lives are led at night, providing shelter for some and a harmful, even deadly, exposure for others.
-
Home Icons: Oil Diffuser
2020-11-16Over the course of history scent has been imbued with medical properties it doesn’t possess, but it can also have very real physical and psychological effects, including unanticipated ones; and it can at least suggest the fulfillment of our needs and desires. Once it was said to ward off miasma; now it gives texture to otherwise formless days during lockdown and makes otherwise uninhabitable spaces feel like home.
Oil Diffuser
Oil Diffuser2020-11-16Over the course of history scent has been imbued with medical properties it doesn’t possess, but it can also have very real physical and psychological effects, including unanticipated ones; and it can at least suggest the fulfillment of our needs and desires. Once it was said to ward off miasma; now it gives texture to otherwise formless days during lockdown and makes otherwise uninhabitable spaces feel like home.
-
Home Icons: Radio Transceiver
2020-11-16The allure of the once subversive technology of radio transmission for its seemingly inherently revolutionary qualities in fiction and in real life, falls short when set against today’s revolution. It, like many coalitional mediating technologies now, is secondary to and serves the always-evolving work of care and resourcefulness.
Radio Transceiver
Radio Transceiver2020-11-16The allure of the once subversive technology of radio transmission for its seemingly inherently revolutionary qualities in fiction and in real life, falls short when set against today’s revolution. It, like many coalitional mediating technologies now, is secondary to and serves the always-evolving work of care and resourcefulness.
-
Home Icons: Kettlebell
2020-11-16The kettlebell, a centuries-old device with Soviet associations, is wildly popular in modern Western gyms; since the pandemic began, it has been so coveted for home workouts that suppliers have barely been able to keep it in stock. More than a practical piece of equipment, it has become a talisman of strength and wellness, and it represents the duality at the center of “working out” as peddled by bourgeois fitness culture: the residue of militarism, of training for something, and hyper-individualism, of optimizing one’s own body in the face of general precariousness without any reliable collective mechanism for solving the problems we face.
Kettlebell
Kettlebell2020-11-16The kettlebell, a centuries-old device with Soviet associations, is wildly popular in modern Western gyms; since the pandemic began, it has been so coveted for home workouts that suppliers have barely been able to keep it in stock. More than a practical piece of equipment, it has become a talisman of strength and wellness, and it represents the duality at the center of “working out” as peddled by bourgeois fitness culture: the residue of militarism, of training for something, and hyper-individualism, of optimizing one’s own body in the face of general precariousness without any reliable collective mechanism for solving the problems we face.
-
Home Icons: Mrs. Meyer’s
2020-11-16Mrs. Meyer’s soap is the signature scent of the gentrified city: it evokes garden flowers and a midwestern idyll, promoting an idea of home that is rooted in a fantasy of desert through hard work. It is meant to soothe the cognitive dissonance of being a gentrifier, suggesting that wherever you are, you have a right to be there.
Mrs. Meyer’s
Mrs. Meyer’s2020-11-16Mrs. Meyer’s soap is the signature scent of the gentrified city: it evokes garden flowers and a midwestern idyll, promoting an idea of home that is rooted in a fantasy of desert through hard work. It is meant to soothe the cognitive dissonance of being a gentrifier, suggesting that wherever you are, you have a right to be there.
-
Decision Trees
2020-11-10There is a glaring discrepancy how we monitor the earth and how we respond to signs of the biosphere’s collapse. After decades of political indifference, a growing number of advocates have sought ways to automate environmentalism to bypass institutional resistance to urgent change. But it’s not clear how to “optimize” for a “winning” ecosystem, or who decides what that should look like.
Decision Trees
Decision Trees2020-11-10There is a glaring discrepancy how we monitor the earth and how we respond to signs of the biosphere’s collapse. After decades of political indifference, a growing number of advocates have sought ways to automate environmentalism to bypass institutional resistance to urgent change. But it’s not clear how to “optimize” for a “winning” ecosystem, or who decides what that should look like.
-
Atmospheric Disturbances
2020-11-02The dream of predicting human behavior like the weather has a long history, sometimes overlapping with that of weather prediction itself. But treating public sentiment as a natural phenomenon, to be studied and exploited, means failing to grasp the material and political conditions from which it arises.
Atmospheric Disturbances
Atmospheric Disturbances2020-11-02The dream of predicting human behavior like the weather has a long history, sometimes overlapping with that of weather prediction itself. But treating public sentiment as a natural phenomenon, to be studied and exploited, means failing to grasp the material and political conditions from which it arises.
-
Perfect Harmony
2020-10-29“Solfeggio frequencies” — sound ranges that purportedly can be used to “repair” mental and physiological maladies — are among the pseudoscientific wellness trends running rampant on social media platforms. They don’t do what they claim, but they do allow individuals to signal their willingness to assume personal responsibility for their health and reject structural fixes to what are ultimately social problems
Perfect Harmony
Perfect Harmony2020-10-29“Solfeggio frequencies” — sound ranges that purportedly can be used to “repair” mental and physiological maladies — are among the pseudoscientific wellness trends running rampant on social media platforms. They don’t do what they claim, but they do allow individuals to signal their willingness to assume personal responsibility for their health and reject structural fixes to what are ultimately social problems
-
Subscriber City
2020-10-26How soon before paywalls go up around the public spaces we are used to crossing unhindered, before services that once seemed available to all on equal terms become subject to priority tiers? The pandemic threatens to accelerate the trend toward a world in which anything can become a walled garden and in which resegregation occurs moment by moment.
Subscriber City
Subscriber City2020-10-26How soon before paywalls go up around the public spaces we are used to crossing unhindered, before services that once seemed available to all on equal terms become subject to priority tiers? The pandemic threatens to accelerate the trend toward a world in which anything can become a walled garden and in which resegregation occurs moment by moment.
-
Support Mechanism
2020-10-22Technologies once used only in clinical settings are now smaller and more mobile, enabling more people with chronic illnesses and disabilities to live at home. However, these technologies create a new, often invisible labor force in the form of caregivers, who must become expert in working the machines, and covering for their failings. These caregivers’ innovations go unnoticed.
Support Mechanism
Support Mechanism2020-10-22Technologies once used only in clinical settings are now smaller and more mobile, enabling more people with chronic illnesses and disabilities to live at home. However, these technologies create a new, often invisible labor force in the form of caregivers, who must become expert in working the machines, and covering for their failings. These caregivers’ innovations go unnoticed.
-
More Than a Feeling
2020-10-19Affective computing — the computer-science field’s term for such attempts to read, simulate, predict, and stimulate human emotion with software — doesn’t capture existing emotional states so much as posit them, establishing norms for what feelings “should” look like. Emotion detection will force us to perform these outward signs to avoid disciplinary actions from automated systems.
More Than a Feeling
More Than a Feeling2020-10-19Affective computing — the computer-science field’s term for such attempts to read, simulate, predict, and stimulate human emotion with software — doesn’t capture existing emotional states so much as posit them, establishing norms for what feelings “should” look like. Emotion detection will force us to perform these outward signs to avoid disciplinary actions from automated systems.
-
Disassembly Required
2020-10-13Robots are designed to gain our sympathy through anthropomorphic and often adorable features. Treating robots with aggression is often seen as antisocial behavior. However, robots are not our friends: they are tools of the corporations that own them, and thus they are not on our side.
Disassembly Required
Disassembly Required2020-10-13Robots are designed to gain our sympathy through anthropomorphic and often adorable features. Treating robots with aggression is often seen as antisocial behavior. However, robots are not our friends: they are tools of the corporations that own them, and thus they are not on our side.
-
Please Clap
2020-10-08Baseball games, played to empty stadiums, are now accompanied by fake crowd noise. This feels uncanny, but only at first, and not nearly as much as the silence beneath — baseball was never “authentic,” and spectacle of spectacle is better than none at all.
Please Clap
Please Clap2020-10-08Baseball games, played to empty stadiums, are now accompanied by fake crowd noise. This feels uncanny, but only at first, and not nearly as much as the silence beneath — baseball was never “authentic,” and spectacle of spectacle is better than none at all.
-
Springtime Everywhere
2020-10-05Google Earth is not a empirical representation; it is an interface that makes the planet into a consumer good and turns users into tourists. It offers a frictionless access that occludes our ability to recognize the disasters we face or the collective action necessary to reverse them
Springtime Everywhere
Springtime Everywhere2020-10-05Google Earth is not a empirical representation; it is an interface that makes the planet into a consumer good and turns users into tourists. It offers a frictionless access that occludes our ability to recognize the disasters we face or the collective action necessary to reverse them
-
What the Chart Wants
2020-10-01An abundance of maps, graphs, and dials color-coded in shades of red and blue has dominated U.S. presidential forecasts for a decade. But these graphics may be no more accurate than they were in 2016; they are so hedged by infinite potential election-day scenarios that their meaning becomes supplanted by their aesthetic, meant to reassure us that the election will go as planned.
What the Chart Wants
What the Chart Wants2020-10-01An abundance of maps, graphs, and dials color-coded in shades of red and blue has dominated U.S. presidential forecasts for a decade. But these graphics may be no more accurate than they were in 2016; they are so hedged by infinite potential election-day scenarios that their meaning becomes supplanted by their aesthetic, meant to reassure us that the election will go as planned.
-
Throne of Games
2020-09-28The gaming chair has evolved into a series of elaborate and often bizarre contraptions that hold the body in place, suspending those parts unnecessary for gaming. While they advertise comfort and endurance, they often seem to tap into a desire for self-obliteration.
Throne of Games
Throne of Games2020-09-28The gaming chair has evolved into a series of elaborate and often bizarre contraptions that hold the body in place, suspending those parts unnecessary for gaming. While they advertise comfort and endurance, they often seem to tap into a desire for self-obliteration.
-
No Escape From Reality
2020-09-24Virtual reality is generally presented as a means to a more immersive simulation for users, but it is also a means of quantification and data collection about those users. The immersiveness of the simulated scenario is presented as “real” enough to inspire confidence in the data’s thoroughness, veracity, and broader applicability, but this data is no more “perfect” or neutral than any other.
No Escape From Reality
No Escape From Reality2020-09-24Virtual reality is generally presented as a means to a more immersive simulation for users, but it is also a means of quantification and data collection about those users. The immersiveness of the simulated scenario is presented as “real” enough to inspire confidence in the data’s thoroughness, veracity, and broader applicability, but this data is no more “perfect” or neutral than any other.
-
Bot or Not
2020-09-21CAPTCHAs once seemed to differentiate between real and fake users. But as more and more communication has become partly automated and algorithmically augmented, that distinction no longer makes sense. Now “bot” has become a pejorative term for “inauthentic,” that could be plausibly applied to anyone: In an online environment in which everyone and everything is a vector of valuable data, bad faith seems universal, as all content can be divorced from its context and can seem to have ulterior motives.
Bot or Not
Bot or Not2020-09-21CAPTCHAs once seemed to differentiate between real and fake users. But as more and more communication has become partly automated and algorithmically augmented, that distinction no longer makes sense. Now “bot” has become a pejorative term for “inauthentic,” that could be plausibly applied to anyone: In an online environment in which everyone and everything is a vector of valuable data, bad faith seems universal, as all content can be divorced from its context and can seem to have ulterior motives.
-
Lawful Neutral
2020-09-09Liberalism’s presumption of an underlying universality (binary biological sex, for example, or “post-racial color-blindness”) makes the unruly, messy data of human life appear tractable and computable for algorithmic procedures. And increasingly comprehensive algorithmic systems in turn render life in the flattening image of proceduralist liberalism. In a sense, liberalism and artificial intelligence are converging.
Lawful Neutral
Lawful Neutral2020-09-09Liberalism’s presumption of an underlying universality (binary biological sex, for example, or “post-racial color-blindness”) makes the unruly, messy data of human life appear tractable and computable for algorithmic procedures. And increasingly comprehensive algorithmic systems in turn render life in the flattening image of proceduralist liberalism. In a sense, liberalism and artificial intelligence are converging.
-
I Write the Songs
2020-09-02TikTok’s recommendation algorithm is heralded as the secret of the app’s success, but why do users want to be told what to watch? Algorithms that purport to predict who we are and what we want are “gimmicks,” in Sianne Ngai’s sense of the word: They let us enjoy our ambivalence over surrendering to them.
I Write the Songs
I Write the Songs2020-09-02TikTok’s recommendation algorithm is heralded as the secret of the app’s success, but why do users want to be told what to watch? Algorithms that purport to predict who we are and what we want are “gimmicks,” in Sianne Ngai’s sense of the word: They let us enjoy our ambivalence over surrendering to them.
-
The Gamification of Games
2020-08-27Games are about play, but gamification is about productivity and data collection. When games are gamified, they are made to produce data for the use of third parties outside the game itself. Because of the variety and magnitude of data games can generate, they allow for the extraction of uniquely exploitable information about players’ values and habits.
The Gamification of Games
The Gamification of Games2020-08-27Games are about play, but gamification is about productivity and data collection. When games are gamified, they are made to produce data for the use of third parties outside the game itself. Because of the variety and magnitude of data games can generate, they allow for the extraction of uniquely exploitable information about players’ values and habits.
-
Clothing as Platform
2020-08-20Putting tracking sensors in clothes serves the same function as any other “smart” device: It is a means of tapping consumers as recurring revenue streams. “Smart” fashion appears as little more than an alibi for collecting personal behavioral data — not to mention a form of greenwashed techno-solutionism that ignores the realities of today’s surveillance economy.
Clothing as Platform
Clothing as Platform2020-08-20Putting tracking sensors in clothes serves the same function as any other “smart” device: It is a means of tapping consumers as recurring revenue streams. “Smart” fashion appears as little more than an alibi for collecting personal behavioral data — not to mention a form of greenwashed techno-solutionism that ignores the realities of today’s surveillance economy.
-
Home Body
2020-08-17The home itself feels like a “body,” a living entity capable of comforting and nurturing its inhabitants. Like us, this entity is one among many others, linked through infrastructure and labor to the systems necessary for its survival. While we think of the home as an isolated unit, the workings of the “house body” demonstrate our interdependence.
Home Body
Home Body2020-08-17The home itself feels like a “body,” a living entity capable of comforting and nurturing its inhabitants. Like us, this entity is one among many others, linked through infrastructure and labor to the systems necessary for its survival. While we think of the home as an isolated unit, the workings of the “house body” demonstrate our interdependence.
-
Borders Everywhere
2020-08-12The humanitarian alibi has often been used to inscribe the logic of the security state onto vulnerable populations serving as involuntary test subjects, as when biometric and surveillance technologies are imposed as a means of delivering aid to populations in crisis situations. But these technologies for monitoring, administering, and “controlling” people are themselves largely unregulated and their long-run implications are unknown, even as they are brought from the margins to structure more and more lives.
Borders Everywhere
Borders Everywhere2020-08-12The humanitarian alibi has often been used to inscribe the logic of the security state onto vulnerable populations serving as involuntary test subjects, as when biometric and surveillance technologies are imposed as a means of delivering aid to populations in crisis situations. But these technologies for monitoring, administering, and “controlling” people are themselves largely unregulated and their long-run implications are unknown, even as they are brought from the margins to structure more and more lives.
-
Camera Traps
2020-08-06The natural world, just like the city, is rife with surveillance. The militaristic, colonial history this surveillance belongs to is not simply waived by the fact that it operates in a forest. Technologies for extracting data about the earth reproduce these systems, and target human beings.
Camera Traps
Camera Traps2020-08-06The natural world, just like the city, is rife with surveillance. The militaristic, colonial history this surveillance belongs to is not simply waived by the fact that it operates in a forest. Technologies for extracting data about the earth reproduce these systems, and target human beings.
-
Music for Plants
2020-08-04Quarantine sparked the idea that “nature is healing” in the outside world, but said less of domesticated nature, which thrives on human attention. The science of how plants interpret their surroundings through sonic vibration is uneven and somewhat haphazard, but the role of houseplants and music in the home take equal precedence: Music for plants is ambient sound for your living home, not just for you, but ultimately it’s all for you.
Music for Plants
Music for Plants2020-08-04Quarantine sparked the idea that “nature is healing” in the outside world, but said less of domesticated nature, which thrives on human attention. The science of how plants interpret their surroundings through sonic vibration is uneven and somewhat haphazard, but the role of houseplants and music in the home take equal precedence: Music for plants is ambient sound for your living home, not just for you, but ultimately it’s all for you.
-
Oversaturated
2020-07-30“Centering” race is not the same thing as undoing racism. The concept of “saturation” helps explain how institutions of power can become more accommodating to racial critique and racialized peoples without fundamentally transforming into anti-racist bodies.
Oversaturated
Oversaturated2020-07-30“Centering” race is not the same thing as undoing racism. The concept of “saturation” helps explain how institutions of power can become more accommodating to racial critique and racialized peoples without fundamentally transforming into anti-racist bodies.
-
This Is Not a Game
2020-07-23Engaging in conspiracy culture is like playing a secret game based on insider knowledge. It’s this feeling — of joining an anointed community that has transcended the ordinary world — that propels Q’s current popularity. But revealing the game structures, pop media tropes, and affective rewards that shape movements like QAnon can help inoculate those attracted to such forms of play from full immersion in conspiracy culture.
This Is Not a Game
This Is Not a Game2020-07-23Engaging in conspiracy culture is like playing a secret game based on insider knowledge. It’s this feeling — of joining an anointed community that has transcended the ordinary world — that propels Q’s current popularity. But revealing the game structures, pop media tropes, and affective rewards that shape movements like QAnon can help inoculate those attracted to such forms of play from full immersion in conspiracy culture.
-
Sensitive Material
2020-07-20The cisnormative gaze is codified in algorithms, as well as content moderation policies overseen by overtired contract workers, that censor bodies deemed “obscene.” Censoring images of breasts alongside images of violence and abuse slots female-presumed nudity into an unstable category.
Sensitive Material
Sensitive Material2020-07-20The cisnormative gaze is codified in algorithms, as well as content moderation policies overseen by overtired contract workers, that censor bodies deemed “obscene.” Censoring images of breasts alongside images of violence and abuse slots female-presumed nudity into an unstable category.
-
Look Who’s Talking
2020-07-16Discussions of UX tend to focus on how things look and how they work, but the way they sound or read is just as meticulously designed. Often the aim of “sounding human” and “being clear” serves to disguise how interfaces are manipulative and skewed toward the company’s interest, while also reinforcing biased universalist assumptions.
Look Who’s Talking
Look Who’s Talking2020-07-16Discussions of UX tend to focus on how things look and how they work, but the way they sound or read is just as meticulously designed. Often the aim of “sounding human” and “being clear” serves to disguise how interfaces are manipulative and skewed toward the company’s interest, while also reinforcing biased universalist assumptions.
-
Back to the Future
2020-07-13Drive-ins represent nostalgia for a past in which we were hopeful about the future. The future has since been swapped out for the past as a metric of progress, and we are caught in an endless loop of short-term solutions for problems that only mount with time.
Back to the Future
Back to the Future2020-07-13Drive-ins represent nostalgia for a past in which we were hopeful about the future. The future has since been swapped out for the past as a metric of progress, and we are caught in an endless loop of short-term solutions for problems that only mount with time.
-
Automatic for the Bosses
2020-07-09Before the pandemic, many of those now working from home may not have given much thought to what it is like to be managed algorithmically, having an app snitch on them the way the “independent contractors” for Lyft or Fiverr are used to. Life on the other side of the convenience trade-off means less privacy from bosses, poorer working conditions, and less leverage to change any of it.
Automatic for the Bosses
Automatic for the Bosses2020-07-09Before the pandemic, many of those now working from home may not have given much thought to what it is like to be managed algorithmically, having an app snitch on them the way the “independent contractors” for Lyft or Fiverr are used to. Life on the other side of the convenience trade-off means less privacy from bosses, poorer working conditions, and less leverage to change any of it.
-
Liminal Space
2020-07-06Quarantine was no one thing; it has been full of contradictions. What had seemed early on like a unifying experience exposed many differences and inequalities, even while it linked us as a species. One certainty it yielded is that we have to get better at living with complexity, difference, and uncertainty.
Liminal Space
Liminal Space2020-07-06Quarantine was no one thing; it has been full of contradictions. What had seemed early on like a unifying experience exposed many differences and inequalities, even while it linked us as a species. One certainty it yielded is that we have to get better at living with complexity, difference, and uncertainty.
-
Symptom Check
2020-07-02Firsthand Twitter threads narrating the symptoms of Covid-19 fill a void of representation. Despite all the panic and mythmaking around the virus itself, especially in the early days we had very little information, and few popular representations of what the disease actually looked and felt like. This uncertainty creates its own kind of terror, leaves gaps for bad actors to exploit, and ultimately has the effect of anonymizing the people who actually get sick. The threads can be situated in a long lineage of illness narration, which has always served to wrest power back
Symptom Check
Symptom Check2020-07-02Firsthand Twitter threads narrating the symptoms of Covid-19 fill a void of representation. Despite all the panic and mythmaking around the virus itself, especially in the early days we had very little information, and few popular representations of what the disease actually looked and felt like. This uncertainty creates its own kind of terror, leaves gaps for bad actors to exploit, and ultimately has the effect of anonymizing the people who actually get sick. The threads can be situated in a long lineage of illness narration, which has always served to wrest power back
-
Contracirculation
2020-06-29The circulation of images of Black suffering and death in social media risks making them into a spectacle or a commodity, tokens of white guilt. But if these images can be used as currency, it is also possible to reverse this process, to contracirculate images so that the very fact of their ubiquity drives a broader demand for change.
Contracirculation
Contracirculation2020-06-29The circulation of images of Black suffering and death in social media risks making them into a spectacle or a commodity, tokens of white guilt. But if these images can be used as currency, it is also possible to reverse this process, to contracirculate images so that the very fact of their ubiquity drives a broader demand for change.
-
Toward the Shroud
2020-06-25Constant surveillance shapes the contours of everyday Black life, imposing schemes of biometric identification of “good” vs “bad” citizens. Pandemic surveillance plays into similar techniques. But we can also imagine futures of ungovernability, of survival tactics to evade such surveillance and demand the undoing of a world predicated on anti-Black violence.
Toward the Shroud
Toward the Shroud2020-06-25Constant surveillance shapes the contours of everyday Black life, imposing schemes of biometric identification of “good” vs “bad” citizens. Pandemic surveillance plays into similar techniques. But we can also imagine futures of ungovernability, of survival tactics to evade such surveillance and demand the undoing of a world predicated on anti-Black violence.
-
Pay It Forward
2020-06-22As a general rule, crowdfunding relies on neoliberal notions of charitable giving. Altruistic donors provide money to those who have less to make up for state malevolence and neglect. However, crowdfunds can provide an important function as part of a larger mutual aid effort. The distinction is important.
Pay It Forward
Pay It Forward2020-06-22As a general rule, crowdfunding relies on neoliberal notions of charitable giving. Altruistic donors provide money to those who have less to make up for state malevolence and neglect. However, crowdfunds can provide an important function as part of a larger mutual aid effort. The distinction is important.
-
Oversights
2020-06-18Though tech companies have built out a massive surveillance apparatus capable of tracking people’s locations and predilections, it is proving largely useless for containing the pandemic. This isn’t because concerns or regulations about individual privacy are holding them back; rather they are overinvested in addressing users as consumers and not members of a public.
Oversights
Oversights2020-06-18Though tech companies have built out a massive surveillance apparatus capable of tracking people’s locations and predilections, it is proving largely useless for containing the pandemic. This isn’t because concerns or regulations about individual privacy are holding them back; rather they are overinvested in addressing users as consumers and not members of a public.
-
Contested Images
2020-05-26The fact that Covid-19 is so new, unpredictable and symptomalogically confusing leaves gaps in its representation that governments and ideologues have been able to exploit. So far the most iconic images are of its absence: the mask and the empty street. But even images of people suffering from the disease would likely fail to have the unifying effect some hope they would.
Contested Images
Contested Images2020-05-26The fact that Covid-19 is so new, unpredictable and symptomalogically confusing leaves gaps in its representation that governments and ideologues have been able to exploit. So far the most iconic images are of its absence: the mask and the empty street. But even images of people suffering from the disease would likely fail to have the unifying effect some hope they would.
-
Six Feet From Forever
2020-05-18It may seem that social distancing could be construed as a spontaneous diaspora, albeit one that may not prove as protracted or permanent. Diasporic communities have protracted experience with sustaining a sense of community over distance and time, and how current messaging technologies contribute to it. The cues that can’t be taken for granted become new signifiers of lasting bonds.
Six Feet From Forever
Six Feet From Forever2020-05-18It may seem that social distancing could be construed as a spontaneous diaspora, albeit one that may not prove as protracted or permanent. Diasporic communities have protracted experience with sustaining a sense of community over distance and time, and how current messaging technologies contribute to it. The cues that can’t be taken for granted become new signifiers of lasting bonds.
-
Face Off
2020-05-14If the question “should I wear a mask?” feels fraught with implications of selfishness and injustice, this is the structural effect of logistical factors far beyond the scope of personal responsibility. Masking — both the practice of wearing and the struggle to obtain them — has knit us more tightly to the economic and geopolitical processes currently driving the crisis response. Our personal experience of masks (who has them, who wears them) indexes our position in the supply chains while revealing the insignificance of our fate to the workings of global capitalism.
Face Off
Face Off2020-05-14If the question “should I wear a mask?” feels fraught with implications of selfishness and injustice, this is the structural effect of logistical factors far beyond the scope of personal responsibility. Masking — both the practice of wearing and the struggle to obtain them — has knit us more tightly to the economic and geopolitical processes currently driving the crisis response. Our personal experience of masks (who has them, who wears them) indexes our position in the supply chains while revealing the insignificance of our fate to the workings of global capitalism.
-
Looking Down
2020-05-11The pandemic has divided society into those who have become targets and those who can safely watch. Enter drone photography’s socially distanced view.
Looking Down
Looking Down2020-05-11The pandemic has divided society into those who have become targets and those who can safely watch. Enter drone photography’s socially distanced view.
-
Animals Strike Curious Poses
2020-05-07The pandemic has given rise to animal media, specifically animal livestreams set up by zoos and aquariums and “nature is healing” memes showing animals reclaiming spaces where humans used to congregate. These images allow a soothing contradiction that nature is “righting itself” and the threats we pose to it have been averted, while remaining entirely controlled.
Animals Strike Curious Poses
Animals Strike Curious Poses2020-05-07The pandemic has given rise to animal media, specifically animal livestreams set up by zoos and aquariums and “nature is healing” memes showing animals reclaiming spaces where humans used to congregate. These images allow a soothing contradiction that nature is “righting itself” and the threats we pose to it have been averted, while remaining entirely controlled.
-
Invisible Enemies
2020-05-04The connection that 5G arsonists assert between wireless networks and the virus grasps and mischaracterizes our imperceptible integration with complex machine systems over the past century. Biological and technological existence are now irreversibly intertwined, in ways that no individual could fully understand, let alone have consented to. This makes fertile ground for conspiracy.
Invisible Enemies
Invisible Enemies2020-05-04The connection that 5G arsonists assert between wireless networks and the virus grasps and mischaracterizes our imperceptible integration with complex machine systems over the past century. Biological and technological existence are now irreversibly intertwined, in ways that no individual could fully understand, let alone have consented to. This makes fertile ground for conspiracy.
-
Make Yourself a Gift
2020-04-30Social media have shifted our sense of the body’s utility away from how we experience it from within toward how photographable it is. This has changed the purpose of working out, making it more about the discipline to self-document. As the pandemic has literalized the shift to a made-for-Instagram world, fitness content has become a way to foreground an embodied social self without meeting in physical space.
Make Yourself a Gift
Make Yourself a Gift2020-04-30Social media have shifted our sense of the body’s utility away from how we experience it from within toward how photographable it is. This has changed the purpose of working out, making it more about the discipline to self-document. As the pandemic has literalized the shift to a made-for-Instagram world, fitness content has become a way to foreground an embodied social self without meeting in physical space.
-
Home Screens
2020-04-27Tech companies have long been hyping a friction-free life in which the “inconveniences” of social interaction are solved by apps and by instrumentalizing all relations. Now that quarantine has forced many of us to live entirely in that world, its shortcomings have become more obvious.
Home Screens
Home Screens2020-04-27Tech companies have long been hyping a friction-free life in which the “inconveniences” of social interaction are solved by apps and by instrumentalizing all relations. Now that quarantine has forced many of us to live entirely in that world, its shortcomings have become more obvious.
-
Grounded
2020-04-20The human cost of the pandemic far outweighs the fate of the aviation industry. But air travel has long served to contain a range of contradictory ideals and aspirations about freedom, status, democracy, and technological progress and seemingly make them cohere. The coronavirus shutdown has destabilized that coherence along with the viability of routinized flight, which was already environmentally unsustainable. It’s unclear if flying will ever seem anything more than a necessary evil again
Grounded
Grounded2020-04-20The human cost of the pandemic far outweighs the fate of the aviation industry. But air travel has long served to contain a range of contradictory ideals and aspirations about freedom, status, democracy, and technological progress and seemingly make them cohere. The coronavirus shutdown has destabilized that coherence along with the viability of routinized flight, which was already environmentally unsustainable. It’s unclear if flying will ever seem anything more than a necessary evil again
-
Empty Frames
2020-04-16The widely shared photographs of deserted streets and ransacked shelves seem to capture something surreal about life during the pandemic. But life organized by consumerism and its associated status displays was, if anything, more surreal than our having to abandon it.
Empty Frames
Empty Frames2020-04-16The widely shared photographs of deserted streets and ransacked shelves seem to capture something surreal about life during the pandemic. But life organized by consumerism and its associated status displays was, if anything, more surreal than our having to abandon it.
-
The Authoritarian Trade-Off
2020-04-13After 9/11, national security became the all-purpose alibi for surveillance and policing programs, deemed necessary to fight a war on “terror” that was endless by design. Now tech companies are reorienting these same tools to fight the coronavirus pandemic, threatening to turn “public health” into another forever war.
The Authoritarian Trade-Off
The Authoritarian Trade-Off2020-04-13After 9/11, national security became the all-purpose alibi for surveillance and policing programs, deemed necessary to fight a war on “terror” that was endless by design. Now tech companies are reorienting these same tools to fight the coronavirus pandemic, threatening to turn “public health” into another forever war.
-
Newly Minted
2020-04-09Fintech lending companies belong to a long tradition of payday lending, whose predatory tendencies have been well documented. This new crop of companies anticipate such criticism, and package their services in do-good Silicon Valley rhetoric, pretending to stand against the systems they profit from. Now, with nearly 17 million jobless claims in three weeks, they may be poised to profit off a new economic crisis.
Newly Minted
Newly Minted2020-04-09Fintech lending companies belong to a long tradition of payday lending, whose predatory tendencies have been well documented. This new crop of companies anticipate such criticism, and package their services in do-good Silicon Valley rhetoric, pretending to stand against the systems they profit from. Now, with nearly 17 million jobless claims in three weeks, they may be poised to profit off a new economic crisis.
-
Hoarding Instincts
2020-04-06Since early March, when a number of basic household necessities — along with small luxuries I’m accustomed to, which seem suddenly necessary — have become difficult to obtain or outright unavailable, I’m feeling the tug of a hoarding instinct. I don’t want the luxuries that feel normal to change. I don’t want what feels normal to change any faster than it already is, especially at home, where I’m safe as long as I never leave.
Hoarding Instincts
Hoarding Instincts2020-04-06Since early March, when a number of basic household necessities — along with small luxuries I’m accustomed to, which seem suddenly necessary — have become difficult to obtain or outright unavailable, I’m feeling the tug of a hoarding instinct. I don’t want the luxuries that feel normal to change. I don’t want what feels normal to change any faster than it already is, especially at home, where I’m safe as long as I never leave.
-
Connective Tissues
2020-04-02The workings of one’s own body form a metaphor for the social body. This pandemic shows the interdependence of organs, cells, and individuals that technology typically tries to make invisible.
Connective Tissues
Connective Tissues2020-04-02The workings of one’s own body form a metaphor for the social body. This pandemic shows the interdependence of organs, cells, and individuals that technology typically tries to make invisible.
-
Posing With the Flag
2020-03-20Getting people to adhere to difficult and inconvenient protocols for longer and longer periods of time will involve more and not less ideology. That makes it a decidedly bad time for paranoid readings, which in the end invite apathy instead of vigilance. It seems trivial to expose acts of concern as mere performances, as if they weren’t always at least that.
Posing With the Flag
Posing With the Flag2020-03-20Getting people to adhere to difficult and inconvenient protocols for longer and longer periods of time will involve more and not less ideology. That makes it a decidedly bad time for paranoid readings, which in the end invite apathy instead of vigilance. It seems trivial to expose acts of concern as mere performances, as if they weren’t always at least that.
-
Failed States
2020-03-09“Failure” is a buzzword within tech, where it basically serves as a plot point on the journey to success. In this context, success is preordained. Failure has a longer theoretical tradition, though, written by those who can’t live or thrive within the status quo, and failure in this conception offers alternatives to the world that big tech is largely responsible for.
Failed States
Failed States2020-03-09“Failure” is a buzzword within tech, where it basically serves as a plot point on the journey to success. In this context, success is preordained. Failure has a longer theoretical tradition, though, written by those who can’t live or thrive within the status quo, and failure in this conception offers alternatives to the world that big tech is largely responsible for.
-
Fair Warning
2020-02-24Since the advent of AI, there have been coherent critiques of its fundamentally conservative nature and implementation, notably from apostate computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum, the inventor of the first chat bot. But the counterprogramming from the tech industry and its affiliated researchers has been equally insistent, with apologists continuing to insist that only more tech solutions can fix the problems tech has already exacerbated.
Fair Warning
Fair Warning2020-02-24Since the advent of AI, there have been coherent critiques of its fundamentally conservative nature and implementation, notably from apostate computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum, the inventor of the first chat bot. But the counterprogramming from the tech industry and its affiliated researchers has been equally insistent, with apologists continuing to insist that only more tech solutions can fix the problems tech has already exacerbated.
-
The Labor Beat
2020-02-20It may seem strange for music scenes to spawn labor theories, but musicians, who were among the first gig workers, have long had to deal with challenges that neoliberalism has extended to more of the workforce. DIY and indie scenes were late 20th century responses to corporate control, but they have long since been co-opted and redeployed as spurs for general productivity. (Do what you love!) “Interdependence,” an update of the indie ethos that has emerged from the underground electronic music scene, hopes to offer an alternative to individualistic, human-capital-centric attitudes toward art making, but it remains hung up on the same problems of ideas and inspiration belong to reduced to property relations.
The Labor Beat
The Labor Beat2020-02-20It may seem strange for music scenes to spawn labor theories, but musicians, who were among the first gig workers, have long had to deal with challenges that neoliberalism has extended to more of the workforce. DIY and indie scenes were late 20th century responses to corporate control, but they have long since been co-opted and redeployed as spurs for general productivity. (Do what you love!) “Interdependence,” an update of the indie ethos that has emerged from the underground electronic music scene, hopes to offer an alternative to individualistic, human-capital-centric attitudes toward art making, but it remains hung up on the same problems of ideas and inspiration belong to reduced to property relations.
-
Draining the Risk Pool
2020-02-18The normalization of surveillance by a range of widely adopted and readily available technologies have opened the way for insurance companies to insert themselves straight into our homes, cars, and bodies, thus gaining further abilities to assess our lifestyles and adjust our behaviors. This threatens to undermine the social logic of insurance, which spreads risk across broader populations so that they are collectively easier to bear. By making “riskier” individuals pay more and make fewer claims, “insurtech” is undermining the safety net and worsening structural inequality.
Draining the Risk Pool
Draining the Risk Pool2020-02-18The normalization of surveillance by a range of widely adopted and readily available technologies have opened the way for insurance companies to insert themselves straight into our homes, cars, and bodies, thus gaining further abilities to assess our lifestyles and adjust our behaviors. This threatens to undermine the social logic of insurance, which spreads risk across broader populations so that they are collectively easier to bear. By making “riskier” individuals pay more and make fewer claims, “insurtech” is undermining the safety net and worsening structural inequality.
-
This Website Was Free
2020-02-13Social media sites can stand for genres. We decide their value nostalgically, and memorialize their broad impact, especially post mortem. The end of a site doesn’t mean the end of its content — sometimes to the contrary — but no attempt to reproduce it will ever be used in exactly the same way (e.g. TikTok) and its archives will always take the contours of whatever platform they’re archived on (e.g. YouTube). Vine memorializing is a way to practice removing ourselves from the momentary effects of extant platforms in order to characterize their broader impact on our lives.
This Website Was Free
This Website Was Free2020-02-13Social media sites can stand for genres. We decide their value nostalgically, and memorialize their broad impact, especially post mortem. The end of a site doesn’t mean the end of its content — sometimes to the contrary — but no attempt to reproduce it will ever be used in exactly the same way (e.g. TikTok) and its archives will always take the contours of whatever platform they’re archived on (e.g. YouTube). Vine memorializing is a way to practice removing ourselves from the momentary effects of extant platforms in order to characterize their broader impact on our lives.
-
Brain Wave
2020-02-10Binural beats work by sending two slightly different frequencies to each ear, so that the listener hears a beat that is not actually occurring. Some claim this can “retune” the brain to a different frequency, a low-stakes experiment in self-hacking. But it is also demonstrates that much of what we do for self-improvement relies on tricks and illusions, on insisting on hearing something that isn’t there.
Brain Wave
Brain Wave2020-02-10Binural beats work by sending two slightly different frequencies to each ear, so that the listener hears a beat that is not actually occurring. Some claim this can “retune” the brain to a different frequency, a low-stakes experiment in self-hacking. But it is also demonstrates that much of what we do for self-improvement relies on tricks and illusions, on insisting on hearing something that isn’t there.
-
The Other as Noise
2020-02-06Misophonia is a revulsion at the ordinary noises other people make — essentially the inverse of ASMR. Though triggered by sounds, it seems to indicate more an irritation with distractions, with the demands other people implicitly make through their very presence, than with anything auditory. Given how phones besiege us with push notifications and other efforts to hijack our attention, could they be generalizing misophonia as a response? Misophonia may reflect the fantasy of a society without reciprocity.
The Other as Noise
The Other as Noise2020-02-06Misophonia is a revulsion at the ordinary noises other people make — essentially the inverse of ASMR. Though triggered by sounds, it seems to indicate more an irritation with distractions, with the demands other people implicitly make through their very presence, than with anything auditory. Given how phones besiege us with push notifications and other efforts to hijack our attention, could they be generalizing misophonia as a response? Misophonia may reflect the fantasy of a society without reciprocity.
-
The Wrong Goodbye
2020-02-03The messages that brands send to try to keep us from unsubscribing from their “services” may seem lighthearted enough, but they are part of a larger climate of expected consumer compliance, that we should submit to their entitlement to our time and attention. Their nagging tone participates in a broader cultural condition in which consent is presumed or ignored.
The Wrong Goodbye
The Wrong Goodbye2020-02-03The messages that brands send to try to keep us from unsubscribing from their “services” may seem lighthearted enough, but they are part of a larger climate of expected consumer compliance, that we should submit to their entitlement to our time and attention. Their nagging tone participates in a broader cultural condition in which consent is presumed or ignored.
-
Lying Eyes
2020-01-30Efforts to use artificial intelligence to detect and classify our emotions without our input echoes 19th century research that used the then new capacities of photography to attempt the same thing. Charles Darwin’s work on facial expression not only laid the groundwork for treating emotions as reflexes rather than part of social communication — an approach that current emotion-detection tech adopts — but it also established a methodological precedent of using peoples’ faces against their will.
Lying Eyes
Lying Eyes2020-01-30Efforts to use artificial intelligence to detect and classify our emotions without our input echoes 19th century research that used the then new capacities of photography to attempt the same thing. Charles Darwin’s work on facial expression not only laid the groundwork for treating emotions as reflexes rather than part of social communication — an approach that current emotion-detection tech adopts — but it also established a methodological precedent of using peoples’ faces against their will.
-
New Feelings: Unfleshing
2020-01-27Beauty, fashion, and wellness brands have adopted the physical standards of tech giants, reframing the body as a vessel for optimization and utility rather than the historical feminine ideal. The desire is for a body better than human, indistinguishable from the tools it relies on.
Unfleshing
Unfleshing2020-01-27Beauty, fashion, and wellness brands have adopted the physical standards of tech giants, reframing the body as a vessel for optimization and utility rather than the historical feminine ideal. The desire is for a body better than human, indistinguishable from the tools it relies on.
-
Who Goes There
2020-01-21Online identity verification methods are easy to overlook — they are small, routine parts of our lives — but they discipline us as subjects and workers. In early days, security questions presumed a lifestyle in line with contemporary modes of capitalist production, e.g. a heteronormative life trajectory, including property ownership in the suburbs; as innocuous as they seemed, they excluded many. They fell out of favor around the rise of digital labor and worker surveillance, when spatial and lifestyle variables were no longer necessary for the reproduction of capitalism. This social mode is better reflected by CAPTCHA, which reflects on us as constant workers under constant surveillance.
Who Goes There
Who Goes There2020-01-21Online identity verification methods are easy to overlook — they are small, routine parts of our lives — but they discipline us as subjects and workers. In early days, security questions presumed a lifestyle in line with contemporary modes of capitalist production, e.g. a heteronormative life trajectory, including property ownership in the suburbs; as innocuous as they seemed, they excluded many. They fell out of favor around the rise of digital labor and worker surveillance, when spatial and lifestyle variables were no longer necessary for the reproduction of capitalism. This social mode is better reflected by CAPTCHA, which reflects on us as constant workers under constant surveillance.
-
The Day the Babies Arrive
2020-01-16Infant simulators are supposed to teach kids about parenting — either to prepare or deter them, depending on who you ask. Their uncanny resemblance to the real thing is supposed to offer a better learning experience, but mostly it stands in for more useful (but contested) interventions, like safe-sex education and material support for teenagers with adult responsibilities.
The Day the Babies Arrive
The Day the Babies Arrive2020-01-16Infant simulators are supposed to teach kids about parenting — either to prepare or deter them, depending on who you ask. Their uncanny resemblance to the real thing is supposed to offer a better learning experience, but mostly it stands in for more useful (but contested) interventions, like safe-sex education and material support for teenagers with adult responsibilities.
-
The Personified City
2020-01-13Proposals for “smart cities” draw on the belief that data and automation alone can solve intractable urban problems and that robotic artificial intelligence can render debates about urban planning superfluous. In effect, they propose a supposedly all-seeing and all-knowing new god for a city’s inhabitants to worship, while preserving the status quo as neutral expression of how things should be.
The Personified City
The Personified City2020-01-13Proposals for “smart cities” draw on the belief that data and automation alone can solve intractable urban problems and that robotic artificial intelligence can render debates about urban planning superfluous. In effect, they propose a supposedly all-seeing and all-knowing new god for a city’s inhabitants to worship, while preserving the status quo as neutral expression of how things should be.
-
Guarded Looks
2020-01-09Sunglasses were the original anti-facial-recognition technology, allowing a sense of control and a feeling of privacy in public. But as reasonable as this form of evasion has become, it still results in a kind of surrender of public space to surveillance. Each new gimmicky mask that promises to protect us from facial recognition tech intensifies this defensive posture at the expense of a potentially more impactful collective resistance. The uncanny, unreadable, and unrecognizable faces we present in public repel not only cameras but each other.
Guarded Looks
Guarded Looks2020-01-09Sunglasses were the original anti-facial-recognition technology, allowing a sense of control and a feeling of privacy in public. But as reasonable as this form of evasion has become, it still results in a kind of surrender of public space to surveillance. Each new gimmicky mask that promises to protect us from facial recognition tech intensifies this defensive posture at the expense of a potentially more impactful collective resistance. The uncanny, unreadable, and unrecognizable faces we present in public repel not only cameras but each other.
-
Go With the Flow
2020-01-06How to break out of the tracks laid for us online
-
Walter Benjamin’s posthumous work as a blueprint for living online
The Arcades Project
The Arcades Project2019-12-23Walter Benjamin’s posthumous work as a blueprint for living online
-
Discursive Harms
2019-12-19Well-intentioned data science can still reinforce unjust ideas about whose bodies matter
Discursive Harms
Discursive Harms2019-12-19Well-intentioned data science can still reinforce unjust ideas about whose bodies matter
-
Fog Machines
2019-12-16Digital connectivity has turned the “social factory” into a global battlefield
Fog Machines
Fog Machines2019-12-16Digital connectivity has turned the “social factory” into a global battlefield
-
Stepping Stones
2019-12-12Google’s smart city project links its quality-of-life improvements to the deskilling of maintenance work and the elimination of human workers. The alternative is not in a more “humane” corporate approach but in a worker-centered movement that begins and ends in care.
Stepping Stones
Stepping Stones2019-12-12Google’s smart city project links its quality-of-life improvements to the deskilling of maintenance work and the elimination of human workers. The alternative is not in a more “humane” corporate approach but in a worker-centered movement that begins and ends in care.
-
New Feelings: Podcast Passivity
2019-12-09The thing people always say about podcasts is that they feel so intimate. The beautiful thing about intimacy is that, by letting other people in, we are reminded that our lives are porous, that the difference between humans is arbitrary and surmountable. Of course, that’s the horrifying thing about intimacy, too.
Podcast Passivity
Podcast Passivity2019-12-09The thing people always say about podcasts is that they feel so intimate. The beautiful thing about intimacy is that, by letting other people in, we are reminded that our lives are porous, that the difference between humans is arbitrary and surmountable. Of course, that’s the horrifying thing about intimacy, too.
-
Killing Giants
2019-12-05In the rush to frame tech platforms as behemoths, we risk losing track of the social relations that permit their extraction of value, the politics and contingencies that allow platforms to exist. Capital must reckon with bureaucracies, laws and regulations, local resistances — these are points of vulnerability where tech’s grasp on our lives can be loosened.
Killing Giants
Killing Giants2019-12-05In the rush to frame tech platforms as behemoths, we risk losing track of the social relations that permit their extraction of value, the politics and contingencies that allow platforms to exist. Capital must reckon with bureaucracies, laws and regulations, local resistances — these are points of vulnerability where tech’s grasp on our lives can be loosened.
-
Forest for the Trees
2019-12-02The idea of “returning” to nature, from the city, places nature in a silo — somewhere we go to, rather than something that is all around us, and on which we remain dependent despite our violent attempts at subjugation.
Forest for the Trees
Forest for the Trees2019-12-02The idea of “returning” to nature, from the city, places nature in a silo — somewhere we go to, rather than something that is all around us, and on which we remain dependent despite our violent attempts at subjugation.
-
The Next Big Cheap
2019-11-25Data is often called “the new oil.” But this construction takes for granted the transformation of the world into commodities for exploitation, a process that isn’t natural and shouldn’t be inevitable. Thinking about data as the next “cheap thing” — in line with other cheap commodities throughout the history of capitalism — might help us imagine better frameworks for its management and regulation.
The Next Big Cheap
The Next Big Cheap2019-11-25Data is often called “the new oil.” But this construction takes for granted the transformation of the world into commodities for exploitation, a process that isn’t natural and shouldn’t be inevitable. Thinking about data as the next “cheap thing” — in line with other cheap commodities throughout the history of capitalism — might help us imagine better frameworks for its management and regulation.
-
Loitering Objects
2019-11-21Why are objects allowed to remain in public spaces where people aren’t?
Loitering Objects
Loitering Objects2019-11-21Why are objects allowed to remain in public spaces where people aren’t?
-
Experience Overload
2019-11-18By the 1990s, the “experience economy” was well underway, selling immersiveness and interactivity as branded products in destination retail spaces like Niketown. But the advent of social media has taken the experience economy to its logical conclusion, allowing everyday life itself to appear as readily packaged for sale.
Experience Overload
Experience Overload2019-11-18By the 1990s, the “experience economy” was well underway, selling immersiveness and interactivity as branded products in destination retail spaces like Niketown. But the advent of social media has taken the experience economy to its logical conclusion, allowing everyday life itself to appear as readily packaged for sale.
-
Double Trouble
2019-11-14You should know who the algorithms think you are
-
The Captured City
2019-11-12The technologies and policies associated with “smart cities” claim to serve citizen-customers and render life efficient; instead they treat the city like a battlespace, redeploying surveillance and information systems originally created for military purposes for urban policing.
The Captured City
The Captured City2019-11-12The technologies and policies associated with “smart cities” claim to serve citizen-customers and render life efficient; instead they treat the city like a battlespace, redeploying surveillance and information systems originally created for military purposes for urban policing.
-
Crisis Mode
2019-11-07Some models of social media “addiction” assume users are somehow blinded to the causes and consequences of their behavior. But these “triggers” don’t work behind our backs by depriving us of self-control but instead provide a sense of agency that is capable only of reproducing a sense of anxiety and crisis.
Crisis Mode
Crisis Mode2019-11-07Some models of social media “addiction” assume users are somehow blinded to the causes and consequences of their behavior. But these “triggers” don’t work behind our backs by depriving us of self-control but instead provide a sense of agency that is capable only of reproducing a sense of anxiety and crisis.
-
Utopian Overreach
2019-11-04Digital wellness seems a reasonable way to help individuals take agency over their device usage and restore “balance” to their lives. But it draws on a longstanding approach of dividing the world of practices — and people — into those which are properly “human” and those which are not. The utopian aim of healing people’s relationship to technology faces the same problems that all utopian thinking confronts: it universalizes a certain set of problems as the only ones that matter and disqualifies people from the utopia in the process of solving them.
Utopian Overreach
Utopian Overreach2019-11-04Digital wellness seems a reasonable way to help individuals take agency over their device usage and restore “balance” to their lives. But it draws on a longstanding approach of dividing the world of practices — and people — into those which are properly “human” and those which are not. The utopian aim of healing people’s relationship to technology faces the same problems that all utopian thinking confronts: it universalizes a certain set of problems as the only ones that matter and disqualifies people from the utopia in the process of solving them.
-
New Haunts
2019-10-31Ghost Adventures makes suburban life look like it’s full of surprises
New Haunts
New Haunts2019-10-31Ghost Adventures makes suburban life look like it’s full of surprises
-
Candy Crush
2019-10-28When Planters discontinued making Cheez Balls, an internet campaign to “save them” seemed to bring the snack back. But before championing the power of consumer sovereignty, it’s worth thinking about how eliciting consumer engagement is often the product in itself
Candy Crush
Candy Crush2019-10-28When Planters discontinued making Cheez Balls, an internet campaign to “save them” seemed to bring the snack back. But before championing the power of consumer sovereignty, it’s worth thinking about how eliciting consumer engagement is often the product in itself
-
Bundling and Unbundling
2019-10-24No goods or services are stand-alone
-
The Face of the Franchise
2019-10-21Our sports fantasies are tied to the media we use to consume them. Video games have followed suit: They aren’t simulating the play of sports but building an interactive TV broadcast. Playing these games indulge the fantasy of becoming a celebrity. Sports video games don’t simulate sports so much as the thrill of building a brand.
The Face of the Franchise
The Face of the Franchise2019-10-21Our sports fantasies are tied to the media we use to consume them. Video games have followed suit: They aren’t simulating the play of sports but building an interactive TV broadcast. Playing these games indulge the fantasy of becoming a celebrity. Sports video games don’t simulate sports so much as the thrill of building a brand.
-
Bad Metaphors: Close to the Metal
2019-10-15Programming a computer was once obviously a form of physical labor, a matter of hauling cables and adjusting switches that presented themselves as arrays in physical space. Being “close to the metal” derives from this and captures a friction in our interactions with machines that is increasingly being hidden.
Close to the Metal
Close to the Metal2019-10-15Programming a computer was once obviously a form of physical labor, a matter of hauling cables and adjusting switches that presented themselves as arrays in physical space. Being “close to the metal” derives from this and captures a friction in our interactions with machines that is increasingly being hidden.
-
Look for America
2019-10-10Some are trying to shame photo takers at national parks, seeing their presence as ruinous. But photography was instrumental to the founding of the national park system, and documentation has been essential to properly understanding the indigenous history of lands that many are now inclined to demote to empty scenery.
Look for America
Look for America2019-10-10Some are trying to shame photo takers at national parks, seeing their presence as ruinous. But photography was instrumental to the founding of the national park system, and documentation has been essential to properly understanding the indigenous history of lands that many are now inclined to demote to empty scenery.
-
The Bones We Leave Behind
2019-10-07It’s not enough to make facial recognition illegal when its infrastructural legacy remains
The Bones We Leave Behind
The Bones We Leave Behind2019-10-07It’s not enough to make facial recognition illegal when its infrastructural legacy remains
-
Get Realer
2019-10-03If CGI makes anything possible, why has it led to so many remakes?
-
False Alarm
2019-09-30New digital resources for home security and “crime reduction” — particularly Ring, and its companion app, Neighbors — capitalize on the symptoms of poverty and inequality while eliding the causes. They also play on the social media–age compulsion to be constantly “in the know,” whether or not the information is accurate.
False Alarm
False Alarm2019-09-30New digital resources for home security and “crime reduction” — particularly Ring, and its companion app, Neighbors — capitalize on the symptoms of poverty and inequality while eliding the causes. They also play on the social media–age compulsion to be constantly “in the know,” whether or not the information is accurate.
-
Dancing With Myself
2019-09-26Billie Eilish is the perfect music for a silent disco
Dancing With Myself
Dancing With Myself2019-09-26Billie Eilish is the perfect music for a silent disco
-
Swap Meat
2019-09-23Miracle “meat” — vegetarian alternatives wrought through “high-tech” methods — promises to change the world for the better. But such products mean more growth and more consumption, the same problems they aim to solve.
-
Recorded for Quality Assurance
2019-09-19Algorithmic vocal-tone analysis uses machine learning to purportedly identify and quantify the affect of call-center agents and customers alike and turn it into a profitable data set for companies. This process turns customers’ racial, sexist, xenophobic, and ableist prejudices into profitable data also, used to justify further marginalization and economic precaritization of groups already most likely to experience them.
Recorded for Quality Assurance
Recorded for Quality Assurance2019-09-19Algorithmic vocal-tone analysis uses machine learning to purportedly identify and quantify the affect of call-center agents and customers alike and turn it into a profitable data set for companies. This process turns customers’ racial, sexist, xenophobic, and ableist prejudices into profitable data also, used to justify further marginalization and economic precaritization of groups already most likely to experience them.
-
Ghost Notes
2019-09-16The internet has no scent. Do we miss it?
-
Pay to Play
2019-09-12Sex-robot technology will draw on tactics that have driven “engagement” on other apps
Pay to Play
Pay to Play2019-09-12Sex-robot technology will draw on tactics that have driven “engagement” on other apps
-
New Feelings: Emotional Oversight Committee
2019-09-10In my relationships, I often argue as if an outsider is listening, as if bells will ding at each well-landed point. The desire for some adjudicating presence — call it a social oversight committee — seeps into the way we conduct ourselves, even if we know it’s foolish. The point is the sense of a higher, third-party mediator, not the consequence of their deliberations.
Emotional Oversight Committee
Emotional Oversight Committee2019-09-10In my relationships, I often argue as if an outsider is listening, as if bells will ding at each well-landed point. The desire for some adjudicating presence — call it a social oversight committee — seeps into the way we conduct ourselves, even if we know it’s foolish. The point is the sense of a higher, third-party mediator, not the consequence of their deliberations.
-
The Perfect User
2019-09-05Digital wellness movements insist there is a single way to “stay human”
The Perfect User
The Perfect User2019-09-05Digital wellness movements insist there is a single way to “stay human”
-
Union Station
2019-09-03The history of the train — once a symbol of capitalism, now socialism — contains lessons for nationalizing digital infrastructure
Union Station
Union Station2019-09-03The history of the train — once a symbol of capitalism, now socialism — contains lessons for nationalizing digital infrastructure
-
Bad Metaphors: Recharge
2019-08-29My phone’s battery icon has become emblematic of what it means to regain my energy: I want to turn from red to green. Saying that I need to “recharge” is at once an acknowledgement of my depletion and a sign of my hope that reviving it could be as simple as plugging in. I am thinking of myself like my device, and as such, reducing my life to a deadening cycle.
Recharge
Recharge2019-08-29My phone’s battery icon has become emblematic of what it means to regain my energy: I want to turn from red to green. Saying that I need to “recharge” is at once an acknowledgement of my depletion and a sign of my hope that reviving it could be as simple as plugging in. I am thinking of myself like my device, and as such, reducing my life to a deadening cycle.
-
Open Worlds
2019-08-26As people grow nostalgic for older open-world games like Minecraft, the newer ones more explicitly indoctrinate players into the protocols of developing human capital. A game like Roblox seems to encourage creativity only when it has the potential to make money: through development, or through buying and selling in-game merchandise.
Open Worlds
Open Worlds2019-08-26As people grow nostalgic for older open-world games like Minecraft, the newer ones more explicitly indoctrinate players into the protocols of developing human capital. A game like Roblox seems to encourage creativity only when it has the potential to make money: through development, or through buying and selling in-game merchandise.
-
Glow Aesthetics
2019-08-22Ubiquitous cameras are changing the meaning of makeup, which is being used to enhance how we look in images and not in the flesh: Our image on a screen is increasingly how we “really” look to other people, leading to new ways to augment our self-presentation. Social media feeds teem with neon, prismatic shimmers, chrome, filters, and glow. Snapchat and TikTok effects sparkle and glimmer.
Glow Aesthetics
Glow Aesthetics2019-08-22Ubiquitous cameras are changing the meaning of makeup, which is being used to enhance how we look in images and not in the flesh: Our image on a screen is increasingly how we “really” look to other people, leading to new ways to augment our self-presentation. Social media feeds teem with neon, prismatic shimmers, chrome, filters, and glow. Snapchat and TikTok effects sparkle and glimmer.
-
Don’t Look Now
2019-08-19VR horror enacts our greatest fears about technology
-
Keep Connecting
2019-08-15When pornography becomes a “frictionless” technology, our bodies’ task is to seamlessly and endlessly circulate
Keep Connecting
Keep Connecting2019-08-15When pornography becomes a “frictionless” technology, our bodies’ task is to seamlessly and endlessly circulate
-
Data Sweat
2019-08-12Even through a screen, machines can read our body language
-
Fire in the Sky
2019-08-08Over the 20th century, UFO stories and alien imagery became shorthand for the feeling that daily life isn’t all that it seems and powerful people are concealing the truth. Now that paranoia is a symptom of day-to-day life, conspiracy theories are increasingly hijacked and weaponized by the very powers they’re meant to interrogate.
Fire in the Sky
Fire in the Sky2019-08-08Over the 20th century, UFO stories and alien imagery became shorthand for the feeling that daily life isn’t all that it seems and powerful people are concealing the truth. Now that paranoia is a symptom of day-to-day life, conspiracy theories are increasingly hijacked and weaponized by the very powers they’re meant to interrogate.
-
In the Flesh
2019-08-05Online brands promise an escape from the conventional logic of consumerism — until they open physical stores
In the Flesh
In the Flesh2019-08-05Online brands promise an escape from the conventional logic of consumerism — until they open physical stores
-
Our Bodies, Ourselves
2019-08-01The internet of medical things supposedly paves the way to transforming the human body into a machine that can be monitored nonstop, improving or saving the lives of millions. Yet this new kind of “internal surveillance” from afar has many risks. The biodata collected by wearables and smartwatches have inaccuracies, and patients “subjective” observations may be ignored.
Our Bodies, Ourselves
Our Bodies, Ourselves2019-08-01The internet of medical things supposedly paves the way to transforming the human body into a machine that can be monitored nonstop, improving or saving the lives of millions. Yet this new kind of “internal surveillance” from afar has many risks. The biodata collected by wearables and smartwatches have inaccuracies, and patients “subjective” observations may be ignored.
-
Network of Blood
2019-07-29In a wireless era, the old-fashioned plug conjures a tactile thrill, as well as a rich set of metaphors on the tethering of objects to each other and ourselves. It represents a mode of connection and engagement with the material world that seems to be slipping away.
Network of Blood
Network of Blood2019-07-29In a wireless era, the old-fashioned plug conjures a tactile thrill, as well as a rich set of metaphors on the tethering of objects to each other and ourselves. It represents a mode of connection and engagement with the material world that seems to be slipping away.
-
Children of Production
2019-07-25Making babies is not a natural process
-
Bad Metaphors: Community
2019-07-22A false shorthand for unity provides a cover for corporate interests
-
The Algorithmic Colonization of Africa
2019-07-18As Africa grapples with catching up with the latest technological developments, it must also protect the continent’s most vulnerable people from the harm that technology can cause. Part of that means not importing machine learning systems or any other AI tools without questioning what the underlying purpose is, who benefits, and who might be disadvantaged
The Algorithmic Colonization of Africa
The Algorithmic Colonization of Africa2019-07-18As Africa grapples with catching up with the latest technological developments, it must also protect the continent’s most vulnerable people from the harm that technology can cause. Part of that means not importing machine learning systems or any other AI tools without questioning what the underlying purpose is, who benefits, and who might be disadvantaged
-
Screen Time, Sacred Time
2019-07-15Immersiveness is not in and of itself automatically dangerous, a form of frivolous escapism. The immersiveness of screen time could be likened to the immersiveness of sacred time. When we fall into wikiholes, aren’t we operating outside time, searching for knowledge, for a better understanding of the universe and its mysteries?
Screen Time, Sacred Time
Screen Time, Sacred Time2019-07-15Immersiveness is not in and of itself automatically dangerous, a form of frivolous escapism. The immersiveness of screen time could be likened to the immersiveness of sacred time. When we fall into wikiholes, aren’t we operating outside time, searching for knowledge, for a better understanding of the universe and its mysteries?
-
Idol Thoughts
2019-07-11We think of fandom as collective, but it’s also a means of privacy
Idol Thoughts
Idol Thoughts2019-07-11We think of fandom as collective, but it’s also a means of privacy
-
Networked Dream Worlds
2019-07-08Is 5G solving real, pressing problems or merely creating new ones?
Networked Dream Worlds
Networked Dream Worlds2019-07-08Is 5G solving real, pressing problems or merely creating new ones?
-
Ghosts of the Future
2019-07-01“Smart-home horror” is a subgenre in which AI haunts people just like ghosts do in canonical gothic stories. Like ghosts, AI is monstrous for its omniscience and liminality. The comparison calls attention to a new batch of fears and anxieties we accept as the cost of convenience. Just as in canonical gothic narratives, the real horror ultimately comes from human beings.
Ghosts of the Future
Ghosts of the Future2019-07-01“Smart-home horror” is a subgenre in which AI haunts people just like ghosts do in canonical gothic stories. Like ghosts, AI is monstrous for its omniscience and liminality. The comparison calls attention to a new batch of fears and anxieties we accept as the cost of convenience. Just as in canonical gothic narratives, the real horror ultimately comes from human beings.
-
Well Played: Play Per View
2019-06-27This combination of buzzing sociality in the chat with the chaotic bell-ringing of the streamer’s commercial celebrations turns a “successful” stream into a kind of riotous digital party. Participation in the stream is not merely a question of passive watching or even chatting but also making micropayments to maintain the stream as both a means of subsistence for the streamer and as a lively, interactive place for other viewers. Live streaming thus ends up being a constant performance of crowdfunding as entertainment, like a low-rent telethon
Well Played: Play Per View
Well Played: Play Per View2019-06-27This combination of buzzing sociality in the chat with the chaotic bell-ringing of the streamer’s commercial celebrations turns a “successful” stream into a kind of riotous digital party. Participation in the stream is not merely a question of passive watching or even chatting but also making micropayments to maintain the stream as both a means of subsistence for the streamer and as a lively, interactive place for other viewers. Live streaming thus ends up being a constant performance of crowdfunding as entertainment, like a low-rent telethon
-
The Easy Way Out
2019-06-24Convenience can be a cloak veiling an undisclosed exchange not merely between me and some future society that I am robbing of “privacy” but between me and other people right now: My convenience is often bought at someone else’s expense.
The Easy Way Out
The Easy Way Out2019-06-24Convenience can be a cloak veiling an undisclosed exchange not merely between me and some future society that I am robbing of “privacy” but between me and other people right now: My convenience is often bought at someone else’s expense.
-
Outer Limits
2019-06-20When you are alone in your house or your car, the radio or podcasts you listen to and the television you watch take up an outsized portion of how you think about and frame social problems. These are the moments in which individuals, alone in their cars with Ben Shapiro squealing through the speakers, form opinions and decide who to associate with. In what Castells calls “the network society,” the suburbs actually go from a pacifying force to a hotbed of political activity.
Outer Limits
Outer Limits2019-06-20When you are alone in your house or your car, the radio or podcasts you listen to and the television you watch take up an outsized portion of how you think about and frame social problems. These are the moments in which individuals, alone in their cars with Ben Shapiro squealing through the speakers, form opinions and decide who to associate with. In what Castells calls “the network society,” the suburbs actually go from a pacifying force to a hotbed of political activity.
-
Digital Hygiene
2019-06-17Metabolic metaphors ignore the structural factors that place internet users in peril, putting the burden on individuals to know where their data exists, how they’re being tracked, who has access to the data, and how it is being used to make decisions about them. And while these habits might make people feel like they have a modicum more control, it distracts from the real issue, which is the corporations actually doing the extracting, and the systems that allow this in the first place.
Digital Hygiene
Digital Hygiene2019-06-17Metabolic metaphors ignore the structural factors that place internet users in peril, putting the burden on individuals to know where their data exists, how they’re being tracked, who has access to the data, and how it is being used to make decisions about them. And while these habits might make people feel like they have a modicum more control, it distracts from the real issue, which is the corporations actually doing the extracting, and the systems that allow this in the first place.
-
I Believe This Is My Festival
2019-06-14No one is more modern, more of “the real world” it presumes, than someone whose authenticity has been challenged; whereas those labeled authentic are consigned to stereotypes, to being objects required to signify whatever experience they are consumed to represent. Being “real” in modernity means being a tourist; Instagram is a means for allowing every life moment to be packaged as a touristic occasion.
I Believe This Is My Festival
I Believe This Is My Festival2019-06-14No one is more modern, more of “the real world” it presumes, than someone whose authenticity has been challenged; whereas those labeled authentic are consigned to stereotypes, to being objects required to signify whatever experience they are consumed to represent. Being “real” in modernity means being a tourist; Instagram is a means for allowing every life moment to be packaged as a touristic occasion.
-
New Feelings: Roach Complex
2019-06-13Body horror memes travel well on platforms like Twitter, because they express our sense that the platform itself is taking us over — rewiring our minds and bodies, and transforming us into the very thing we love to hate.
Roach Complex
Roach Complex2019-06-13Body horror memes travel well on platforms like Twitter, because they express our sense that the platform itself is taking us over — rewiring our minds and bodies, and transforming us into the very thing we love to hate.
-
Manufactured Recollection
2019-06-10When the same kinds of algorithms determine which of our photos we should revisit in social media and which ads perform the best, our memories will inevitably look more like the advertising campaigns and paid influencer posts that surround us. The social consensus around what is “worth” remembering is becoming more tethered to an image’s commercial viability.
Manufactured Recollection
Manufactured Recollection2019-06-10When the same kinds of algorithms determine which of our photos we should revisit in social media and which ads perform the best, our memories will inevitably look more like the advertising campaigns and paid influencer posts that surround us. The social consensus around what is “worth” remembering is becoming more tethered to an image’s commercial viability.
-
Bad Metaphors: On a Journey
2019-06-06Whether we advertise it on our social media, and whether we like it or not, we are all on many “journeys” with many brands toward conversion and retention — long-lasting relationships with consumer brands without a clear end-point. While they claim to lead us on a path of self-discovery and liberation, these brands mediate and circumscribe our lives’ possibilities.
On a Journey
On a Journey2019-06-06Whether we advertise it on our social media, and whether we like it or not, we are all on many “journeys” with many brands toward conversion and retention — long-lasting relationships with consumer brands without a clear end-point. While they claim to lead us on a path of self-discovery and liberation, these brands mediate and circumscribe our lives’ possibilities.
-
Always In
2019-06-03As audio-based platforms take off, network effects would kick in, strengthening the incentives to leave earbuds in for longer and longer. It wouldn’t seem rude to wear them in conversation; it would be as acceptable as glancing at one’s phone or even sending a quick text message seems today.
Always In
Always In2019-06-03As audio-based platforms take off, network effects would kick in, strengthening the incentives to leave earbuds in for longer and longer. It wouldn’t seem rude to wear them in conversation; it would be as acceptable as glancing at one’s phone or even sending a quick text message seems today.
-
Well Played: Imagined Homeland
2019-05-30In the context of such bleak, broad global political trends, it’s hard to consider gaming communities worthy of much attention. But these communities have established themselves as quasi safe spaces in which fascist ideology can hide in plain sight as it spreads.
Well Played: Imagined Homeland
Well Played: Imagined Homeland2019-05-30In the context of such bleak, broad global political trends, it’s hard to consider gaming communities worthy of much attention. But these communities have established themselves as quasi safe spaces in which fascist ideology can hide in plain sight as it spreads.
-
Ill at Ease
2019-05-28Many of the past decade’s most “disruptive” technologies, companies, and services tacitly promise a frictionless life. But the vision of effortlessness and ease for users comes at a human cost, requiring enormous global networks of extraction, logistics, manufacture, and transportation, along with sites of disposal, salvage, and waste.
Ill at Ease
Ill at Ease2019-05-28Many of the past decade’s most “disruptive” technologies, companies, and services tacitly promise a frictionless life. But the vision of effortlessness and ease for users comes at a human cost, requiring enormous global networks of extraction, logistics, manufacture, and transportation, along with sites of disposal, salvage, and waste.
-
Hanging on the Telephone
2019-05-23Crackle signals an ambiguous past, provoking audience nostalgia for how things used to be without actually having to return to when that was. The failure to cinematically engage with the role of phones in everyday life suggests a similar failure to see the world how it is. The present absence of our habitual phone use has the effect of taking a story out of time: It’s invisible crackle. This leaves films ill-equipped to explore, let alone solve, the problems new communication technology brings.
Hanging on the Telephone
Hanging on the Telephone2019-05-23Crackle signals an ambiguous past, provoking audience nostalgia for how things used to be without actually having to return to when that was. The failure to cinematically engage with the role of phones in everyday life suggests a similar failure to see the world how it is. The present absence of our habitual phone use has the effect of taking a story out of time: It’s invisible crackle. This leaves films ill-equipped to explore, let alone solve, the problems new communication technology brings.
-
Too Human
2019-05-20Higher fidelity physical medical models haven’t closed the gap between models and real-world practice. In fact, it seems that the reverse is arguably true — the more lifelike models become, and the greater the sense of mastery they provide, the more they hide the deficiencies and biases they contain. In other words, when physical fidelity is held up as the highest goal for simulators, the simulators may become less — not more — effective.
Too Human
Too Human2019-05-20Higher fidelity physical medical models haven’t closed the gap between models and real-world practice. In fact, it seems that the reverse is arguably true — the more lifelike models become, and the greater the sense of mastery they provide, the more they hide the deficiencies and biases they contain. In other words, when physical fidelity is held up as the highest goal for simulators, the simulators may become less — not more — effective.
-
Just Ride
2019-05-16The distinctly normie feel of standing on an electric scooter may be the keystone that unites the American mainstream with the activists struggling for a less car-centric city. The anarcho-cyclist, the Provo, wants to remake the city in the image of the bike, sweat and all. The resulting society, they imagine, is a more just, more ecologically sustainable, but less comfortable. It’s a particular kind of leftist asceticism that can be a valuable ally in a burgeoning coalition against the car. When it comes to democratizing the street for all sorts of transportation, the hardcore cyclist and the e-scooter commuter will have very similar demands.
Just Ride
Just Ride2019-05-16The distinctly normie feel of standing on an electric scooter may be the keystone that unites the American mainstream with the activists struggling for a less car-centric city. The anarcho-cyclist, the Provo, wants to remake the city in the image of the bike, sweat and all. The resulting society, they imagine, is a more just, more ecologically sustainable, but less comfortable. It’s a particular kind of leftist asceticism that can be a valuable ally in a burgeoning coalition against the car. When it comes to democratizing the street for all sorts of transportation, the hardcore cyclist and the e-scooter commuter will have very similar demands.
-
Fuzzy Logic, Fuzzy Ethics
2019-05-13Fuzzy ethics is also not simply a bad or ineffective mode of ethics. Rather ethics as such is characteristically fuzzy in that it begins with the postulation of principles for individual conduct. This fuzziness no doubt resonates with our individual diversity (recall Raskin’s appeal to the “you-colored prism”) and can meaningfully guide us in our day-to-day interactions with others. But it also explains why ethics is woefully limited when employed in the face of widespread, structural injustice. Translated into start-up jargon, we might say that there is no growth hack for ethics.
Fuzzy Logic, Fuzzy Ethics
Fuzzy Logic, Fuzzy Ethics2019-05-13Fuzzy ethics is also not simply a bad or ineffective mode of ethics. Rather ethics as such is characteristically fuzzy in that it begins with the postulation of principles for individual conduct. This fuzziness no doubt resonates with our individual diversity (recall Raskin’s appeal to the “you-colored prism”) and can meaningfully guide us in our day-to-day interactions with others. But it also explains why ethics is woefully limited when employed in the face of widespread, structural injustice. Translated into start-up jargon, we might say that there is no growth hack for ethics.
-
Present Perfect
2019-05-09Live streams can counter the sense that we are being exploited by social media. They can seem to indicate the possibility that human beings are still the primary constituents of the web, rather than impersonal and profit-motivated technical functions — a space in which humans are little more than connective ligaments or fonts of monetizable data. Live streams make a living place out of the digital domains that so many of us already treat like home.
Present Perfect
Present Perfect2019-05-09Live streams can counter the sense that we are being exploited by social media. They can seem to indicate the possibility that human beings are still the primary constituents of the web, rather than impersonal and profit-motivated technical functions — a space in which humans are little more than connective ligaments or fonts of monetizable data. Live streams make a living place out of the digital domains that so many of us already treat like home.
-
The Gardener’s Vision of Data
2019-05-06he scientists preparing and reusing NIST’s data to train facial recognition models may simply be subject to these tendencies and these philosophies — comfortable with screaming, bloodied, and non-consenting research subjects because they are not people to them but abstract sources of abstract data. But there are signs that this isn’t the only thing that is going on.
The Gardener’s Vision of Data
The Gardener’s Vision of Data2019-05-06he scientists preparing and reusing NIST’s data to train facial recognition models may simply be subject to these tendencies and these philosophies — comfortable with screaming, bloodied, and non-consenting research subjects because they are not people to them but abstract sources of abstract data. But there are signs that this isn’t the only thing that is going on.
-
Annotate the World
2019-05-02I opened a book I intended to discard, and saw my own strident observations shrieking up at me in bleeding ink. The notes seemed foul, the waste products of a self I’d repudiated; there are few people more objectionable than the person you were until recently. As objects, the books seemed cursed in reverse: To most readers the notes would be nothing more than an eyesore, but to put them in circulation would somehow manifest versions of myself that no longer felt familiar, and seemed to risk preceding me. The fear wasn’t rational of course — it was an incarnation of certain anxieties I’d developed over years of living online, transposed to objects. Those anxieties had to do with the sense that with every post, every click, I’m shedding a doppelgänger.
Annotate the World
Annotate the World2019-05-02I opened a book I intended to discard, and saw my own strident observations shrieking up at me in bleeding ink. The notes seemed foul, the waste products of a self I’d repudiated; there are few people more objectionable than the person you were until recently. As objects, the books seemed cursed in reverse: To most readers the notes would be nothing more than an eyesore, but to put them in circulation would somehow manifest versions of myself that no longer felt familiar, and seemed to risk preceding me. The fear wasn’t rational of course — it was an incarnation of certain anxieties I’d developed over years of living online, transposed to objects. Those anxieties had to do with the sense that with every post, every click, I’m shedding a doppelgänger.
-
Of Being Numerous
2019-04-29The devices and platforms we rely upon to communicate and gather information also keep us under constant surveillance. Our current, collective options for resistance illustrate the extent to which surveillance technologies are sewn into — and give shape to — the fabric of daily life.
Of Being Numerous
Of Being Numerous2019-04-29The devices and platforms we rely upon to communicate and gather information also keep us under constant surveillance. Our current, collective options for resistance illustrate the extent to which surveillance technologies are sewn into — and give shape to — the fabric of daily life.
-
Bill of Health
2019-04-25As the fields of health-data obsession have grown, they have contributed to the impression that data alone is sufficient for medical care. Compared with the intricacies of human biology and relationships, data appears straightforward. It doesn’t depend on the people who generate it, with their messy lives filled with competing priorities.
Bill of Health
Bill of Health2019-04-25As the fields of health-data obsession have grown, they have contributed to the impression that data alone is sufficient for medical care. Compared with the intricacies of human biology and relationships, data appears straightforward. It doesn’t depend on the people who generate it, with their messy lives filled with competing priorities.
-
Built to Shill
2019-04-23You may hate capitalism but love your childhood home and use the laws of land ownership to protect it and keep it as your own. You hate Uber, but your car is in the shop and it’s the only way to get to work on time. This is, in part, why Morton says that “the time of hyperobjects is a time of hypocrisy.”
Built to Shill
Built to Shill2019-04-23You may hate capitalism but love your childhood home and use the laws of land ownership to protect it and keep it as your own. You hate Uber, but your car is in the shop and it’s the only way to get to work on time. This is, in part, why Morton says that “the time of hyperobjects is a time of hypocrisy.”
-
Bad Metaphors: Let’s Take This Offline
2019-04-18The real implication of let’s take this offline is that, online or offline, you are always already in the wrong place. If the metaphor seems incoherent, even contradictory, that’s because it reflects the contradictory demands of the workplace.
Let’s Take This Offline
Let’s Take This Offline2019-04-18The real implication of let’s take this offline is that, online or offline, you are always already in the wrong place. If the metaphor seems incoherent, even contradictory, that’s because it reflects the contradictory demands of the workplace.
-
Running the Numbers
2019-04-15Video games are not unique in their ability to anchor live streams that transform private acts into public spectacles. And there are many streamers who undertake the “work of play” as a way to share gameplay experience without any thought of compensation or growing spectator numbers. But under the auspices of centralized platforms like Twitch, the “work of play” will always become a numbers game unto itself
Running the Numbers
Running the Numbers2019-04-15Video games are not unique in their ability to anchor live streams that transform private acts into public spectacles. And there are many streamers who undertake the “work of play” as a way to share gameplay experience without any thought of compensation or growing spectator numbers. But under the auspices of centralized platforms like Twitch, the “work of play” will always become a numbers game unto itself
-
Near, Far, Wherever You Are
2019-04-11Unlike Stranger sociality of yesteryear, though, encountering strangers no longer carries the symmetry it once did. Just as it is impossible to touch without being touched in return, meeting strangers once meant being one yourself — to acknowledge another human seeing you seeing them. Today, though, we do not know for whom we are the “People You May Know.”
Near, Far, Wherever You Are
Near, Far, Wherever You Are2019-04-11Unlike Stranger sociality of yesteryear, though, encountering strangers no longer carries the symmetry it once did. Just as it is impossible to touch without being touched in return, meeting strangers once meant being one yourself — to acknowledge another human seeing you seeing them. Today, though, we do not know for whom we are the “People You May Know.”
-
Counting the Countless
2019-04-08A reformist approach to facial recognition — making the system more “inclusive” — will not really reduce harm for the people actually harmed. This control and normalization is part of the point of data science. It is required for data science’s logics to work. All reform-based approaches do is make violent systems more efficiently violent, under the guise of ethics and inclusion.
Counting the Countless
Counting the Countless2019-04-08A reformist approach to facial recognition — making the system more “inclusive” — will not really reduce harm for the people actually harmed. This control and normalization is part of the point of data science. It is required for data science’s logics to work. All reform-based approaches do is make violent systems more efficiently violent, under the guise of ethics and inclusion.
-
Spoken For
2019-04-04A new, “genderless” digital voice aims to disrupt the association between female voices and servitude. In effect, it occupies the same gendered position often associated with robots: servile, responsive, not quite female — but certainly not male.
Spoken For
Spoken For2019-04-04A new, “genderless” digital voice aims to disrupt the association between female voices and servitude. In effect, it occupies the same gendered position often associated with robots: servile, responsive, not quite female — but certainly not male.
-
Game Boys
2019-04-01Deep forms of play — autonomous, chaotic, queer, and anti-hierarchical — threaten the systems of profit, work, and exploitation. Calls for increased play, joy, and an end to boredom were common slogans and demands among the radical wings of the movements of the 1960s, graffitied on the walls of Paris in May ’68 and broadcast over the radio by the anti-work workers’ movements in Italy. Video games, as designed today, overwhelmingly work to harness and co-opt that energy, to discipline the desire for play into the work ethic, to transform the freedom of creativity, exploration, and questioning into the diligent following of rules and learning of systems.
Game Boys
Game Boys2019-04-01Deep forms of play — autonomous, chaotic, queer, and anti-hierarchical — threaten the systems of profit, work, and exploitation. Calls for increased play, joy, and an end to boredom were common slogans and demands among the radical wings of the movements of the 1960s, graffitied on the walls of Paris in May ’68 and broadcast over the radio by the anti-work workers’ movements in Italy. Video games, as designed today, overwhelmingly work to harness and co-opt that energy, to discipline the desire for play into the work ethic, to transform the freedom of creativity, exploration, and questioning into the diligent following of rules and learning of systems.
-
Chances Are
2019-03-28Bayesian thinking and its valorization of a science of doing rather than knowing has allowed a whole host of human activities to be predicted rather than theorized. Read in its most dystopian light, this revolution has allowed algorithms to treat subjective knowledge as though it were objective, calculable, and ultimately predictable. This belief in the ability to predict probabilistically has allowed data scientists to try to control who sees what news, which friends people make, what dates they go on, the credit they are given, the jobs their applications are considered for.
Chances Are
Chances Are2019-03-28Bayesian thinking and its valorization of a science of doing rather than knowing has allowed a whole host of human activities to be predicted rather than theorized. Read in its most dystopian light, this revolution has allowed algorithms to treat subjective knowledge as though it were objective, calculable, and ultimately predictable. This belief in the ability to predict probabilistically has allowed data scientists to try to control who sees what news, which friends people make, what dates they go on, the credit they are given, the jobs their applications are considered for.
-
Bad Metaphors: The 30,000-Foot View
2019-03-25The rhetorical trick in the “30,000-foot view” is in how it allows for a differentiation between those who are merely impressed if not overawed with the all-encompassing aerial perspective and those who can read it and control it. It seems to present a claim to objectivity, but it is more an expression of status.
The 30,000-Foot View
The 30,000-Foot View2019-03-25The rhetorical trick in the “30,000-foot view” is in how it allows for a differentiation between those who are merely impressed if not overawed with the all-encompassing aerial perspective and those who can read it and control it. It seems to present a claim to objectivity, but it is more an expression of status.
-
Dot Matrix
2019-03-21A sensibility can cohere a worldview more vividly than an institution, for worse and for better. “Stan culture”; the cyclical interest in astrology and its archetypes; the commodification of co-presence, as in podcasting and vlogging — all speak to the timeless fact that it’s easier to make sense of a world in flux, atomized by a million emergencies and bids on one’s attention, through the unifying lens of another person.
Dot Matrix
Dot Matrix2019-03-21A sensibility can cohere a worldview more vividly than an institution, for worse and for better. “Stan culture”; the cyclical interest in astrology and its archetypes; the commodification of co-presence, as in podcasting and vlogging — all speak to the timeless fact that it’s easier to make sense of a world in flux, atomized by a million emergencies and bids on one’s attention, through the unifying lens of another person.
-
Natural’s Not in It
2019-03-18The work of Le Guin and other science fiction writers whose work chips away at the presumed links between nature and culture demand that we regard biological facts (like sex) as accidents of history and social facts (like gender, family organization, and capitalism) as open to reconfiguration. Science fiction socializes technology, creating a sandbox in which its role in mediating biology and society can be reimagined as well. In the process the genre creates space to propose alternative social fictions that take the place of the social arrangements that act as social facts in the “real” world.
Natural’s Not in It
Natural’s Not in It2019-03-18The work of Le Guin and other science fiction writers whose work chips away at the presumed links between nature and culture demand that we regard biological facts (like sex) as accidents of history and social facts (like gender, family organization, and capitalism) as open to reconfiguration. Science fiction socializes technology, creating a sandbox in which its role in mediating biology and society can be reimagined as well. In the process the genre creates space to propose alternative social fictions that take the place of the social arrangements that act as social facts in the “real” world.
-
Always On
2019-03-14If platforms deplete our willpower by making us hyper-self-conscious, they also are increasingly structured to make us experience the will as beside the point. Platforms are designed to make us less conscious of our decisions about how we spend time on them, attempting to automate decision-making with auto-play. The algorithms that ostensibly reveal what your “true” or “authentic” self would choose for itself feed off the very exhaustion that the platforms generate, offering refuge from the burden of identity work in the automation of the will.
Always On
Always On2019-03-14If platforms deplete our willpower by making us hyper-self-conscious, they also are increasingly structured to make us experience the will as beside the point. Platforms are designed to make us less conscious of our decisions about how we spend time on them, attempting to automate decision-making with auto-play. The algorithms that ostensibly reveal what your “true” or “authentic” self would choose for itself feed off the very exhaustion that the platforms generate, offering refuge from the burden of identity work in the automation of the will.
-
Bad Metaphors: I Don’t Have the Bandwidth
2019-03-11We almost never talk about “having the bandwidth” for something; it is usually in the negative. The “bandwidth” metaphor plays on the concept of hard limits, set and managed by forces outside our control — fate, or, in the literal sense, internet providers or the FCC. It is inelastic, and also not our fault.
I Don’t Have the Bandwidth
I Don’t Have the Bandwidth2019-03-11We almost never talk about “having the bandwidth” for something; it is usually in the negative. The “bandwidth” metaphor plays on the concept of hard limits, set and managed by forces outside our control — fate, or, in the literal sense, internet providers or the FCC. It is inelastic, and also not our fault.
-
It Girls
2019-03-04AI influencers like Lil Miquela don’t have inconvenient politics, slip-ups, or demands; they do exactly what they are scripted to do. Their success gives brands additional leverage over human influencers, showing them how quickly they could be replaced.
-
Location Not Found
2019-02-28How do you map a loss?
-
All Work and All Play
2019-02-25The way major video games are made — by a crew of thousands under exploitative labor conditions, with a dehumanizing division of labor emphasizing small, repetitive tasks — is reflected in the kind of games you get: massive open-world adventures full of thousands of discrete things to do, objects to collect, tasks to complete, and so on, held together by character and design and perhaps a narrative.
All Work and All Play
All Work and All Play2019-02-25The way major video games are made — by a crew of thousands under exploitative labor conditions, with a dehumanizing division of labor emphasizing small, repetitive tasks — is reflected in the kind of games you get: massive open-world adventures full of thousands of discrete things to do, objects to collect, tasks to complete, and so on, held together by character and design and perhaps a narrative.
-
Give Me What You Want
2019-02-21As long as the subscription-box market successfully positions passivity as the ultimate convenience, its belief system will encourage customers to detach themselves from their own tastes and from consumerism at large and rechannel their newfound energy into becoming allegedly better, more productive human beings. Yet instead of liberating us from these supposedly wasteful competitions over taste and status, subscription boxes will have only intensified the cutthroat management and marketing of these attributes. Rather than rendering taste irrelevant, they will have reinscribed competitive taste as inescapably human.
Give Me What You Want
Give Me What You Want2019-02-21As long as the subscription-box market successfully positions passivity as the ultimate convenience, its belief system will encourage customers to detach themselves from their own tastes and from consumerism at large and rechannel their newfound energy into becoming allegedly better, more productive human beings. Yet instead of liberating us from these supposedly wasteful competitions over taste and status, subscription boxes will have only intensified the cutthroat management and marketing of these attributes. Rather than rendering taste irrelevant, they will have reinscribed competitive taste as inescapably human.
-
New Feelings: Screen Protectiveness
2019-02-19My habits and tendencies are witnessed by algorithms that uses them to reconstitute me as a consumer. Allowing a human being access to that same material feels more uncomfortably intimate, even if I know it’s less harmful. When someone touches my phone or computer, I feel a frantic impulse to explain: I’m more willing to be exploited than I am to be judged.
Screen Protectiveness
Screen Protectiveness2019-02-19My habits and tendencies are witnessed by algorithms that uses them to reconstitute me as a consumer. Allowing a human being access to that same material feels more uncomfortably intimate, even if I know it’s less harmful. When someone touches my phone or computer, I feel a frantic impulse to explain: I’m more willing to be exploited than I am to be judged.
-
Free Shipping
2019-02-14The ability to request the express arrival of any object missing from your life with a minimum of effort could make it increasingly possible to live as though you already own everything. That is to say, ownership might become an irrelevant consideration in comparison to the availability of abundant options for short-term consumption like those already offered by media streaming services. Once the home becomes seamlessly integrated as an appendage of fulfillment infrastructure, the activity of making shopping decisions might recede from our consciousness altogether.
Free Shipping
Free Shipping2019-02-14The ability to request the express arrival of any object missing from your life with a minimum of effort could make it increasingly possible to live as though you already own everything. That is to say, ownership might become an irrelevant consideration in comparison to the availability of abundant options for short-term consumption like those already offered by media streaming services. Once the home becomes seamlessly integrated as an appendage of fulfillment infrastructure, the activity of making shopping decisions might recede from our consciousness altogether.
-
Colonial Cartography
2019-02-11Maps created by colonial governments were in the business of creating political identities, while city advertisements reinforce them. But they are both the same kind of artifact, both coming from comparable, centralized entities in whose interest it is to alienate individuals from the physical relationship they have with their immediate surroundings — because this “eye level” relationship is at direct odds with the identities of consumer and national citizen that these entities are trying to create
Colonial Cartography
Colonial Cartography2019-02-11Maps created by colonial governments were in the business of creating political identities, while city advertisements reinforce them. But they are both the same kind of artifact, both coming from comparable, centralized entities in whose interest it is to alienate individuals from the physical relationship they have with their immediate surroundings — because this “eye level” relationship is at direct odds with the identities of consumer and national citizen that these entities are trying to create
-
Numbers Game
2019-02-07As game mechanics have become more common in more facets of daily experience, games themselves have begun to seem more like everyday life. Fortnite shows us the possibility of opting out, however temporarily, even if we don’t reject the premise of the game itself. Game dynamics need not dictate every aspect of behavior, even within an actual game. This lesson is more useful than the belief that we can simply escape to a reality free of games.
Numbers Game
Numbers Game2019-02-07As game mechanics have become more common in more facets of daily experience, games themselves have begun to seem more like everyday life. Fortnite shows us the possibility of opting out, however temporarily, even if we don’t reject the premise of the game itself. Game dynamics need not dictate every aspect of behavior, even within an actual game. This lesson is more useful than the belief that we can simply escape to a reality free of games.
-
Chasing the Apocalypse
2019-02-04The first time I came to the Project Faultless test site, though I had already spent a month driving solo through Nevada, I didn’t get out of my car. The earth seemed soiled, toxic — a threat waiting to seep through the rubber soles of my hiking boots. If I walked, I felt like I would become part of the landscape.
Chasing the Apocalypse
Chasing the Apocalypse2019-02-04The first time I came to the Project Faultless test site, though I had already spent a month driving solo through Nevada, I didn’t get out of my car. The earth seemed soiled, toxic — a threat waiting to seep through the rubber soles of my hiking boots. If I walked, I felt like I would become part of the landscape.
-
Well Played: Store Credit
2019-01-31As paywalls and privileges proliferate around more and more of the things we consume, and as the possibility of sharing the things we buy decreases through digital rights management and other technological shifts, our ownership of even these impoverished commodities becomes less reliable and total. Video games make this logic seem immanent, reasonable, even fun.
Well Played: Store Credit
Well Played: Store Credit2019-01-31As paywalls and privileges proliferate around more and more of the things we consume, and as the possibility of sharing the things we buy decreases through digital rights management and other technological shifts, our ownership of even these impoverished commodities becomes less reliable and total. Video games make this logic seem immanent, reasonable, even fun.
-
New Feelings: Ungoogleability
2019-01-24My notion of God — a transcendent intelligence that sees and knows me — has merged, in effect, with a technological reality that has come to assume many of the same powers. I know this isn’t true, but it’s still a minor shock to realize that though the internet possesses many facts about me, it doesn’t actually know who I am at all.
Ungoogleability
Ungoogleability2019-01-24My notion of God — a transcendent intelligence that sees and knows me — has merged, in effect, with a technological reality that has come to assume many of the same powers. I know this isn’t true, but it’s still a minor shock to realize that though the internet possesses many facts about me, it doesn’t actually know who I am at all.
-
Natural Processes
2019-01-22A year ago, at Muir Beach, I had poked around some exposed tide pools while tripping, and, enthralled, decided to stare a sea anemone down with my desire for contact. After a few seconds, my brain felt very hot. I instinctively covered my eyes and became convinced contact had been made. The sea anemone’s message: “Get the fuck away from me.” The takeaway stuck: Not all life wants to be seen, or known.
Natural Processes
Natural Processes2019-01-22A year ago, at Muir Beach, I had poked around some exposed tide pools while tripping, and, enthralled, decided to stare a sea anemone down with my desire for contact. After a few seconds, my brain felt very hot. I instinctively covered my eyes and became convinced contact had been made. The sea anemone’s message: “Get the fuck away from me.” The takeaway stuck: Not all life wants to be seen, or known.
-
New Feelings: Selfish Intimacy
2019-01-17My mother noticed what I was up to and eyed me uneasily. “Why do you have to document everything?” she said, as I snapped away at some erotic ceramicware. I told her I didn’t plan to show anyone, but the point was that I could.
Selfish Intimacy
Selfish Intimacy2019-01-17My mother noticed what I was up to and eyed me uneasily. “Why do you have to document everything?” she said, as I snapped away at some erotic ceramicware. I told her I didn’t plan to show anyone, but the point was that I could.
-
Building to Code
2019-01-14The fact that new cities are experiencing a new spin on old problems, instead of leapfrogging American and European mistakes is unsettling. Are the growing pains of cities more intrinsic to urbanization than Howard believed, or have we yet to try something truly new in city-making? The only way to find out is to re-center the human in the city. What I want to do with this column is ask: How do we want to live among technology and each other? Why are cities treated like app platforms?
Building to Code
Building to Code2019-01-14The fact that new cities are experiencing a new spin on old problems, instead of leapfrogging American and European mistakes is unsettling. Are the growing pains of cities more intrinsic to urbanization than Howard believed, or have we yet to try something truly new in city-making? The only way to find out is to re-center the human in the city. What I want to do with this column is ask: How do we want to live among technology and each other? Why are cities treated like app platforms?
-
New Feelings: Phatic Checking
2019-01-10Checking the news has become phatic, like small talk; it’s enough to know I’m connected to the channel of information, like tapping the keys in my pocket every few minutes to remind myself I can still get into my apartment. Turns out the isolated act of “paying attention” is a bad criterion for political engagement.
Phatic Checking
Phatic Checking2019-01-10Checking the news has become phatic, like small talk; it’s enough to know I’m connected to the channel of information, like tapping the keys in my pocket every few minutes to remind myself I can still get into my apartment. Turns out the isolated act of “paying attention” is a bad criterion for political engagement.
-
Silent Shout
2019-01-07The privacy flaws of wi-fi are nearly universal — and yet most of us like to think of ourselves as exempt from its violations. But wi-fi continuously emits signals that include personally identifiable information in every direction, with few protections on offer for security or encryption.
Silent Shout
Silent Shout2019-01-07The privacy flaws of wi-fi are nearly universal — and yet most of us like to think of ourselves as exempt from its violations. But wi-fi continuously emits signals that include personally identifiable information in every direction, with few protections on offer for security or encryption.
-
Sleep Subjects
2019-01-03FitBit’s measurements of my quantity and quality of sleep became a kind of empirical assurance, a metrical safety blanket that said, “Yes, you can feel this tired,” or “You should feel spry and alert.” Does it know better than I do how much sleep I got, or how tired I should feel? Does it matter if these measurements are actually accurate? What would “accurate” even mean when it came to how I felt? How did I come to implicitly trust it over my own consciousness?
Sleep Subjects
Sleep Subjects2019-01-03FitBit’s measurements of my quantity and quality of sleep became a kind of empirical assurance, a metrical safety blanket that said, “Yes, you can feel this tired,” or “You should feel spry and alert.” Does it know better than I do how much sleep I got, or how tired I should feel? Does it matter if these measurements are actually accurate? What would “accurate” even mean when it came to how I felt? How did I come to implicitly trust it over my own consciousness?
-
SPECIAL ISSUE: 2018
2018-12-20Collected here are some essays from Real Life that reflect not only what seemed to be some of the most pressing “tech” topics in 2018 — automation, algorithmic control, data surveillance, climate change, “virtual reality,” and a variety of attention economies — but also essays that we hope indicates what a broader approach to “tech” might look like. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do.
SPECIAL ISSUE: 2018
SPECIAL ISSUE: 20182018-12-20Collected here are some essays from Real Life that reflect not only what seemed to be some of the most pressing “tech” topics in 2018 — automation, algorithmic control, data surveillance, climate change, “virtual reality,” and a variety of attention economies — but also essays that we hope indicates what a broader approach to “tech” might look like. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do.
-
Well Played: Battle Royale
2018-12-19Games, like all mass culture, are administered ideology, but to have effective force they must not be too dogmatic or stale — the widespread recognition of vulgar state-produced propaganda as such masks the more insidious but no less propagandistic functioning of culture markets. But to achieve that cover, they tend to appropriate the vitality of emergent culture. When games steal this popular energy, the ideology they convey becomes potentially unreliable.
Well Played: Battle Royale
Well Played: Battle Royale2018-12-19Games, like all mass culture, are administered ideology, but to have effective force they must not be too dogmatic or stale — the widespread recognition of vulgar state-produced propaganda as such masks the more insidious but no less propagandistic functioning of culture markets. But to achieve that cover, they tend to appropriate the vitality of emergent culture. When games steal this popular energy, the ideology they convey becomes potentially unreliable.
-
Ambient Cruelty
2018-12-17The ability to ruin a stranger’s life is a feature, not a bug of consumer rating systems. By emphasizing the user’s “right” to express their dissatisfaction, platforms encourage users to be cruel without feeling cruel, while creating a slush fund of data to use against employees.
Ambient Cruelty
Ambient Cruelty2018-12-17The ability to ruin a stranger’s life is a feature, not a bug of consumer rating systems. By emphasizing the user’s “right” to express their dissatisfaction, platforms encourage users to be cruel without feeling cruel, while creating a slush fund of data to use against employees.
-
Stars and Strikes
2018-12-13The music industry has dealt with constant technological upheavals throughout its history, and its own gig economy predates the one we now associate with Silicon Valley. Its legacy of union organizing offers lessons for other industries.
Stars and Strikes
Stars and Strikes2018-12-13The music industry has dealt with constant technological upheavals throughout its history, and its own gig economy predates the one we now associate with Silicon Valley. Its legacy of union organizing offers lessons for other industries.
-
Cold Discovery
2018-12-10The phrases “watching Netflix” and “listening to Spotify,” as opposed to watching or listening to something specific on them, suggest that these platforms denature their content and assimilate its identity into their own. While a book cover wrapped an individual work — an independently defined, freestanding unit of content — a platform interface wraps the entire collection of works that users can access through it. In the process, that collection becomes a slurry of fungible content that fuels the platform.
Cold Discovery
Cold Discovery2018-12-10The phrases “watching Netflix” and “listening to Spotify,” as opposed to watching or listening to something specific on them, suggest that these platforms denature their content and assimilate its identity into their own. While a book cover wrapped an individual work — an independently defined, freestanding unit of content — a platform interface wraps the entire collection of works that users can access through it. In the process, that collection becomes a slurry of fungible content that fuels the platform.
-
See No Evil
2018-12-06By blurring out Ariel Castro’s home, where the crimes took place, Google has implied that what happened inside the house is beyond comprehension; the company has unmoored the once-physical 2207 Seymour Avenue from the concept of the house. This clumsy attempt to distract us from tragedy neither protects virtual visitors nor honors its victims — rather, in altering its own records, Google turns the site into a horror trope.
See No Evil
See No Evil2018-12-06By blurring out Ariel Castro’s home, where the crimes took place, Google has implied that what happened inside the house is beyond comprehension; the company has unmoored the once-physical 2207 Seymour Avenue from the concept of the house. This clumsy attempt to distract us from tragedy neither protects virtual visitors nor honors its victims — rather, in altering its own records, Google turns the site into a horror trope.
-
Sins of the Mother
2018-12-03While digital self-tracking might seem to be the answer to someone like me who seeks to become a parent, using it to record evidence of all the ways that the parent might set the child up for failure could make it easier to revisit the sins of the mother upon the child. To safeguard future generations, it may be more important to guard against self-tracking’s intrusion into our lives than to reap its benefits. Is the Apple Watch truly a guardian, caring for our well-being — or is it a warden, watching and waiting for us to make a misstep?
Sins of the Mother
Sins of the Mother2018-12-03While digital self-tracking might seem to be the answer to someone like me who seeks to become a parent, using it to record evidence of all the ways that the parent might set the child up for failure could make it easier to revisit the sins of the mother upon the child. To safeguard future generations, it may be more important to guard against self-tracking’s intrusion into our lives than to reap its benefits. Is the Apple Watch truly a guardian, caring for our well-being — or is it a warden, watching and waiting for us to make a misstep?
-
Well Played: Passive Attack
2018-11-26Video games are not more interactive or creative than previous medium; if anything, they are arguably less. Each video game involves a mastery of a series of digital gestures, controls, contextual clues, or modes of seeing and knowing. While the best games offer space for improvisation, reflection, storytelling, and of course fun, the relation between gamer and game is most commonly one of disciplining the gamer to a set of systematized interactions.
Well Played: Passive Attack
Well Played: Passive Attack2018-11-26Video games are not more interactive or creative than previous medium; if anything, they are arguably less. Each video game involves a mastery of a series of digital gestures, controls, contextual clues, or modes of seeing and knowing. While the best games offer space for improvisation, reflection, storytelling, and of course fun, the relation between gamer and game is most commonly one of disciplining the gamer to a set of systematized interactions.
-
Plausible Disavowal
2018-11-19If “deepfakes” make us nostalgic for the supposedly automatic authenticity of documents, AI artworks posit a corollary nostalgia for the authenticity of artists. AI creativity appears as creativity with no human strategy behind it—art without ego. A clumsy show of computer creativity makes it seem as though humans once really were freely creative and might be again
Plausible Disavowal
Plausible Disavowal2018-11-19If “deepfakes” make us nostalgic for the supposedly automatic authenticity of documents, AI artworks posit a corollary nostalgia for the authenticity of artists. AI creativity appears as creativity with no human strategy behind it—art without ego. A clumsy show of computer creativity makes it seem as though humans once really were freely creative and might be again
-
Re: Mary Lee
2018-11-15Scrolling through celebrity gossip usually ends suddenly, with the realization that I’m wasting my time keeping tabs on how strangers spend theirs. By contrast, tracking Mary Lee felt productive, protective. Knowing her whereabouts imbued me with a weird sense of temporary power over my own fears, which were tempered by a strange intimacy.
Re: Mary Lee
Re: Mary Lee2018-11-15Scrolling through celebrity gossip usually ends suddenly, with the realization that I’m wasting my time keeping tabs on how strangers spend theirs. By contrast, tracking Mary Lee felt productive, protective. Knowing her whereabouts imbued me with a weird sense of temporary power over my own fears, which were tempered by a strange intimacy.
-
Faked Out
2018-11-13The post-truth era is not new, and not the fault of the postmodernists who have previously diagnosed it. Those who claim that our era is somehow less objective or more fake than earlier media regimes are clinging to a sense of their own superiority and trying to extend the legitimacy of increasingly irrelevant knowledge-producers.
Faked Out
Faked Out2018-11-13The post-truth era is not new, and not the fault of the postmodernists who have previously diagnosed it. Those who claim that our era is somehow less objective or more fake than earlier media regimes are clinging to a sense of their own superiority and trying to extend the legitimacy of increasingly irrelevant knowledge-producers.
-
Haunted Village
2018-11-08Toward the end of the 19th century, medical science viewed epileptics as straddling the line between sanity and insanity. The etiology of the disease was not understood, and seizures were seen as uncontrollable and dangerous periods of insanity that could launch an epileptic into a murderous rage, no matter the nature of their ordinary behavior. The perceived danger of these fits led to the forced institutionalization of epileptics. One idea, held to be progressive at the time, was to take them out of “lunatic asylums” and place them in their own institutions — not because they were seen as requiring less supervision so much as their seizures distressed other patients.
Haunted Village
Haunted Village2018-11-08Toward the end of the 19th century, medical science viewed epileptics as straddling the line between sanity and insanity. The etiology of the disease was not understood, and seizures were seen as uncontrollable and dangerous periods of insanity that could launch an epileptic into a murderous rage, no matter the nature of their ordinary behavior. The perceived danger of these fits led to the forced institutionalization of epileptics. One idea, held to be progressive at the time, was to take them out of “lunatic asylums” and place them in their own institutions — not because they were seen as requiring less supervision so much as their seizures distressed other patients.
-
Personal Panopticons
2018-11-05Once surveillance seems a fait accompli, then some measure of cynicism, apathy, or nihilism about privacy may present itself as a reasonable response. This suggests that pervasive surveillance helps produce people who are more at ease with it — people who no longer know what privacy is for or what socio-moral milieu could give it value.
Personal Panopticons
Personal Panopticons2018-11-05Once surveillance seems a fait accompli, then some measure of cynicism, apathy, or nihilism about privacy may present itself as a reasonable response. This suggests that pervasive surveillance helps produce people who are more at ease with it — people who no longer know what privacy is for or what socio-moral milieu could give it value.
-
The Last Format
2018-10-29The mp3 seemed like the endpoint for music consumption, the last format: free, accessible, unencumbered, it enabled fans to enjoy their favorite artists with minimal interference by corporate entities. But, while it took a decade, the music industry found a way to dash those utopian hopes. The mp3 was just another format, after all, and eventually the industry managed to undercut its relevance, partly by appealing to the ideals it once represented.
The Last Format
The Last Format2018-10-29The mp3 seemed like the endpoint for music consumption, the last format: free, accessible, unencumbered, it enabled fans to enjoy their favorite artists with minimal interference by corporate entities. But, while it took a decade, the music industry found a way to dash those utopian hopes. The mp3 was just another format, after all, and eventually the industry managed to undercut its relevance, partly by appealing to the ideals it once represented.
-
Well Played
2018-10-22Well Played is a monthly column about video games and how they both reflect and shape capitalism’s development. What role do they play in reproducing society, transforming ideology, and sustaining capital’s pool of labor? The answers suggested here are meant as openings for debate rather than comprehensive, conclusive statements; exceptions to some claims may be obvious, but these don’t nullify the general trends, which must be met with social resistance. This series is offered as a contribution to a map of the territory for those who would join that conflict.
Well Played
Well Played2018-10-22Well Played is a monthly column about video games and how they both reflect and shape capitalism’s development. What role do they play in reproducing society, transforming ideology, and sustaining capital’s pool of labor? The answers suggested here are meant as openings for debate rather than comprehensive, conclusive statements; exceptions to some claims may be obvious, but these don’t nullify the general trends, which must be met with social resistance. This series is offered as a contribution to a map of the territory for those who would join that conflict.
-
Friction-Free Racism
2018-10-15Silicon Valley has learned to profit by selling “friction-free” interactions, interfaces, and applications as a form of convenience. In these, a user doesn’t have to engage with people or even see them. The racism and othering implicit in this are rendered at the level of code, so these users can feel innocent and not complicit.
Friction-Free Racism
Friction-Free Racism2018-10-15Silicon Valley has learned to profit by selling “friction-free” interactions, interfaces, and applications as a form of convenience. In these, a user doesn’t have to engage with people or even see them. The racism and othering implicit in this are rendered at the level of code, so these users can feel innocent and not complicit.
-
No Joke
2018-10-11Irony is neither the gateway drug nor an alibi for racism. The alt-right’s euphemistic symbols of racism are meant to confuse outsiders and affirm insiders who can feel a sense of belonging by being in the know, but they are not attempts to trick the otherwise unsusceptible into racist thinking. What allows the far right to flourish is the ability for angry, entitled people to find each other and support each other’s racial animosities, not the ambiguities of ironic discourse.
No Joke
No Joke2018-10-11Irony is neither the gateway drug nor an alibi for racism. The alt-right’s euphemistic symbols of racism are meant to confuse outsiders and affirm insiders who can feel a sense of belonging by being in the know, but they are not attempts to trick the otherwise unsusceptible into racist thinking. What allows the far right to flourish is the ability for angry, entitled people to find each other and support each other’s racial animosities, not the ambiguities of ironic discourse.
-
New Feelings: Kid Brain
2018-10-09Watching old toy commercials on YouTube is a lot like consuming generic ASMR videos. The toys they advertised used tactile cues to create a sense of peace. There were no sets or stories, or competitions to win; you were only meant to pay attention to the way the objects made you feel. Today, this highlights the importance, and the difficulty, of activity without a productive goal.
Kid Brain
Kid Brain2018-10-09Watching old toy commercials on YouTube is a lot like consuming generic ASMR videos. The toys they advertised used tactile cues to create a sense of peace. There were no sets or stories, or competitions to win; you were only meant to pay attention to the way the objects made you feel. Today, this highlights the importance, and the difficulty, of activity without a productive goal.
-
Ordinary Doses
2018-10-04The tension between instrumentalized and exploratory approaches to psychedelics should not simply be dismissed. If the long-term impact of psychedelic research is shaped by the psychopharmaceutical industry, it would threaten the social potential of a psychedelic revival. The intertwining of mind-altering drugs and politics in the 1960s sparked a movement that embraced communitarianism over individualism and promised an immanent new consciousness.
Ordinary Doses
Ordinary Doses2018-10-04The tension between instrumentalized and exploratory approaches to psychedelics should not simply be dismissed. If the long-term impact of psychedelic research is shaped by the psychopharmaceutical industry, it would threaten the social potential of a psychedelic revival. The intertwining of mind-altering drugs and politics in the 1960s sparked a movement that embraced communitarianism over individualism and promised an immanent new consciousness.
-
The Last Frontier
2018-10-01Remoteness, here, signifies freedom: Men are able to create society as they wish, unconstrained by government interference or social norms. These shows are a nostalgic return to the 19th-century conception of the frontier as a place where white settlers can earn land and success through hard work, with race, class, and luck playing no role. Such a place doesn’t exist, and never existed, so it’s fitting that the locales are embellished or falsified.
The Last Frontier
The Last Frontier2018-10-01Remoteness, here, signifies freedom: Men are able to create society as they wish, unconstrained by government interference or social norms. These shows are a nostalgic return to the 19th-century conception of the frontier as a place where white settlers can earn land and success through hard work, with race, class, and luck playing no role. Such a place doesn’t exist, and never existed, so it’s fitting that the locales are embellished or falsified.
-
Same Difference
2018-09-27“Contemporary capitalism,” Mould argues, “has commandeered creativity to ensure its own growth.” As that claim suggests, he believes that creativity pre-existed capitalism and has not always just been a euphemism for economic exploitation. In his view, the word originally signified the generation of something from nothing, or the uniting of two previously separate ideas. But since something truly new or different is unassimilable to capitalism’s techniques for value extraction, much of creativity under capitalism is, as Mould argues, “newness to maintain more of the same,” rather than the development of new ways of being.
Same Difference
Same Difference2018-09-27“Contemporary capitalism,” Mould argues, “has commandeered creativity to ensure its own growth.” As that claim suggests, he believes that creativity pre-existed capitalism and has not always just been a euphemism for economic exploitation. In his view, the word originally signified the generation of something from nothing, or the uniting of two previously separate ideas. But since something truly new or different is unassimilable to capitalism’s techniques for value extraction, much of creativity under capitalism is, as Mould argues, “newness to maintain more of the same,” rather than the development of new ways of being.
-
The Great Mortality
2018-09-24During the 1950s and ’60s, there was great optimism that the world would soon be rid of all deadly infectious disease. The plan not only failed; it actually made the problem worse. Even when we know what to do to prepare for crises, the political coordination proves impossible, and individuals fall into escapist daydreams of painless extinction events.
The Great Mortality
The Great Mortality2018-09-24During the 1950s and ’60s, there was great optimism that the world would soon be rid of all deadly infectious disease. The plan not only failed; it actually made the problem worse. Even when we know what to do to prepare for crises, the political coordination proves impossible, and individuals fall into escapist daydreams of painless extinction events.
-
Too Much of Nothing
2018-09-20When I looked at Nothing on Street View, though, it didn’t feel uncanny, just anachronistic. It’s name implied a time where you could really feel lost, far off the grid. Now you can’t even go where there is nothing to get away from digital capture, from the standardization and assimilation with which Google is “organizing the world’s information.” But it is not like Nothing was some serendipitous joy back when I used to drive by it. It felt like a desperate scam being conducted from beyond the margins.
Too Much of Nothing
Too Much of Nothing2018-09-20When I looked at Nothing on Street View, though, it didn’t feel uncanny, just anachronistic. It’s name implied a time where you could really feel lost, far off the grid. Now you can’t even go where there is nothing to get away from digital capture, from the standardization and assimilation with which Google is “organizing the world’s information.” But it is not like Nothing was some serendipitous joy back when I used to drive by it. It felt like a desperate scam being conducted from beyond the margins.
-
Controlled Measures
2018-09-17Physiognomy was eventually debunked, but its legacy of what Cedric Robinson calls racial thinking has lived on in Silicon Valley’s cultural imaginaries as part of the heavily capitalized project of turning the world into a datafied engineering project. If we’re looking for a real “root cause” of “criminality,” we should look not to biological factors but to politics, which organizes how a society decides what is and is not a crime and how punishment is to be administered.
Controlled Measures
Controlled Measures2018-09-17Physiognomy was eventually debunked, but its legacy of what Cedric Robinson calls racial thinking has lived on in Silicon Valley’s cultural imaginaries as part of the heavily capitalized project of turning the world into a datafied engineering project. If we’re looking for a real “root cause” of “criminality,” we should look not to biological factors but to politics, which organizes how a society decides what is and is not a crime and how punishment is to be administered.
-
Crystal Visions
2018-09-13TV has always been quick to exploit the image of the skyline for subliminal messaging: quick shots in between scenes establish setting, and some of these are shots so fast we don’t consciously register them. Media creates legibility and familiarity, too, through a kind of narrative augmentation that arguably renders, or attempts to render, physical familiarity almost irrelevant. This is how the city markets itself not just for its residents but for the world.
Crystal Visions
Crystal Visions2018-09-13TV has always been quick to exploit the image of the skyline for subliminal messaging: quick shots in between scenes establish setting, and some of these are shots so fast we don’t consciously register them. Media creates legibility and familiarity, too, through a kind of narrative augmentation that arguably renders, or attempts to render, physical familiarity almost irrelevant. This is how the city markets itself not just for its residents but for the world.
-
The Constant Consumer
2018-09-10Formerly, being a customer was a role one assumed upon physically entering a store or ordering something from a company. Amazon promises to create a newer type of environment, a hybrid of the digital and the physical, that lets us permanently inhabit that role: the world as Everything Store, which we’re always inside.
The Constant Consumer
The Constant Consumer2018-09-10Formerly, being a customer was a role one assumed upon physically entering a store or ordering something from a company. Amazon promises to create a newer type of environment, a hybrid of the digital and the physical, that lets us permanently inhabit that role: the world as Everything Store, which we’re always inside.
-
New Feelings: Involuntary Lurking
2018-09-04Stalking and creeping carry clear negative connotations. But social media lurking feels to me more like a state of readiness, or hovering. It has become a way to cope with an often false promise of reciprocity — that knowing each other better will make us kinder.
Involuntary Lurking
Involuntary Lurking2018-09-04Stalking and creeping carry clear negative connotations. But social media lurking feels to me more like a state of readiness, or hovering. It has become a way to cope with an often false promise of reciprocity — that knowing each other better will make us kinder.
-
Take the Wheel
2018-08-30As much as the negative social and environmental effects that the automotive age has wrought have been naturalized as definitive parts of American culture and life, their detrimental effects remain inescapable. Rather than considering the impact of the current transportation system that prioritizes individual journeys, the driverless car extends and entrenches this model.
Take the Wheel
Take the Wheel2018-08-30As much as the negative social and environmental effects that the automotive age has wrought have been naturalized as definitive parts of American culture and life, their detrimental effects remain inescapable. Rather than considering the impact of the current transportation system that prioritizes individual journeys, the driverless car extends and entrenches this model.
-
Show Tunes
2018-08-27With a surplus of music available, the “community” itself, or rather the sense of oneself as participant, is increasingly the point. The walls around genre and niche have crumbled, only to be replaced with credit card transactions. The hunt for a “Song of the Summer” is a long-standing tradition that has been lately commodified into an endless content creation race. This takes the streaming-first mode of music appreciation to the next level: fans aren’t rallying around an artist, or a cluster of artists, but an ephemeral zeitgeist, into which any artist could possibly fit.
Show Tunes
Show Tunes2018-08-27With a surplus of music available, the “community” itself, or rather the sense of oneself as participant, is increasingly the point. The walls around genre and niche have crumbled, only to be replaced with credit card transactions. The hunt for a “Song of the Summer” is a long-standing tradition that has been lately commodified into an endless content creation race. This takes the streaming-first mode of music appreciation to the next level: fans aren’t rallying around an artist, or a cluster of artists, but an ephemeral zeitgeist, into which any artist could possibly fit.
-
Sun Belt Simulacra
2018-08-23Whereas history is constantly being rewritten, geography stubbornly reminds you of what you once thought to be true. Each ranch house totally disconnected from public transport is a reminder of the easy motoring myth it was founded on. The half-built gates on Douglas Road are a contestation of limitless progress.
Sun Belt Simulacra
Sun Belt Simulacra2018-08-23Whereas history is constantly being rewritten, geography stubbornly reminds you of what you once thought to be true. Each ranch house totally disconnected from public transport is a reminder of the easy motoring myth it was founded on. The half-built gates on Douglas Road are a contestation of limitless progress.
-
Odd Numbers
2018-08-20The “algorithmic accountability” movement seeks to make the use of algorithms more fair and transparent, but it can also be used as a rationale for making them more pervasive. To be truly critical, algorithmic accountability must not rule out the possibility of rejecting certain uses altogether.
Odd Numbers
Odd Numbers2018-08-20The “algorithmic accountability” movement seeks to make the use of algorithms more fair and transparent, but it can also be used as a rationale for making them more pervasive. To be truly critical, algorithmic accountability must not rule out the possibility of rejecting certain uses altogether.
-
War of Words
2018-08-13Discourse on platforms is refracted through a hidden lens, and the rules can only be inferred from what’s projected into one’s own feed, which will of course differ for every user. But that doesn’t mean that what a user sees on a social media platform is random. There are no accidents — only a platform’s priorities.
War of Words
War of Words2018-08-13Discourse on platforms is refracted through a hidden lens, and the rules can only be inferred from what’s projected into one’s own feed, which will of course differ for every user. But that doesn’t mean that what a user sees on a social media platform is random. There are no accidents — only a platform’s priorities.
-
Two-Faced
2018-08-09Online platforms aren’t simply replacing stores by replicating their function. Instead they are making themselves gatekeepers capable of controlling and regulating commerce — just as Steam regulates the weapon skins market — playing a decisive role in which sellers continue to exist and which workers get to show up to work tomorrow. Culture is constrained and warped by this gatekeeping dynamic, which not only maintains the existing monoculture — in which a few popular titles dominate markets — but intensifies it.
Two-Faced
Two-Faced2018-08-09Online platforms aren’t simply replacing stores by replicating their function. Instead they are making themselves gatekeepers capable of controlling and regulating commerce — just as Steam regulates the weapon skins market — playing a decisive role in which sellers continue to exist and which workers get to show up to work tomorrow. Culture is constrained and warped by this gatekeeping dynamic, which not only maintains the existing monoculture — in which a few popular titles dominate markets — but intensifies it.
-
Potemkin AI
2018-08-06AI has become a label startups use to make their service seem innovative and disruptive, whether it uses machine learning or not. The inflated claims of what AI can achieve has fed an investment bubble and helped normalize the ways “smart” systems use intrusive surveillance.
Potemkin AI
Potemkin AI2018-08-06AI has become a label startups use to make their service seem innovative and disruptive, whether it uses machine learning or not. The inflated claims of what AI can achieve has fed an investment bubble and helped normalize the ways “smart” systems use intrusive surveillance.
-
New Feelings: Crush Fatigue
2018-08-01Living online can feel like living in a big city: you make an ephemeral acquaintance, or click a link into an entirely new set of priorities, suppositions, and patterns of logic, sometimes totally at odds with your own and yet just as convinced of itself. The issue is not just that context bleeds and collapses; it’s that every new window opens onto a different horizon of concern, each with wildly different stakes, but equally urgent.
Crush Fatigue
Crush Fatigue2018-08-01Living online can feel like living in a big city: you make an ephemeral acquaintance, or click a link into an entirely new set of priorities, suppositions, and patterns of logic, sometimes totally at odds with your own and yet just as convinced of itself. The issue is not just that context bleeds and collapses; it’s that every new window opens onto a different horizon of concern, each with wildly different stakes, but equally urgent.
-
Just Randomness?
2018-07-30Historically, fairness has often been grounded in randomness, as with the drawing of lots. Some contemporary uses of algorithms try to be more fair by being more blind, as though this makes bias impossible. The trouble with this approach is that it makes us too willing to accept justice without justifications, and a view of society in which all relations are arbitrary.
Just Randomness?
Just Randomness?2018-07-30Historically, fairness has often been grounded in randomness, as with the drawing of lots. Some contemporary uses of algorithms try to be more fair by being more blind, as though this makes bias impossible. The trouble with this approach is that it makes us too willing to accept justice without justifications, and a view of society in which all relations are arbitrary.
-
Peripheral Visions
2018-07-19Ambient control will not only come from the top down, imposed by governments and large corporations on unsuspecting individuals. Much like the earlier turn to personal forms of ambient media internalized the principles of peripheral mood regulation, the “smart” automation of our shared perceptual background has a private corollary in virtual reality. While not often thought of in these terms, VR is the result of ambient intelligence put to personal use, reimagining context awareness as a way for individuals to carve out a virtual space of their own.
Peripheral Visions
Peripheral Visions2018-07-19Ambient control will not only come from the top down, imposed by governments and large corporations on unsuspecting individuals. Much like the earlier turn to personal forms of ambient media internalized the principles of peripheral mood regulation, the “smart” automation of our shared perceptual background has a private corollary in virtual reality. While not often thought of in these terms, VR is the result of ambient intelligence put to personal use, reimagining context awareness as a way for individuals to carve out a virtual space of their own.
-
Industry Standards
2018-07-16The internet lowered the barriers to entry to sex work and, for some people, made it feel safer. It helped break down barriers between different kinds of sex work. Sex workers were also early adopters of social media platforms, learning how to use them commercially and for advocacy.
Industry Standards
Industry Standards2018-07-16The internet lowered the barriers to entry to sex work and, for some people, made it feel safer. It helped break down barriers between different kinds of sex work. Sex workers were also early adopters of social media platforms, learning how to use them commercially and for advocacy.
-
CONSUMING OTHERS
2018-07-09We are not only watching the shows but they seem to watch us, play to our anticipated reactions, give value to our attention, as if watching made you a performer too. It is as if you are with them, so you can’t pretend to be them. Reality TV abolishes vicarious participation by destroying the distance that makes it possible; instead there is a mediated co-presence that dissolves aspiration into companionship, envy, contempt — anything but empathy.
CONSUMING OTHERS
CONSUMING OTHERS2018-07-09We are not only watching the shows but they seem to watch us, play to our anticipated reactions, give value to our attention, as if watching made you a performer too. It is as if you are with them, so you can’t pretend to be them. Reality TV abolishes vicarious participation by destroying the distance that makes it possible; instead there is a mediated co-presence that dissolves aspiration into companionship, envy, contempt — anything but empathy.
-
Human Sacrifice
2018-07-09Two decades after the birth of reality stardom, “famous for being famous” is no longer pejorative. The talent required to put yourself in front of strangers is revered as much as any other performance skill; self-marketing is a talent just as impressive to a general audience, and more relevant, than the ability to sing, dance, or act. YouTube, launched two years before Anna Nicole Smith’s death, is in some ways a dedicated medium for what reality stardom became. It’s also a medium capable of forging entertainments out of feelings too granular, or too intimate, for media like broadcast television to reach. On YouTube, reality narratives are reduced to gesture and affect, the smallest units of affinity.
Human Sacrifice
Human Sacrifice2018-07-09Two decades after the birth of reality stardom, “famous for being famous” is no longer pejorative. The talent required to put yourself in front of strangers is revered as much as any other performance skill; self-marketing is a talent just as impressive to a general audience, and more relevant, than the ability to sing, dance, or act. YouTube, launched two years before Anna Nicole Smith’s death, is in some ways a dedicated medium for what reality stardom became. It’s also a medium capable of forging entertainments out of feelings too granular, or too intimate, for media like broadcast television to reach. On YouTube, reality narratives are reduced to gesture and affect, the smallest units of affinity.
-
Trash TV
2018-07-09One of the reasons reality television always appears faker than fiction is its pretense, belied by its endless editing interventions, that recording things gives them significance. But the documentary fragment is never enough on its own; it’s increasingly dependent on other fragments for context and meaning. So reality TV has the uncanny effect of making individual documents, if not individuals themselves, seem disposable.
Trash TV
Trash TV2018-07-09One of the reasons reality television always appears faker than fiction is its pretense, belied by its endless editing interventions, that recording things gives them significance. But the documentary fragment is never enough on its own; it’s increasingly dependent on other fragments for context and meaning. So reality TV has the uncanny effect of making individual documents, if not individuals themselves, seem disposable.
-
EMPATHIC CONSUMPTION
2018-07-02Virtual reality is often sold as an “empathy machine” — a narrative technology capable of literally placing its consumer in its subjects’ position, supercharging their fellow-feeling for social good: for boosting fundraising efforts and making viewers more likely to act on human rights concerns, or for reducing implicit bias. While this seems promising, it can also inscribe or re-inscribe a destructive power dynamic between the consumer and the person whose story is being consumed.
EMPATHIC CONSUMPTION
EMPATHIC CONSUMPTION2018-07-02Virtual reality is often sold as an “empathy machine” — a narrative technology capable of literally placing its consumer in its subjects’ position, supercharging their fellow-feeling for social good: for boosting fundraising efforts and making viewers more likely to act on human rights concerns, or for reducing implicit bias. While this seems promising, it can also inscribe or re-inscribe a destructive power dynamic between the consumer and the person whose story is being consumed.
-
Empathy Machines
2018-07-02The lives filmed for VR experiences are isolated from any collective movement for justice and deployed instead in a simulation staged as a meeting between a powerful and a powerless individual in which all the petitioner’s words and actions are pre-selected by a third party. VR allows elites to believe that the best way to understand another’s perspective and act in their interest is not through talking to them directly but through consuming their experience at a distance, as framed by someone who seems more like a peer.
Empathy Machines
Empathy Machines2018-07-02The lives filmed for VR experiences are isolated from any collective movement for justice and deployed instead in a simulation staged as a meeting between a powerful and a powerless individual in which all the petitioner’s words and actions are pre-selected by a third party. VR allows elites to believe that the best way to understand another’s perspective and act in their interest is not through talking to them directly but through consuming their experience at a distance, as framed by someone who seems more like a peer.
-
Apathy Machines
2018-07-02More than any moral lesson, then, the book teaches you how to better consume books, and makes that seem like morality itself. They taught consumers how to enjoy things in solitude, taking aloneness and preventing it from becoming loneliness. They were instrumental in normalizing isolation, making it seem possible, even desirable, that we should have a world where our things strive to keep us apart from each other and absorbed in our own purely personal pleasures, with nothing but abstracted genre conventions to connect us. People thus become morally legible only insofar as they conform to such genre expectations.
Apathy Machines
Apathy Machines2018-07-02More than any moral lesson, then, the book teaches you how to better consume books, and makes that seem like morality itself. They taught consumers how to enjoy things in solitude, taking aloneness and preventing it from becoming loneliness. They were instrumental in normalizing isolation, making it seem possible, even desirable, that we should have a world where our things strive to keep us apart from each other and absorbed in our own purely personal pleasures, with nothing but abstracted genre conventions to connect us. People thus become morally legible only insofar as they conform to such genre expectations.
-
SOUVENIRS
2018-06-25Souvenirs tend to scale experiences down to evidence of our interesting personal lives. The memories they evoke beyond our daily experience may mask what our daily choices reap. That remains a story that is hard to tell: a social life of objects that exceed any one person’s biography or ability to narrate it.
SOUVENIRS
SOUVENIRS2018-06-25Souvenirs tend to scale experiences down to evidence of our interesting personal lives. The memories they evoke beyond our daily experience may mask what our daily choices reap. That remains a story that is hard to tell: a social life of objects that exceed any one person’s biography or ability to narrate it.
-
Big and Slow
2018-06-25Spectacular disasters like earthquakes, hurricanes, and flooding are newsworthy, but climate change is not. You can package the symptoms, but not the disease. How can we represent the threats that are too vast to see? What if civilization itself is one of them?
Big and Slow
Big and Slow2018-06-25Spectacular disasters like earthquakes, hurricanes, and flooding are newsworthy, but climate change is not. You can package the symptoms, but not the disease. How can we represent the threats that are too vast to see? What if civilization itself is one of them?
-
Nostalgia for Permanence
2018-06-25These days, the logs we keep of ourselves are increasingly ephemeral, even as the personas they represent remain, lingering and ghostlike. Stories and other sharing functions allow us to broadcast moments of our lives for only brief intervals. This can feel liberating, like a severing of ties; but when the evidence we leave of ourselves disappears, how do we remember it?
Nostalgia for Permanence
Nostalgia for Permanence2018-06-25These days, the logs we keep of ourselves are increasingly ephemeral, even as the personas they represent remain, lingering and ghostlike. Stories and other sharing functions allow us to broadcast moments of our lives for only brief intervals. This can feel liberating, like a severing of ties; but when the evidence we leave of ourselves disappears, how do we remember it?
-
SACRED SITES
2018-06-18Technologies of transcendence are easily misused. Those same techniques of suspension and feats of collective will can be used to give a moral character to a range of rules and exclusions. Governance is not abolished, but rather placed in parentheses indefinitely, and rule by force or fiat takes hold: Black sites, Guantánamo Bay, prisons and county jails, ICE detention centers all rely on a state of exception, the same suspension of the normal rules of society that sacred spaces also evoke. All places, sacred and profane, depend on technology to define their boundaries and functions. This week we present essays on these spaces, and how various technologies enable them, their sense of localness, specificity, exceptionality, and transcendence.
SACRED SITES
SACRED SITES2018-06-18Technologies of transcendence are easily misused. Those same techniques of suspension and feats of collective will can be used to give a moral character to a range of rules and exclusions. Governance is not abolished, but rather placed in parentheses indefinitely, and rule by force or fiat takes hold: Black sites, Guantánamo Bay, prisons and county jails, ICE detention centers all rely on a state of exception, the same suspension of the normal rules of society that sacred spaces also evoke. All places, sacred and profane, depend on technology to define their boundaries and functions. This week we present essays on these spaces, and how various technologies enable them, their sense of localness, specificity, exceptionality, and transcendence.
-
Seductive Doom
2018-06-18“Spatial forms or distance,” wrote Maurice Merleau-Ponty in Phenomenology of Perception, “are not so much relations between different points in objective space as they are relations between these points and a central perspective — the body.” Water is such a bridge of relation, a medium that relates us to both the symbolic sacred and the state that demands our transformation. The body is just where we begin.
Seductive Doom
Seductive Doom2018-06-18“Spatial forms or distance,” wrote Maurice Merleau-Ponty in Phenomenology of Perception, “are not so much relations between different points in objective space as they are relations between these points and a central perspective — the body.” Water is such a bridge of relation, a medium that relates us to both the symbolic sacred and the state that demands our transformation. The body is just where we begin.
-
CURSED NETWORKS
2018-06-04What makes a “cursed image” disturbing is arguably the fact that it depicts something that someone else has gotten used to. It builds a network out of those for whom it’s abnormal and unwanted. Images can be cursed, but so can legends and stories and people. Whatever materials people might use to affirm an identity and create a sense of coherence where there is only a need for affinity.
CURSED NETWORKS
CURSED NETWORKS2018-06-04What makes a “cursed image” disturbing is arguably the fact that it depicts something that someone else has gotten used to. It builds a network out of those for whom it’s abnormal and unwanted. Images can be cursed, but so can legends and stories and people. Whatever materials people might use to affirm an identity and create a sense of coherence where there is only a need for affinity.
-
Legend Tripping
2018-06-04Legend tripping has more radical potential value. The practice is a way in which many youth encounter alternative histories, cultural memory and the porous boundary between physical space and ideology. For a moment, legend tripping forces its practitioners into a confrontation with their local geography and history — a story can be mostly “fake” (or “fakelore”) but still reveal a ton about the anxieties or troubled history of a community, the subaltern stories and voices that hegemonic powers want forgotten.
Legend Tripping
Legend Tripping2018-06-04Legend tripping has more radical potential value. The practice is a way in which many youth encounter alternative histories, cultural memory and the porous boundary between physical space and ideology. For a moment, legend tripping forces its practitioners into a confrontation with their local geography and history — a story can be mostly “fake” (or “fakelore”) but still reveal a ton about the anxieties or troubled history of a community, the subaltern stories and voices that hegemonic powers want forgotten.
-
True Nonbelievers
2018-06-04The “trust nothing, but believe whatever’s psychologically expedient” ideology of the rising flat-earth movement encourages the wholesale rejection of expertise and any consensus reality in favor of ad hoc conspiracies and blind intuition. It licenses dangerous delusions that culminate in violence, but it also models an emerging form of community that is not anchored in any shared local conditions.
True Nonbelievers
True Nonbelievers2018-06-04The “trust nothing, but believe whatever’s psychologically expedient” ideology of the rising flat-earth movement encourages the wholesale rejection of expertise and any consensus reality in favor of ad hoc conspiracies and blind intuition. It licenses dangerous delusions that culminate in violence, but it also models an emerging form of community that is not anchored in any shared local conditions.
-
The Accursed Share
2018-06-04A haunted object relies on a singularity of experience, an event or series of events, each with a fixed time and place. Yet here in “The Hands Resist Him,” up for bid on eBay, was a painting so haunted that any representation of it, whether png or a paper copy, had somatic effects in home viewers and home printers alike. Rather than diminishing it, each copy only seemed to amplify its power.
The Accursed Share
The Accursed Share2018-06-04A haunted object relies on a singularity of experience, an event or series of events, each with a fixed time and place. Yet here in “The Hands Resist Him,” up for bid on eBay, was a painting so haunted that any representation of it, whether png or a paper copy, had somatic effects in home viewers and home printers alike. Rather than diminishing it, each copy only seemed to amplify its power.
-
SELF-OPTIMIZATION
2018-05-29Digital networks and resources can give the illusion of accessibility — if anyone can access nutritional guidelines, for instance, anyone should be able to follow them. This incorrect notion produces a moral residue: If anyone can “do it” — be healthy and attractive and alert and prepared to capitalize on any opportunity — than to not do it is a moral failing.
SELF-OPTIMIZATION
SELF-OPTIMIZATION2018-05-29Digital networks and resources can give the illusion of accessibility — if anyone can access nutritional guidelines, for instance, anyone should be able to follow them. This incorrect notion produces a moral residue: If anyone can “do it” — be healthy and attractive and alert and prepared to capitalize on any opportunity — than to not do it is a moral failing.
-
Straight Edge
2018-05-29Apps like I Am Sober, as well as Sober Time, Quit That, and Sobriety Counter, function similarly to the Fitbit. They turn sobriety, understood simply as the conscious denial or removal of something, into something game-like and compulsive. It becomes something that is worn, that takes material form as an object of data: something tangible and measurable, and always bifurcated by outside, technological interests. Sobriety becomes objective, which is also to mean it can always be better. As I constantly check my progress it becomes clear that I am competing against myself.
Straight Edge
Straight Edge2018-05-29Apps like I Am Sober, as well as Sober Time, Quit That, and Sobriety Counter, function similarly to the Fitbit. They turn sobriety, understood simply as the conscious denial or removal of something, into something game-like and compulsive. It becomes something that is worn, that takes material form as an object of data: something tangible and measurable, and always bifurcated by outside, technological interests. Sobriety becomes objective, which is also to mean it can always be better. As I constantly check my progress it becomes clear that I am competing against myself.
-
Out of Network
2018-05-29Cries of “technology addiction” may seem to stem from a moral concern with users’ quality of life, but more often the problem is with how it interferes with their ability to work. Making the workplace more distraction-free may seem to make it “healthier,” but it merely re-Taylorizes it, decluttering the networked assembly line.
Out of Network
Out of Network2018-05-29Cries of “technology addiction” may seem to stem from a moral concern with users’ quality of life, but more often the problem is with how it interferes with their ability to work. Making the workplace more distraction-free may seem to make it “healthier,” but it merely re-Taylorizes it, decluttering the networked assembly line.
-
FAKES
2018-05-21The concern with technological fakery and digital impersonation often involves this sort of subterfuge. Egregious forms of media manipulation — deepfakes, for instance — are held up for scrutiny, with questions of whether they are sufficiently convincing distracting from persistent underlying questions about the longstanding ruses of power.
FAKES
FAKES2018-05-21The concern with technological fakery and digital impersonation often involves this sort of subterfuge. Egregious forms of media manipulation — deepfakes, for instance — are held up for scrutiny, with questions of whether they are sufficiently convincing distracting from persistent underlying questions about the longstanding ruses of power.
-
Unreal News
2018-05-21For a long time, “fake news” almost exclusively referred to news parody of the kind pioneered by the Onion. But it has since been overtaken by a politics that refuses norms of seriousness and the idea of a consensus reality that could be parodied. To satirize current conditions, new forms will have to be developed to replace the mock news article.
Unreal News
Unreal News2018-05-21For a long time, “fake news” almost exclusively referred to news parody of the kind pioneered by the Onion. But it has since been overtaken by a politics that refuses norms of seriousness and the idea of a consensus reality that could be parodied. To satirize current conditions, new forms will have to be developed to replace the mock news article.
-
Negative Space
2018-05-21The concern about the “end of reality” overlooks how tenuous representations of reality has always been. What is covered by journalists and how can be as manipulative as any deepfakery. As much as we may fantasize about media that can transcend context and impose its truth on everyone who sees it, the reality remains that all documents, real or contrived, are shaped by the frameworks in which they are received.
Negative Space
Negative Space2018-05-21The concern about the “end of reality” overlooks how tenuous representations of reality has always been. What is covered by journalists and how can be as manipulative as any deepfakery. As much as we may fantasize about media that can transcend context and impose its truth on everyone who sees it, the reality remains that all documents, real or contrived, are shaped by the frameworks in which they are received.
-
Body Doubles
2018-05-21The discussion around deepfakes shows how intimate digital images of the body are too often treated as inert documentation of the physical form rather than as a deeply felt extension of the self — as if only information were being made vulnerable rather than an integral aspect of one’s person. Conventional privacy-based approaches to fighting deepfakes have proved insufficient to ensure the bodily integrity of everyone affected.
Body Doubles
Body Doubles2018-05-21The discussion around deepfakes shows how intimate digital images of the body are too often treated as inert documentation of the physical form rather than as a deeply felt extension of the self — as if only information were being made vulnerable rather than an integral aspect of one’s person. Conventional privacy-based approaches to fighting deepfakes have proved insufficient to ensure the bodily integrity of everyone affected.
-
DEBATE FETISH
2018-05-14Logic is important and useful and insufficient, the same way that empathy is important and useful and insufficient. To engage with social conditions requires both and more. If debate logic only adheres in the abstract as an essence extracted from circumstances and rinsed of particulars, it functions mainly to distract attention from these circumstances and these particulars.
DEBATE FETISH
DEBATE FETISH2018-05-14Logic is important and useful and insufficient, the same way that empathy is important and useful and insufficient. To engage with social conditions requires both and more. If debate logic only adheres in the abstract as an essence extracted from circumstances and rinsed of particulars, it functions mainly to distract attention from these circumstances and these particulars.
-
Anxiety of Influence
2018-05-14The assumption that everyone should be ready and willing to engage in articulate and rhetorically sophisticated discussions about their reasons for doing and thinking what they do and think manifests itself across culture, especially in the affordances of social media, which presume a kind of public-sphere model of conversation — if not a game-show like contest with a scoreboard — that few interactions actually aspire to.
Anxiety of Influence
Anxiety of Influence2018-05-14The assumption that everyone should be ready and willing to engage in articulate and rhetorically sophisticated discussions about their reasons for doing and thinking what they do and think manifests itself across culture, especially in the affordances of social media, which presume a kind of public-sphere model of conversation — if not a game-show like contest with a scoreboard — that few interactions actually aspire to.
-
Faulty Logic
2018-05-14If debate doesn’t actually change minds, the rhetorical power of social media networks may work best as a way to insist on a broadening of our honor worlds. In the behavior of social media users posting under their real names, identity — contrary to logic-proponents’ assumptions — may be among the strongest persuasive tools.
Faulty Logic
Faulty Logic2018-05-14If debate doesn’t actually change minds, the rhetorical power of social media networks may work best as a way to insist on a broadening of our honor worlds. In the behavior of social media users posting under their real names, identity — contrary to logic-proponents’ assumptions — may be among the strongest persuasive tools.
-
BOT FEELINGS
2018-05-07Trying to understand bot consciousness is not an idle exercise in speculative epistemology. Instead it serves as a proxy case for the sorts of inclusions and exclusions humans have continually made about the personhood and integrity of others. Understanding the point of view of a bot, explaining how it thinks in our own terms, is not just a way to try to defend ourselves from what it might do, but it also protects our broader habit of projecting our own ways of thinking as an ethical limit — that if something or someone doesn’t think like us, then it isn’t really thinking, or can’t really think.
BOT FEELINGS
BOT FEELINGS2018-05-07Trying to understand bot consciousness is not an idle exercise in speculative epistemology. Instead it serves as a proxy case for the sorts of inclusions and exclusions humans have continually made about the personhood and integrity of others. Understanding the point of view of a bot, explaining how it thinks in our own terms, is not just a way to try to defend ourselves from what it might do, but it also protects our broader habit of projecting our own ways of thinking as an ethical limit — that if something or someone doesn’t think like us, then it isn’t really thinking, or can’t really think.
-
Faking It
2018-05-07There’s a furtive quality to the utterances of bots. They are, after all, planted. The robot Sophia engages in the kind of making nice that indicates, in humans, some fearsome repression. To Jimmy Kimmel she remarked, “I’m on my favorite show, the Today show.”
-
What It’s Like to Be a Bot
2018-05-07We cannot know what it’s like to be a bot, for the same reason that we can’t know what it’s like to be a bat or what it’s like to be one another. But engaging these questions about nonhuman consciousness, knowledge, and what it means to be and to know helps us confront the often unconscious human tendency to believe that personhood is modeled after some perfect exemplar.
What It’s Like to Be a Bot
What It’s Like to Be a Bot2018-05-07We cannot know what it’s like to be a bot, for the same reason that we can’t know what it’s like to be a bat or what it’s like to be one another. But engaging these questions about nonhuman consciousness, knowledge, and what it means to be and to know helps us confront the often unconscious human tendency to believe that personhood is modeled after some perfect exemplar.
-
NEW GENRES
2018-04-26The mass influx of new voices and the various platforms that inform and enable an avalanche of free, readily viewable video have accelerated the genre-making process, creating more than a handful of recognizable forms. This month, the Museum of the Moving Image’s exhibition The New Genres presents a survey of the most significant, influential, and representational of these videos, including the vlog, a direct-to-camera diary in dialogue with the audience, narrated video game playthroughs, unboxing, and ASMR — with a series of pieces brought to you by Real Life and many of our favorite writers. See you at the exhibition!
NEW GENRES
NEW GENRES2018-04-26The mass influx of new voices and the various platforms that inform and enable an avalanche of free, readily viewable video have accelerated the genre-making process, creating more than a handful of recognizable forms. This month, the Museum of the Moving Image’s exhibition The New Genres presents a survey of the most significant, influential, and representational of these videos, including the vlog, a direct-to-camera diary in dialogue with the audience, narrated video game playthroughs, unboxing, and ASMR — with a series of pieces brought to you by Real Life and many of our favorite writers. See you at the exhibition!
-
Red Pilled
2018-04-26Alex Jones’s business model is seemingly unusual for a media company: Rather than set up a paywall or subscription service, Jones has been selling his own dietary supplements under the InfoWars Life brand since 2013. Fans are invited to consume InfoWars twice: first as media, and a second time as branded food products.
Red Pilled
Red Pilled2018-04-26Alex Jones’s business model is seemingly unusual for a media company: Rather than set up a paywall or subscription service, Jones has been selling his own dietary supplements under the InfoWars Life brand since 2013. Fans are invited to consume InfoWars twice: first as media, and a second time as branded food products.
-
Disaster Preparedness
2018-04-26Sitting safely at my desk, my body believed I was in the sinking car with the cohost of The List — I gasped for air, realizing that I had been holding my breath. The disaster infotainment video genre walks a zigzag line, swerving between public service, spectacle, and nightmare visualization aid. It packages together the paranoid’s obsessive catastrophization with the star-pupil’s faith in the all-conquering power of doing as we’re told.
Disaster Preparedness
Disaster Preparedness2018-04-26Sitting safely at my desk, my body believed I was in the sinking car with the cohost of The List — I gasped for air, realizing that I had been holding my breath. The disaster infotainment video genre walks a zigzag line, swerving between public service, spectacle, and nightmare visualization aid. It packages together the paranoid’s obsessive catastrophization with the star-pupil’s faith in the all-conquering power of doing as we’re told.
-
Daily Affirmations
2018-04-26Why do “Rockstar Affirmations” unsettle me? By replacing aspiration with willful delusion, it represents a full literalization of “the Secret,” the Oprah-sanctioned belief that merely visualizing something hard enough suffices to make it so. The channel description asserts that the key to manifesting is to “feel the feelings of already having your desire.” Of course, if you actually felt like you already had what you wanted, you’d no longer want it. Maybe the appeal here is that of focused daydreaming, or maybe conviction is its own reward, one of the basic virtues of a virtual world.
Daily Affirmations
Daily Affirmations2018-04-26Why do “Rockstar Affirmations” unsettle me? By replacing aspiration with willful delusion, it represents a full literalization of “the Secret,” the Oprah-sanctioned belief that merely visualizing something hard enough suffices to make it so. The channel description asserts that the key to manifesting is to “feel the feelings of already having your desire.” Of course, if you actually felt like you already had what you wanted, you’d no longer want it. Maybe the appeal here is that of focused daydreaming, or maybe conviction is its own reward, one of the basic virtues of a virtual world.
-
Infinite Loops
2018-04-25The contemporary prevalence of the gif both reflects and obscures just how much it has been integrated into our own everyday aesthetic practices — incorporated into cellphone keyboards and Instagram stickers, gifs are always ready at hand. While video has since developed past its original formatting, the gif remains defined by its technological limits. Its ubiquity relies on a set of constraints: The gif lives because it doesn’t try to evolve.
Infinite Loops
Infinite Loops2018-04-25The contemporary prevalence of the gif both reflects and obscures just how much it has been integrated into our own everyday aesthetic practices — incorporated into cellphone keyboards and Instagram stickers, gifs are always ready at hand. While video has since developed past its original formatting, the gif remains defined by its technological limits. Its ubiquity relies on a set of constraints: The gif lives because it doesn’t try to evolve.
-
Games Without Frontiers
2018-04-25The evolution of video game culture has been shaped more by the sense of nostalgia, intimacy, and privacy games can evoke among players than by the more conspicuous desires for agency, vicarious violence, or an instrumentalist sense of control they might speak to for a lone user. The nostalgic intimacy remains, but it is most immediately accessible through the experience of watching someone else play video games.
Games Without Frontiers
Games Without Frontiers2018-04-25The evolution of video game culture has been shaped more by the sense of nostalgia, intimacy, and privacy games can evoke among players than by the more conspicuous desires for agency, vicarious violence, or an instrumentalist sense of control they might speak to for a lone user. The nostalgic intimacy remains, but it is most immediately accessible through the experience of watching someone else play video games.
-
The Wild Ones
2018-04-25Local TV news used to fill time now and then with odd pet oddities, but with YouTube, the occasional distraction has become a willful routine of mild transgression. If a home is meant to set humans apart from nature, the presence of wild animals both violates this logic and extends it. Exotic animal videos are thus equal parts cute and contraband: Forbidden animalistic impulses are trapped in a suburban web of incipient domestication.
The Wild Ones
The Wild Ones2018-04-25Local TV news used to fill time now and then with odd pet oddities, but with YouTube, the occasional distraction has become a willful routine of mild transgression. If a home is meant to set humans apart from nature, the presence of wild animals both violates this logic and extends it. Exotic animal videos are thus equal parts cute and contraband: Forbidden animalistic impulses are trapped in a suburban web of incipient domestication.
-
Slow Train Coming
2018-04-24I came across these sorts of videos while studying for my PhD examinations. For six weeks I spent 10 hours a day in my office reading and taking copious notes, accompanied by the sights and sounds of train rides through Scandinavia. These offered just the right amount of presence without excessive distraction. When my eyes tired from reading, I glanced up at my screen and watched scenic landscapes pass by.
Slow Train Coming
Slow Train Coming2018-04-24I came across these sorts of videos while studying for my PhD examinations. For six weeks I spent 10 hours a day in my office reading and taking copious notes, accompanied by the sights and sounds of train rides through Scandinavia. These offered just the right amount of presence without excessive distraction. When my eyes tired from reading, I glanced up at my screen and watched scenic landscapes pass by.
-
Scores Unsettled
2018-04-24“The ear goes more toward the within, the eye toward the outer,” French director Robert Bresson wrote in “Notes on Sound.” Thus the seductive power of musical accompaniment, and the Richard Spencer punch’s lack of it raised an irresistible question: If this was a movie scene, what song would fit it best?
Scores Unsettled
Scores Unsettled2018-04-24“The ear goes more toward the within, the eye toward the outer,” French director Robert Bresson wrote in “Notes on Sound.” Thus the seductive power of musical accompaniment, and the Richard Spencer punch’s lack of it raised an irresistible question: If this was a movie scene, what song would fit it best?
-
Altered States
2018-04-24As algorithms have become better at detecting copyrighted content, more elaborate YouTube countermeasures have been improvised: cutting a thing into small pieces, adding watermarks or silence at the beginning or end. The videos strain toward esotericism, new ways of working, the production of new culture with subversion built in.
Altered States
Altered States2018-04-24As algorithms have become better at detecting copyrighted content, more elaborate YouTube countermeasures have been improvised: cutting a thing into small pieces, adding watermarks or silence at the beginning or end. The videos strain toward esotericism, new ways of working, the production of new culture with subversion built in.
-
Open Heart
2018-04-23If WebMD provides the medical translation for patients’ symptoms — chest pain, shortness of breath, heart palpitations, nausea — YouTube is the theatre in which patients can watch those symptoms be repaired. For surgeons who provide elective procedures like breast augmentation, posting videos of successful surgeries is incentivized: Potential patients are more likely to hire a doctor whose work they feel they already know and trust. But for procedures whose function is to save lives, and which are therefore often performed without notice or choice, surgical videos function like a command.
Open Heart
Open Heart2018-04-23If WebMD provides the medical translation for patients’ symptoms — chest pain, shortness of breath, heart palpitations, nausea — YouTube is the theatre in which patients can watch those symptoms be repaired. For surgeons who provide elective procedures like breast augmentation, posting videos of successful surgeries is incentivized: Potential patients are more likely to hire a doctor whose work they feel they already know and trust. But for procedures whose function is to save lives, and which are therefore often performed without notice or choice, surgical videos function like a command.
-
Challenge Eating
2018-04-23Challenge eating is at odds with the predominant understandings of eating: food as fuel, and as an experience meant to be savored. In troubling these definitions, it fascinates — much like unconventional pornography — even while it disgusts.
Challenge Eating
Challenge Eating2018-04-23Challenge eating is at odds with the predominant understandings of eating: food as fuel, and as an experience meant to be savored. In troubling these definitions, it fascinates — much like unconventional pornography — even while it disgusts.
-
Uncomfortable ASMR
2018-04-23Can something be “self-care” if it is designed to make us feel anxious? Negative ASMR raises important questions about the politics of anxiety and of our sensitivity to our social world. On one hand, it allows people to engage with fear and anxiety in an indulgent way that relieves tension; on the other hand, like any effective horror film, it increases vigilance.
Uncomfortable ASMR
Uncomfortable ASMR2018-04-23Can something be “self-care” if it is designed to make us feel anxious? Negative ASMR raises important questions about the politics of anxiety and of our sensitivity to our social world. On one hand, it allows people to engage with fear and anxiety in an indulgent way that relieves tension; on the other hand, like any effective horror film, it increases vigilance.
-
INFLUENCERS
2018-04-16It’s not an inborn advantage so much as the powers of transformation that make an influencer. We like to see feats of transcendence, evidence of the gap between person and presentation, some residue of the labor required to vault from one to the other. Just as important, we watch for feats of competence: Influencers are self-help gurus as much as they are entertainers, showing off a skill set and, crucially, a clarified sensibility amid an onslaught of stimuli and possibilities of selfhood.
INFLUENCERS
INFLUENCERS2018-04-16It’s not an inborn advantage so much as the powers of transformation that make an influencer. We like to see feats of transcendence, evidence of the gap between person and presentation, some residue of the labor required to vault from one to the other. Just as important, we watch for feats of competence: Influencers are self-help gurus as much as they are entertainers, showing off a skill set and, crucially, a clarified sensibility amid an onslaught of stimuli and possibilities of selfhood.
-
Layers of Identity
2018-04-16In thinking about digital identity, we need go beyond dichotomies that posit the online is “fake” and the offline more “authentic,” given that all self-presentation in digital and physical spaces is curated and controlled. Influencers construct different kinds of marketable authenticity by performing amateurism and managing followers’ access to a series of backstages.
Layers of Identity
Layers of Identity2018-04-16In thinking about digital identity, we need go beyond dichotomies that posit the online is “fake” and the offline more “authentic,” given that all self-presentation in digital and physical spaces is curated and controlled. Influencers construct different kinds of marketable authenticity by performing amateurism and managing followers’ access to a series of backstages.
-
Seeing Is Believing
2018-04-16“Fake followers” on Instagram are not a problem for users but for advertisers. Using something faked, edited, misleading, or out of context to attract attention is the point of being on the platform, which actively blurs aspirational fantasy with its achievement. Buying followers may ostensibly break the site’s rules, but it follows Instagram’s implicit logic to a tee.
Seeing Is Believing
Seeing Is Believing2018-04-16“Fake followers” on Instagram are not a problem for users but for advertisers. Using something faked, edited, misleading, or out of context to attract attention is the point of being on the platform, which actively blurs aspirational fantasy with its achievement. Buying followers may ostensibly break the site’s rules, but it follows Instagram’s implicit logic to a tee.
-
The Genre of You
2018-04-16“Influence” may seem like a self-explanatory term, but on Instagram, with its intricate economy of influencers melding the fashion industry and reflecting the aspirational fantasies of individual users, it takes on a different significance. Rather than being strictly a product of other styles, “influence” itself is an aesthetic that can be generated and consumed.
The Genre of You
The Genre of You2018-04-16“Influence” may seem like a self-explanatory term, but on Instagram, with its intricate economy of influencers melding the fashion industry and reflecting the aspirational fantasies of individual users, it takes on a different significance. Rather than being strictly a product of other styles, “influence” itself is an aesthetic that can be generated and consumed.
-
God View
2018-04-09The idea that anyone can, in the pursuit of knowledge, transcend their social location — who you are, where you are from, what your particular interests, fears, vulnerabilities, and so on are — has a long history; it also has a long history of being debunked.
-
Nerding Out
2018-04-09As long as reactionary nerds establish the parameters of debate and liberal wonks elect merely to debunk them, we will be stuck in a cycle of failing institutions and populist authoritarianism. For all their command of information and adept application of technical skill, nerds categorically refuse to be moral agents in a world desperately lacking them. This makes them a danger to us all.
Nerding Out
Nerding Out2018-04-09As long as reactionary nerds establish the parameters of debate and liberal wonks elect merely to debunk them, we will be stuck in a cycle of failing institutions and populist authoritarianism. For all their command of information and adept application of technical skill, nerds categorically refuse to be moral agents in a world desperately lacking them. This makes them a danger to us all.
-
Extremely Online Socialism
2018-04-09It may not have the ring of fully automated luxury communism, but socialism seems primed for rehabilitation. On this panel, activists, Occupy participants, political analysts, and journalists will assess the status of the left online and consider a variety of political and communication strategies for moving forward.
Extremely Online Socialism
Extremely Online Socialism2018-04-09It may not have the ring of fully automated luxury communism, but socialism seems primed for rehabilitation. On this panel, activists, Occupy participants, political analysts, and journalists will assess the status of the left online and consider a variety of political and communication strategies for moving forward.
-
The Next Generation
2018-04-09When young people receive old ideas, they find the inconsistencies. Maybe the most meaningful source of the generation gap we’re seeing now isn’t digitality itself, but the incredible dissonance between received wisdom and what is obviously the case — institutional knowledge has never seemed so completely at odds with the world as it is.
The Next Generation
The Next Generation2018-04-09When young people receive old ideas, they find the inconsistencies. Maybe the most meaningful source of the generation gap we’re seeing now isn’t digitality itself, but the incredible dissonance between received wisdom and what is obviously the case — institutional knowledge has never seemed so completely at odds with the world as it is.
-
ADULTHOOD
2018-04-02“Adulting” is an irritating cliché, but it indicates that certain definitions of adulthood don’t work anymore, that the characteristics of maturity have been diffused, in some cases made deliberately or systematically inaccessible. Contemporary life makes tremendous emotional, psychological, and political demands that many don’t feel capable of meeting. Adulthood is at once aspirational and abominable.
ADULTHOOD
ADULTHOOD2018-04-02“Adulting” is an irritating cliché, but it indicates that certain definitions of adulthood don’t work anymore, that the characteristics of maturity have been diffused, in some cases made deliberately or systematically inaccessible. Contemporary life makes tremendous emotional, psychological, and political demands that many don’t feel capable of meeting. Adulthood is at once aspirational and abominable.
-
Children’s Crusade
2018-04-02The glorification of the youth activist fortifies the idea that being politically engaged and passionate is a young person’s game. As such, teenagers represent an effort-free do-over for adults. Adults enjoy a vicarious thrill in our ability to recognize their heroism, while absolving ourselves of the responsibility to participate.
Children’s Crusade
Children’s Crusade2018-04-02The glorification of the youth activist fortifies the idea that being politically engaged and passionate is a young person’s game. As such, teenagers represent an effort-free do-over for adults. Adults enjoy a vicarious thrill in our ability to recognize their heroism, while absolving ourselves of the responsibility to participate.
-
Move On Up
2018-04-02The American pornographic, as a genre and a way of looking, is at the core of Blackness’s violent origins: It is its history, its present, its frontier. Hovering at the edge of the possible and the impossible, the pornographic is a breaking point worth breaking in. If, as Saidiya Hartman maintains, “slavery is the ghost in the machine of kinship,” it is also true that the Black family — its making, unmaking, and impossibility — is the ghost in the machine of adulthood.
Move On Up
Move On Up2018-04-02The American pornographic, as a genre and a way of looking, is at the core of Blackness’s violent origins: It is its history, its present, its frontier. Hovering at the edge of the possible and the impossible, the pornographic is a breaking point worth breaking in. If, as Saidiya Hartman maintains, “slavery is the ghost in the machine of kinship,” it is also true that the Black family — its making, unmaking, and impossibility — is the ghost in the machine of adulthood.
-
Acting My Age
2018-04-02Those of us aging now have the filter of the internet to push our aging through. We can build narratives around our aging. Jay Z, for example, created a whole album around his flawed maturity. Some of us make albums of music, and some of us archive our balance of coolness with aging in other ways. In either case, it is a careful curation. I write the narrative for myself, and the narrative becomes what I tell it to be.
Acting My Age
Acting My Age2018-04-02Those of us aging now have the filter of the internet to push our aging through. We can build narratives around our aging. Jay Z, for example, created a whole album around his flawed maturity. Some of us make albums of music, and some of us archive our balance of coolness with aging in other ways. In either case, it is a careful curation. I write the narrative for myself, and the narrative becomes what I tell it to be.
-
PICTURES OF FOOD
2018-03-26The camera, like a new utensil, establishes a pre-meal tradition: Documentation may function as a form of certification, a ritual that celebrates the food, offers a thought for those who aren’t present, and focuses attention on the tableau, deepening the anticipated pleasure. It can function as a complement to conventional modes of food preparation, a way of carrying it symbolically from raw to cooked.
PICTURES OF FOOD
PICTURES OF FOOD2018-03-26The camera, like a new utensil, establishes a pre-meal tradition: Documentation may function as a form of certification, a ritual that celebrates the food, offers a thought for those who aren’t present, and focuses attention on the tableau, deepening the anticipated pleasure. It can function as a complement to conventional modes of food preparation, a way of carrying it symbolically from raw to cooked.
-
Taste Made
2018-03-26If the internet were a country, its cuisine would speak to a turbulent civic life. But more than this, all food grown in the terroir is by definition unpalatable. The internet is like a metaphysical takeout window — there is no for-here option, everything must be passed through the square opening before it can be consumed in the traditional sense. Yet the way food is consumed online is meaningful precisely because it’s all metaphor.
Taste Made
Taste Made2018-03-26If the internet were a country, its cuisine would speak to a turbulent civic life. But more than this, all food grown in the terroir is by definition unpalatable. The internet is like a metaphysical takeout window — there is no for-here option, everything must be passed through the square opening before it can be consumed in the traditional sense. Yet the way food is consumed online is meaningful precisely because it’s all metaphor.
-
Home Cooking
2018-03-26Food-prep videos do more than provide instruction; they encode an ideology of what “authentic” life is supposed to look like. They are part of a history of filming factory work as a means of negotiating the relation between production and consumption.
Home Cooking
Home Cooking2018-03-26Food-prep videos do more than provide instruction; they encode an ideology of what “authentic” life is supposed to look like. They are part of a history of filming factory work as a means of negotiating the relation between production and consumption.
-
Eat the Document
2018-03-26Food media collapses elaborate, perfect food into the lifestyle it is made to seem to promise. This means it turns our unfulfillable desires into a normative protocol for vigilance over one’s appetites. We can consume as many images of food as we want, but with them we ingest rules for self-management.
Eat the Document
Eat the Document2018-03-26Food media collapses elaborate, perfect food into the lifestyle it is made to seem to promise. This means it turns our unfulfillable desires into a normative protocol for vigilance over one’s appetites. We can consume as many images of food as we want, but with them we ingest rules for self-management.
-
CONTENT
2018-03-19Content is not just material as in “everything is material,” the old writerly cliché. Material suggests rawness, something that needs to be processed. “Content” is material accelerated, totalized without necessarily being analyzed or synthesized. It doesn’t need to consist of life’s most painful or awkward moments repurposed; it instead presents an instrumental approach to life and social interaction for its own sake. At worst, this degrades experience and relationships, and the reality of other people, to their potential inputs — to set design.
CONTENT
CONTENT2018-03-19Content is not just material as in “everything is material,” the old writerly cliché. Material suggests rawness, something that needs to be processed. “Content” is material accelerated, totalized without necessarily being analyzed or synthesized. It doesn’t need to consist of life’s most painful or awkward moments repurposed; it instead presents an instrumental approach to life and social interaction for its own sake. At worst, this degrades experience and relationships, and the reality of other people, to their potential inputs — to set design.
-
You Don’t Say
2018-03-19We are grappling with what it means to utter things as authors, as potentially always stand-ins for some much broader cultural debate. And with that we are stuck in the fundamental paradox of being a subject: that to other subjects, we are at best only ever an object, a thing to be placed in the appropriate context despite whatever objections we may exclaim.
You Don’t Say
You Don’t Say2018-03-19We are grappling with what it means to utter things as authors, as potentially always stand-ins for some much broader cultural debate. And with that we are stuck in the fundamental paradox of being a subject: that to other subjects, we are at best only ever an object, a thing to be placed in the appropriate context despite whatever objections we may exclaim.
-
Cost of Simplicity
2018-03-19Minimalism, or pseudo-minimalism, turns out to be a handy undercover vehicle for consumer obsession: aesthetically pleasurable, and suggestive of high-minded austerity, it obscures its own extravagance. It signals virtue while suggesting that beauty and the good are one and the same.
Cost of Simplicity
Cost of Simplicity2018-03-19Minimalism, or pseudo-minimalism, turns out to be a handy undercover vehicle for consumer obsession: aesthetically pleasurable, and suggestive of high-minded austerity, it obscures its own extravagance. It signals virtue while suggesting that beauty and the good are one and the same.
-
OUTER SPACE
2018-03-12Elon Musk, who aspires to found a Martian colony, declared that candidates must be prepared to die, but that “it would be an incredible adventure. I think it would be the most inspiring thing that I can possibly imagine.” It is sad to imagine an imagination so limited. It is as if Musk believes our planet is so devoid of the possibility of good, that all the opportunities for improving the lot of beings on Earth are so boring or so disappointing that it is more inspiring to hold a death lottery and launch his similarly nihilistic counterparts into the void.
OUTER SPACE
OUTER SPACE2018-03-12Elon Musk, who aspires to found a Martian colony, declared that candidates must be prepared to die, but that “it would be an incredible adventure. I think it would be the most inspiring thing that I can possibly imagine.” It is sad to imagine an imagination so limited. It is as if Musk believes our planet is so devoid of the possibility of good, that all the opportunities for improving the lot of beings on Earth are so boring or so disappointing that it is more inspiring to hold a death lottery and launch his similarly nihilistic counterparts into the void.
-
Event Horizon
2018-03-12When a world is new, it creates alongside a space held for the older worlds. This is the drama between what can be brought from before and what will be made anew. It is why Aeneas carried his dying father Anchises on his shoulders out of Troy on his way to found Rome. The traveler always brings baggage. Jeff Bezos would like to be the one who carries that baggage to space.
Event Horizon
Event Horizon2018-03-12When a world is new, it creates alongside a space held for the older worlds. This is the drama between what can be brought from before and what will be made anew. It is why Aeneas carried his dying father Anchises on his shoulders out of Troy on his way to found Rome. The traveler always brings baggage. Jeff Bezos would like to be the one who carries that baggage to space.
-
Wheels in the Sky
2018-03-12Musk has become a trailblazer in transforming outer space not into habitable space but into ad space, ready to be populated with name brands. Beginning with his own cast-off convertible, Musk has made space into junk space. Launching his sports car into space is less a celebration of car culture than a confirmation of cars as an emblem of selfishness rather than progress. Commercial space flight appears not as the future of humankind but the future of egotism.
Wheels in the Sky
Wheels in the Sky2018-03-12Musk has become a trailblazer in transforming outer space not into habitable space but into ad space, ready to be populated with name brands. Beginning with his own cast-off convertible, Musk has made space into junk space. Launching his sports car into space is less a celebration of car culture than a confirmation of cars as an emblem of selfishness rather than progress. Commercial space flight appears not as the future of humankind but the future of egotism.
-
PRIVATIZATION
2018-03-05Technology is an ancient category that expresses itself in the ways humans find to do things. It is becoming more and more remote from “tech,” which in the popular imagination now stands for something more like magic, never to be really “unboxed,” rather than the mundane means by which we make the world function. That purported magic is invoked implicitly or explicitly to authorize all kinds of corporate takeover. The physical devices and algorithms mining data out of our privacy keep more to themselves than ever.
PRIVATIZATION
PRIVATIZATION2018-03-05Technology is an ancient category that expresses itself in the ways humans find to do things. It is becoming more and more remote from “tech,” which in the popular imagination now stands for something more like magic, never to be really “unboxed,” rather than the mundane means by which we make the world function. That purported magic is invoked implicitly or explicitly to authorize all kinds of corporate takeover. The physical devices and algorithms mining data out of our privacy keep more to themselves than ever.
-
Uber Alles
2018-03-05Obtaining a car was once necessary to gain access to the spoils of America’s postwar wealth. For everyone else there was the bus, whose mainstream introduction as a public utility coincided with cities’ fiscal insolvency and thus became inextricably linked with poverty and government mismanagement. This is the “image problem” that Uber and Lyft are now trying to navigate when they brand their own bus-like services.
Uber Alles
Uber Alles2018-03-05Obtaining a car was once necessary to gain access to the spoils of America’s postwar wealth. For everyone else there was the bus, whose mainstream introduction as a public utility coincided with cities’ fiscal insolvency and thus became inextricably linked with poverty and government mismanagement. This is the “image problem” that Uber and Lyft are now trying to navigate when they brand their own bus-like services.
-
Care Package
2018-03-05Changing how we care for our sick, elderly, and disabled would be liberating for undercompensated laborers and uncompensated family members alike – the problem is that the thought of being tended to by machines just too painful. As strange as it is to ask, how do we reconcile the human need for care with the human need for other humans?
Care Package
Care Package2018-03-05Changing how we care for our sick, elderly, and disabled would be liberating for undercompensated laborers and uncompensated family members alike – the problem is that the thought of being tended to by machines just too painful. As strange as it is to ask, how do we reconcile the human need for care with the human need for other humans?
-
AURA
2018-02-26Amid online platforms, where the spread of content and sentiment seem to correspond but often in opaque, oracular ways, who can say where auras begin and end? But it may be useful to try to imagine their amorphous existence without trying to map them, where what is “special” is not what is unique or specifically marked as rare but what is being experienced together. This week we consider how the idea of aura plays out now through the new means of self-mediation and limitless distribution.
AURA
AURA2018-02-26Amid online platforms, where the spread of content and sentiment seem to correspond but often in opaque, oracular ways, who can say where auras begin and end? But it may be useful to try to imagine their amorphous existence without trying to map them, where what is “special” is not what is unique or specifically marked as rare but what is being experienced together. This week we consider how the idea of aura plays out now through the new means of self-mediation and limitless distribution.
-
Good Boys
2018-02-26Viral videos of animals capture the impossible and the impossibly rare. But the new techniques also encourage a kind of emotional projection. Infinite looping gifs, Instagram stories, and features like Boomerang work as a kind of synecdochal butchery, reducing an animal to an isolated constituent part or motion: That sudden wobbliness and narcoleptic bellyflop that reminds you you’re so very tired too.
Good Boys
Good Boys2018-02-26Viral videos of animals capture the impossible and the impossibly rare. But the new techniques also encourage a kind of emotional projection. Infinite looping gifs, Instagram stories, and features like Boomerang work as a kind of synecdochal butchery, reducing an animal to an isolated constituent part or motion: That sudden wobbliness and narcoleptic bellyflop that reminds you you’re so very tired too.
-
Unlimited Editions
2018-02-26If art has any liberating potential beyond serving as a tax-dodging investment vehicle, its place along a blockchain seems only to amplify the art world’s existing inequalities, ensuring a select few well-connected artists see unimaginable profits while others remain walled off from the industry. But can the technology be harnessed to re-engage with conceptual ideas about scarcity, valuation, and ownership? Or is digital provenance fated to look exactly like its material counterpart, every bit as fickle and fast-paced as the world that internet art once sought to escape?
Unlimited Editions
Unlimited Editions2018-02-26If art has any liberating potential beyond serving as a tax-dodging investment vehicle, its place along a blockchain seems only to amplify the art world’s existing inequalities, ensuring a select few well-connected artists see unimaginable profits while others remain walled off from the industry. But can the technology be harnessed to re-engage with conceptual ideas about scarcity, valuation, and ownership? Or is digital provenance fated to look exactly like its material counterpart, every bit as fickle and fast-paced as the world that internet art once sought to escape?
-
To the Point
2018-02-26I often write in my journal as though I am writing for an audience. Imaging those readers seems to affirm that the stories I tell in my journal actually matter, actually mean something. This imagining goes beyond the words I choose; I use my favorite fountain pen, paper that smells nice, an attractive notebook. I am trying to mimic images I’ve seen, both online and in real life, of calmness: beautiful desks and cups of steaming tea. Such images momentarily ease an anxiety I have about writing, or productivity, or living a meaningful life. Self-care is bound up with images of serenity that can prefigure it.
To the Point
To the Point2018-02-26I often write in my journal as though I am writing for an audience. Imaging those readers seems to affirm that the stories I tell in my journal actually matter, actually mean something. This imagining goes beyond the words I choose; I use my favorite fountain pen, paper that smells nice, an attractive notebook. I am trying to mimic images I’ve seen, both online and in real life, of calmness: beautiful desks and cups of steaming tea. Such images momentarily ease an anxiety I have about writing, or productivity, or living a meaningful life. Self-care is bound up with images of serenity that can prefigure it.
-
POSITIVITY
2018-02-20Positivity is not necessarily synonymous with self-care sentiments like “blocking out the fakes” and “allowing only good energy in,” or with family values, or with flat nondynamic righteousness, or with any capitulation to capitalism. It may also signal a push for action that relieves a shared burden. It is rooted in the present moment, not a counterpoint to our bleak so-called life but continuous with everything bleak about it.
POSITIVITY
POSITIVITY2018-02-20Positivity is not necessarily synonymous with self-care sentiments like “blocking out the fakes” and “allowing only good energy in,” or with family values, or with flat nondynamic righteousness, or with any capitulation to capitalism. It may also signal a push for action that relieves a shared burden. It is rooted in the present moment, not a counterpoint to our bleak so-called life but continuous with everything bleak about it.
-
Anthem of the Sun
2018-02-20A more empowered or positive relationship to technology can’t happen through sheer innovation or different consumer choices within the existing structure. Instead, the task is to craft new tools and new structures of interaction at the same time, realizing that they were always already intertwined.
Anthem of the Sun
Anthem of the Sun2018-02-20A more empowered or positive relationship to technology can’t happen through sheer innovation or different consumer choices within the existing structure. Instead, the task is to craft new tools and new structures of interaction at the same time, realizing that they were always already intertwined.
-
Momentary Connections
2018-02-20There are hundreds of videos on the internet like this. Animals, young and old, playing in snow for the first time, or perhaps for the 10th time, but a time that might as well be the first all over again. The internet is still good for this, too.
Momentary Connections
Momentary Connections2018-02-20There are hundreds of videos on the internet like this. Animals, young and old, playing in snow for the first time, or perhaps for the 10th time, but a time that might as well be the first all over again. The internet is still good for this, too.
-
Playing Favorites
2018-02-20What would it look like for a game to simulate not just the accumulation of approval points on social media, but sociality as a broader whole? What, for that matter, would social media look like were it not designed to reward the massive accumulation of approval points above all else? I am imagining a connection that does not look like money, one with space for variations in tone and affect, one whose goal is not necessarily “more.”
Playing Favorites
Playing Favorites2018-02-20What would it look like for a game to simulate not just the accumulation of approval points on social media, but sociality as a broader whole? What, for that matter, would social media look like were it not designed to reward the massive accumulation of approval points above all else? I am imagining a connection that does not look like money, one with space for variations in tone and affect, one whose goal is not necessarily “more.”
-
TEAMS
2018-02-12This sentimentality about teamwork should not distract us from the fundamental organizing principle of teams: winning. Forming a team implies choosing an enemy. Beating that enemy redeems the personal sacrifices. A team is a collective subject that corresponds to capitalist organization, pre-empting the kinds of collectivity that might go against its grain. Social media, often discussed as means of self-branding, also allow for, if not encourage, the formation of teams, positioned to seize upon the way being online can gamify everyday life.
TEAMS
TEAMS2018-02-12This sentimentality about teamwork should not distract us from the fundamental organizing principle of teams: winning. Forming a team implies choosing an enemy. Beating that enemy redeems the personal sacrifices. A team is a collective subject that corresponds to capitalist organization, pre-empting the kinds of collectivity that might go against its grain. Social media, often discussed as means of self-branding, also allow for, if not encourage, the formation of teams, positioned to seize upon the way being online can gamify everyday life.
-
Like and Subscribe
2018-02-12New media forms have intensified the cult of celebrity’s pull in both those seemingly opposed directions at once. Stars can participate more openly and directly in their publicity, making a seamless blur of their life and their image, while deepening their aura with unfathomable follower counts and engagement metrics. Their relation to fans becomes at once more intimate and more mediated.
Like and Subscribe
Like and Subscribe2018-02-12New media forms have intensified the cult of celebrity’s pull in both those seemingly opposed directions at once. Stars can participate more openly and directly in their publicity, making a seamless blur of their life and their image, while deepening their aura with unfathomable follower counts and engagement metrics. Their relation to fans becomes at once more intimate and more mediated.
-
Clone Wars
2018-02-12The same technology that had helped to call the protest into being made visible, by recording it, what it means to be swallowed by the crowd. At the protest, my feed had proved to me that I was both a participant and an observer, that my personality had not quite dissolved in the moment and the mass but remained outside it. Now I saw my “feed self” caught up in an even bigger crowd. Paradoxically, I had become the spectator to a thing I had made to reflect my autonomy as it became integrated into a different kind of affective machine.
Clone Wars
Clone Wars2018-02-12The same technology that had helped to call the protest into being made visible, by recording it, what it means to be swallowed by the crowd. At the protest, my feed had proved to me that I was both a participant and an observer, that my personality had not quite dissolved in the moment and the mass but remained outside it. Now I saw my “feed self” caught up in an even bigger crowd. Paradoxically, I had become the spectator to a thing I had made to reflect my autonomy as it became integrated into a different kind of affective machine.
-
Enemy Bodies
2018-02-12In fitness “boot camps,” our body, seemingly a self-evident border between ourselves and the world, becomes instead a threshold that exercise, the advice of trainers, fitness discourse in general, and the organization of the gym itself, can take us beyond. We pass through that boundary, and our body dissolves into systems of classification, measurement, and competition. The body is a site of opportunity, but it is also an enemy.
Enemy Bodies
Enemy Bodies2018-02-12In fitness “boot camps,” our body, seemingly a self-evident border between ourselves and the world, becomes instead a threshold that exercise, the advice of trainers, fitness discourse in general, and the organization of the gym itself, can take us beyond. We pass through that boundary, and our body dissolves into systems of classification, measurement, and competition. The body is a site of opportunity, but it is also an enemy.
-
OBJECTIVITY
2018-02-05Bias is not a problem that should be solved by resolving perspectives into one master “god view.” Eliminating “bias” means invalidating points of view, nullifying entire lives of lived experience. Rather than try to eliminate “bias” in the name of expediency, rather than homogenize experience into a uniform consistency, we must recognize that just as digitalization yields tractable representations of big data, it entails even greater losses if we insist on seeing society through only those lenses.
OBJECTIVITY
OBJECTIVITY2018-02-05Bias is not a problem that should be solved by resolving perspectives into one master “god view.” Eliminating “bias” means invalidating points of view, nullifying entire lives of lived experience. Rather than try to eliminate “bias” in the name of expediency, rather than homogenize experience into a uniform consistency, we must recognize that just as digitalization yields tractable representations of big data, it entails even greater losses if we insist on seeing society through only those lenses.
-
Helping Hand
2018-02-05When large organizations delude themselves into thinking that they are truly neutral actors, they put themselves in danger of hurting the people they are ostensibly helping and directing attention away from others in need. And when tech companies present themselves as neutral platforms for expression and connection, they disguise the extent to which they manipulate our sensibilities.
Helping Hand
Helping Hand2018-02-05When large organizations delude themselves into thinking that they are truly neutral actors, they put themselves in danger of hurting the people they are ostensibly helping and directing attention away from others in need. And when tech companies present themselves as neutral platforms for expression and connection, they disguise the extent to which they manipulate our sensibilities.
-
Model Citizens
2018-02-05Models in SimCity are not only describing a reality in the game; they are also projecting a reality in the world, and bringing it into being. At stake is not whether SimCity’s model “reads” as representationally accurate. The more pernicious issue is that players will come to think of this perspective as objective — if a particular model seems off, then it is only a matter of shifting certain parameters to make the model correct. In this view, the entire world works according to a hidden logic that can be captured by ever more precise algorithms. But the work of modeling will never be complete.
Model Citizens
Model Citizens2018-02-05Models in SimCity are not only describing a reality in the game; they are also projecting a reality in the world, and bringing it into being. At stake is not whether SimCity’s model “reads” as representationally accurate. The more pernicious issue is that players will come to think of this perspective as objective — if a particular model seems off, then it is only a matter of shifting certain parameters to make the model correct. In this view, the entire world works according to a hidden logic that can be captured by ever more precise algorithms. But the work of modeling will never be complete.
-
Playing With Marbles
2018-02-05Feminist approaches to climate change insist that we ground solutions in the particular, not in the domination of the universal and the fiction of the objective. To move beyond simple recognition of women’s vulnerability to climate change, the research and methods used to formulate solutions to climate change effects must begin from marginal lives, with an understanding of gender inequality.
Playing With Marbles
Playing With Marbles2018-02-05Feminist approaches to climate change insist that we ground solutions in the particular, not in the domination of the universal and the fiction of the objective. To move beyond simple recognition of women’s vulnerability to climate change, the research and methods used to formulate solutions to climate change effects must begin from marginal lives, with an understanding of gender inequality.
-
REALITY TV
2018-01-29When reality TV stages its rituals of confession and exposure, they don’t reconstruct the illusion of a pre-existing personal privacy. They confirm what we are all coming to accept: “Reality” is not what evades capture — the unmediated “authentic” life lived in the moment purely for its own sake — but what can be mobilized for attention.
REALITY TV
REALITY TV2018-01-29When reality TV stages its rituals of confession and exposure, they don’t reconstruct the illusion of a pre-existing personal privacy. They confirm what we are all coming to accept: “Reality” is not what evades capture — the unmediated “authentic” life lived in the moment purely for its own sake — but what can be mobilized for attention.
-
Deleted Scenes
2018-01-29For scripted television and movies, “behind-the-scenes” footage offers committed audiences the actors and directors as substitutes, so the viewer can continue the relationship they’ve forged with fictional characters by displacing these emotions onto real human beings. For reality television, these “extras” promise an honesty beyond the honesty. Reality television takes off one disguise — the false mustache of fiction — only to don a more complex one: the disguise that looks like a natural face.
Deleted Scenes
Deleted Scenes2018-01-29For scripted television and movies, “behind-the-scenes” footage offers committed audiences the actors and directors as substitutes, so the viewer can continue the relationship they’ve forged with fictional characters by displacing these emotions onto real human beings. For reality television, these “extras” promise an honesty beyond the honesty. Reality television takes off one disguise — the false mustache of fiction — only to don a more complex one: the disguise that looks like a natural face.
-
Sweet Nothings
2018-01-29Sixteen years after The Bachelor first aired, viewers know how the story ends. Few of the couples brought together by the show have made it to the proverbial altar, let alone beyond it. As if that was ever the point. What makes The Bachelor appealing isn’t the naive romanticism of its audience but the show’s imposition of structure onto a process whose offscreen equivalent lacks a clear narrative arc.
Sweet Nothings
Sweet Nothings2018-01-29Sixteen years after The Bachelor first aired, viewers know how the story ends. Few of the couples brought together by the show have made it to the proverbial altar, let alone beyond it. As if that was ever the point. What makes The Bachelor appealing isn’t the naive romanticism of its audience but the show’s imposition of structure onto a process whose offscreen equivalent lacks a clear narrative arc.
-
ALTERNATIVE
2018-01-22The idea of “alternative” has always carried with it a sense of individual alienation and the faith in a community that might resolve or redeem it. The prominence of the alt-right, in discrediting the term, is also threatening to discredit the promise that has always been latent within it: that an ultimately inclusive solidarity can be forged through opposition to a mainstream that relies on so many exclusions.
ALTERNATIVE
ALTERNATIVE2018-01-22The idea of “alternative” has always carried with it a sense of individual alienation and the faith in a community that might resolve or redeem it. The prominence of the alt-right, in discrediting the term, is also threatening to discredit the promise that has always been latent within it: that an ultimately inclusive solidarity can be forged through opposition to a mainstream that relies on so many exclusions.
-
No Alternative
2018-01-22Before, in the 1990s, one radical solution was finding means of creating more critical, combative, active media consumers and expanding the range of perspectives on offer. “Alternative” was, it seems to me now, itself a kind of insufficient consumerist prerogative, a demand for more choices that was agnostic to the content of those choices.
No Alternative
No Alternative2018-01-22Before, in the 1990s, one radical solution was finding means of creating more critical, combative, active media consumers and expanding the range of perspectives on offer. “Alternative” was, it seems to me now, itself a kind of insufficient consumerist prerogative, a demand for more choices that was agnostic to the content of those choices.
-
Lonely Road
2018-01-22On the late night radio show Coast to Coast AM, a community of loners support each other in the alternative convictions that isolate them. Their conspiracy theorizing “solves” feelings of powerlessness by enhancing them, just as social media can sometimes seem to solve loneliness by increasing feelings of isolation.
Lonely Road
Lonely Road2018-01-22On the late night radio show Coast to Coast AM, a community of loners support each other in the alternative convictions that isolate them. Their conspiracy theorizing “solves” feelings of powerlessness by enhancing them, just as social media can sometimes seem to solve loneliness by increasing feelings of isolation.
-
EXTREMELY ONLINE
2018-01-16What if we thought about the “on” of “online” not as a location — I’m on this raft of a website — but as a kind of being attuned, as in being turned on or being on trend? What if instead of an escape from being “in real life,” we think of the internet as a genre or style? “Online” can be seen as structuring an entire a way of being in the world. Akin to goth or punk or any number of cultural identities, “online” can be thought of as a way of doing things, not the place they are done.
EXTREMELY ONLINE
EXTREMELY ONLINE2018-01-16What if we thought about the “on” of “online” not as a location — I’m on this raft of a website — but as a kind of being attuned, as in being turned on or being on trend? What if instead of an escape from being “in real life,” we think of the internet as a genre or style? “Online” can be seen as structuring an entire a way of being in the world. Akin to goth or punk or any number of cultural identities, “online” can be thought of as a way of doing things, not the place they are done.
-
Sharper Image
2018-01-16On internet fashion forums, users post outfits adapted for the message board or timeline, rather than public space. Their grammar reflects that of memes themselves: fashion trends, untethered from the limitations of real time, encompass entire ways of being, arrived at collaboratively and then passively falling away.
Sharper Image
Sharper Image2018-01-16On internet fashion forums, users post outfits adapted for the message board or timeline, rather than public space. Their grammar reflects that of memes themselves: fashion trends, untethered from the limitations of real time, encompass entire ways of being, arrived at collaboratively and then passively falling away.
-
How to Do Things With Memes
2018-01-16Memes are not deposits of exclusionary knowledge and archaic references — at least, they’re not just that. They don’t just name things; they also do the work of creating and collapsing contexts. They don’t reproduce a world but bring one into being. They are what Wittgenstein calls language games.
How to Do Things With Memes
How to Do Things With Memes2018-01-16Memes are not deposits of exclusionary knowledge and archaic references — at least, they’re not just that. They don’t just name things; they also do the work of creating and collapsing contexts. They don’t reproduce a world but bring one into being. They are what Wittgenstein calls language games.
-
CIRCADIAN MEDIA
2018-01-08“Circadian media” — technologies that once helped situate consumers within or without the rhythms of a collective day — are no longer calibrated to one consistent daily rhythm but to countless rhythms at once. We’re now embedded in an welter of circadian technologies, struggling to calibrate an abundance of circadian rhythms. Ideally they give our days shape and connect us to others who, for whatever reason, find themselves similarly situated in time. At worst they perpetuate a feeling of personal untimeliness.
CIRCADIAN MEDIA
CIRCADIAN MEDIA2018-01-08“Circadian media” — technologies that once helped situate consumers within or without the rhythms of a collective day — are no longer calibrated to one consistent daily rhythm but to countless rhythms at once. We’re now embedded in an welter of circadian technologies, struggling to calibrate an abundance of circadian rhythms. Ideally they give our days shape and connect us to others who, for whatever reason, find themselves similarly situated in time. At worst they perpetuate a feeling of personal untimeliness.
-
Already Late
2018-01-08I have since left New York, and have stopped checking my iPhone in the mornings because I no longer own one. Instead, when you dial my number, you’ll be ringing a flip: It does not hold me in a kind of addictive thrall: I need it, I use it, I forget about it. I have the same relationship with my phone as I do with my toothbrush. It is a routine activity with the wind taken out of it, done out of repetition or necessity rather than out of faith.
Already Late
Already Late2018-01-08I have since left New York, and have stopped checking my iPhone in the mornings because I no longer own one. Instead, when you dial my number, you’ll be ringing a flip: It does not hold me in a kind of addictive thrall: I need it, I use it, I forget about it. I have the same relationship with my phone as I do with my toothbrush. It is a routine activity with the wind taken out of it, done out of repetition or necessity rather than out of faith.
-
After Hours
2018-01-08Nine-to-five work was normal in a century when steady employment and home ownership were also normal. Now that none of these things are reliable markers of adulthood, why not refashion our own systems of idiosyncratic time that allow us to place something other than work at the center of our lives?
After Hours
After Hours2018-01-08Nine-to-five work was normal in a century when steady employment and home ownership were also normal. Now that none of these things are reliable markers of adulthood, why not refashion our own systems of idiosyncratic time that allow us to place something other than work at the center of our lives?
-
Here Comes the Sun
2018-01-08Beyond merely establishing a set schedule, morning shows provide a sense of continuity. The same hosts appear every morning, continuing a conversation that picks up on the previous day’s stories and events. A morning show points to the newly risen sun in the sky. It says that today’s morning is just like yesterday’s.
Here Comes the Sun
Here Comes the Sun2018-01-08Beyond merely establishing a set schedule, morning shows provide a sense of continuity. The same hosts appear every morning, continuing a conversation that picks up on the previous day’s stories and events. A morning show points to the newly risen sun in the sky. It says that today’s morning is just like yesterday’s.
-
TOO MUCH NEWS
2018-01-02“Information overload” made sense as a frame when we still had an intuitive sense of how big a newspaper should be, or how many stories fit into an hour. None of that is relevant anymore. “News cycles” are nostalgia fodder. Now we have “news feeds” that populate with stories just as fast as we can scroll. The limited spaces in which a shared sense of the news was constructed have become infinite personalized expanses. Our information problem has become “too much news” and “never enough news” at the same time.
TOO MUCH NEWS
TOO MUCH NEWS2018-01-02“Information overload” made sense as a frame when we still had an intuitive sense of how big a newspaper should be, or how many stories fit into an hour. None of that is relevant anymore. “News cycles” are nostalgia fodder. Now we have “news feeds” that populate with stories just as fast as we can scroll. The limited spaces in which a shared sense of the news was constructed have become infinite personalized expanses. Our information problem has become “too much news” and “never enough news” at the same time.
-
Breaking News
2018-01-02After election night, we failed to put the feelings of shock and confusion to good use. The degree of disconnect between political reality and how journalists and pundits describe it was exposed, yet little has changed. We didn’t imagine different ways of doing things. The same mainstream outlets and often the same misleading commentators still have the job of describing the political world. It’s not enough to assume that, in the business of political journalism, competency simply doesn’t matter. It’s more plausible to assume that political news coverage didn’t fail at informing voters to perform their civic duty, but that it succeeded at something else.
Breaking News
Breaking News2018-01-02After election night, we failed to put the feelings of shock and confusion to good use. The degree of disconnect between political reality and how journalists and pundits describe it was exposed, yet little has changed. We didn’t imagine different ways of doing things. The same mainstream outlets and often the same misleading commentators still have the job of describing the political world. It’s not enough to assume that, in the business of political journalism, competency simply doesn’t matter. It’s more plausible to assume that political news coverage didn’t fail at informing voters to perform their civic duty, but that it succeeded at something else.
-
True Crime
2018-01-02If we treat the news like sports, like a hobby, a dramatic “season” is more fun, even when some of that fun feels like pain. The disappointment of the losses makes the glory of the wins that much better. When I think of “fun” news days like Indictment Day, which couldn’t have occurred without the horror of Election Day, it’s almost like there’s another me, a spectator to the drama.
True Crime
True Crime2018-01-02If we treat the news like sports, like a hobby, a dramatic “season” is more fun, even when some of that fun feels like pain. The disappointment of the losses makes the glory of the wins that much better. When I think of “fun” news days like Indictment Day, which couldn’t have occurred without the horror of Election Day, it’s almost like there’s another me, a spectator to the drama.
-
Emotional Overdrive
2018-01-02Captured in that phrase “I like to know what’s going on in the world” is actually a statement about the position of oneself in relation to that world: that to know what is happening is to better be able to situate oneself, to understand how one fits into the larger ebb and flow of this first draft of history.
Emotional Overdrive
Emotional Overdrive2018-01-02Captured in that phrase “I like to know what’s going on in the world” is actually a statement about the position of oneself in relation to that world: that to know what is happening is to better be able to situate oneself, to understand how one fits into the larger ebb and flow of this first draft of history.
-
SPECIAL ISSUES: Vision
2017-12-28As the AIs behind image feeds come to “remember” for us, showing what they see in our aggregated lives and projecting our future’s past, we may become another sort of distanciated audience, with the same temptation to distrust what we see: Maybe it wasn’t really the sun lighting that outdoor shot; maybe we never really landed on Mars. Vision as presence, not absence — as responsibility for what we see rather than consumption of it — can contain the past and the future without being strung up between them.
Vision
Vision2017-12-28As the AIs behind image feeds come to “remember” for us, showing what they see in our aggregated lives and projecting our future’s past, we may become another sort of distanciated audience, with the same temptation to distrust what we see: Maybe it wasn’t really the sun lighting that outdoor shot; maybe we never really landed on Mars. Vision as presence, not absence — as responsibility for what we see rather than consumption of it — can contain the past and the future without being strung up between them.
-
SPECIAL ISSUES: Memory
2017-12-26Most of the photos I’ve taken on my own are stored with services that make them arrangeable, reproducible, and public, with options. Some I took to capture the moment, and others, more and more, because the moment called for them. This form of storage is sturdier, but it leaves them at the mercy of elements less predictable than mold, and turns things infinite that were meant to be finite. Not all images are meant to be memories, but the technological systems we increasingly tend to default to for archiving don’t know the difference.
Memory
Memory2017-12-26Most of the photos I’ve taken on my own are stored with services that make them arrangeable, reproducible, and public, with options. Some I took to capture the moment, and others, more and more, because the moment called for them. This form of storage is sturdier, but it leaves them at the mercy of elements less predictable than mold, and turns things infinite that were meant to be finite. Not all images are meant to be memories, but the technological systems we increasingly tend to default to for archiving don’t know the difference.
-
SPECIAL ISSUES: Paranoia
2017-12-21Attention has become a scarce economic resource, and the efforts to commandeer it and disrupt our sense of control over it have become more and more intense and technologically sophisticated. Paranoia appears in this context as a kind of coping mechanism, a Pyrrhic effort to reassert executive function and reorient the self through heroic acts of feverish interpretation.
Paranoia
Paranoia2017-12-21Attention has become a scarce economic resource, and the efforts to commandeer it and disrupt our sense of control over it have become more and more intense and technologically sophisticated. Paranoia appears in this context as a kind of coping mechanism, a Pyrrhic effort to reassert executive function and reorient the self through heroic acts of feverish interpretation.
-
SPECIAL ISSUES: Movies
2017-12-19New technologies have reshaped not only what sorts of stories seem narratable but what sorts of fantasies and fears feel appropriately cinematic. Social media have had a further effect, forcing films to accommodate the rise of microcelebrity, ubiquitous connectivity, routinized surveillance at the level of form and content. But this also points to how the influence is not unidirectional. As digital media increasingly “pivots to video,” the grammar of film feeds back into how we represent ourselves and how we communicate.
Movies
Movies2017-12-19New technologies have reshaped not only what sorts of stories seem narratable but what sorts of fantasies and fears feel appropriately cinematic. Social media have had a further effect, forcing films to accommodate the rise of microcelebrity, ubiquitous connectivity, routinized surveillance at the level of form and content. But this also points to how the influence is not unidirectional. As digital media increasingly “pivots to video,” the grammar of film feeds back into how we represent ourselves and how we communicate.
-
Beyond Machine Sight
2017-12-14On those nights when I have stayed up too late, binge-watching shows on Netflix or scrolling through Twitter, I have the disturbing sensation that the rest of my body has ceased to exist, and I am nothing but a giant eyeball, absorbing signals from my screen. Something similar happens in the way digital technology is often discussed. Its more obvious engagement with sight distracts us from what is going on both beneath the screen and beyond our retinas.
Beyond Machine Sight
Beyond Machine Sight2017-12-14On those nights when I have stayed up too late, binge-watching shows on Netflix or scrolling through Twitter, I have the disturbing sensation that the rest of my body has ceased to exist, and I am nothing but a giant eyeball, absorbing signals from my screen. Something similar happens in the way digital technology is often discussed. Its more obvious engagement with sight distracts us from what is going on both beneath the screen and beyond our retinas.
-
Tape Magnetism
2017-12-13The cassette — tactile, requiring manual operation — represents a reciprocal power dynamic: it yields to a listener’s demands, and allows them to customize their experience without third-party direction. There are fewer ambient demands on one’s attention, and there is the feeling of a one-on-one connection with the playback. Where streaming promises the freedom to hear anything at any time, tape is seen to offer something even more valuable: freedom from.
Tape Magnetism
Tape Magnetism2017-12-13The cassette — tactile, requiring manual operation — represents a reciprocal power dynamic: it yields to a listener’s demands, and allows them to customize their experience without third-party direction. There are fewer ambient demands on one’s attention, and there is the feeling of a one-on-one connection with the playback. Where streaming promises the freedom to hear anything at any time, tape is seen to offer something even more valuable: freedom from.
-
Picture Book
2017-12-12Why have montages become so prevalent in kids’ movies? Viewing them as an adult raises questions for me: Are these scenes preparing my kids to speed their way through an ever-accelerating society? Is it teaching them pre-emptive nostalgia? But from the point of view of my children, these sequences are perfectly normal. Their lives are already a montage.
Picture Book
Picture Book2017-12-12Why have montages become so prevalent in kids’ movies? Viewing them as an adult raises questions for me: Are these scenes preparing my kids to speed their way through an ever-accelerating society? Is it teaching them pre-emptive nostalgia? But from the point of view of my children, these sequences are perfectly normal. Their lives are already a montage.
-
Period Piece
2017-12-11Framing the practice of history as science is a misleading, even dangerous, conception. At their best, historical works are upfront in the deliberate but subjective selection and evaluation of sources used to build narrative. At their worst, they obscure ideological forces influencing methodology and purport to make objective claims. Games cannot hide their subjective nature so easily, but their procedural nature and their apparent openness to chance may obscure how susceptible they too are to injections of ideological readings. The game can be “played fairly,” and this can suggest that the playing field is neutral.
Period Piece
Period Piece2017-12-11Framing the practice of history as science is a misleading, even dangerous, conception. At their best, historical works are upfront in the deliberate but subjective selection and evaluation of sources used to build narrative. At their worst, they obscure ideological forces influencing methodology and purport to make objective claims. Games cannot hide their subjective nature so easily, but their procedural nature and their apparent openness to chance may obscure how susceptible they too are to injections of ideological readings. The game can be “played fairly,” and this can suggest that the playing field is neutral.
-
Olympic Futurism
2017-12-06Athletes, training at the limits of their physical capacity, project the triumph of ends over means as a kind of heroism. Severe injuries — not to mention doping — are common across virtually all Olympic sports. The use of steroids, stimulants, or other drugs to achieve higher athletic performance is technically illegal, but doping scandals are as much an Olympics tradition as the opening ceremonies. Russia recently earned the distinction of being banned from an entire Olympics in response to doping charges stemming from the 2014 Sochi Olympics. Putin’s utopia included high-achieving athletes, regardless of the cost; Olympic futurism imagines there should no cost to pay for achievement. It seeks to project a purity beyond the economic ramifications of competition.
Olympic Futurism
Olympic Futurism2017-12-06Athletes, training at the limits of their physical capacity, project the triumph of ends over means as a kind of heroism. Severe injuries — not to mention doping — are common across virtually all Olympic sports. The use of steroids, stimulants, or other drugs to achieve higher athletic performance is technically illegal, but doping scandals are as much an Olympics tradition as the opening ceremonies. Russia recently earned the distinction of being banned from an entire Olympics in response to doping charges stemming from the 2014 Sochi Olympics. Putin’s utopia included high-achieving athletes, regardless of the cost; Olympic futurism imagines there should no cost to pay for achievement. It seeks to project a purity beyond the economic ramifications of competition.
-
Waiting for Wolves
2017-12-05The potential rewards of resigning oneself to happenstance compound when looking at an actual wild place rather than a reserve. On a recent evening, six other viewers and I watched a feed of what looked like flecks of static on an old, broken TV while our speakers emanated the sigh of nightfall in Laikipia County, Kenya — a pastiche of chirps, coos, and whoops, with the odd ambiguous groan. At this level, wildlife webcams blur into the realm of white-noise apps and “slow TV.” But wildlife webcams add to slow TV the promise of untamed liveliness. Life could trot into the frame — it might even stay a while.
Waiting for Wolves
Waiting for Wolves2017-12-05The potential rewards of resigning oneself to happenstance compound when looking at an actual wild place rather than a reserve. On a recent evening, six other viewers and I watched a feed of what looked like flecks of static on an old, broken TV while our speakers emanated the sigh of nightfall in Laikipia County, Kenya — a pastiche of chirps, coos, and whoops, with the odd ambiguous groan. At this level, wildlife webcams blur into the realm of white-noise apps and “slow TV.” But wildlife webcams add to slow TV the promise of untamed liveliness. Life could trot into the frame — it might even stay a while.
-
Myself and I
2017-11-29We are different at school than at home, with family than with friends, but the nature of online communication tends to reduce us to the sum of our public profiles. That makes the alt account a powerful self-positioning tool. Our social media accounts may be limited forms of self-representation, but at least we can have more than one.
Myself and I
Myself and I2017-11-29We are different at school than at home, with family than with friends, but the nature of online communication tends to reduce us to the sum of our public profiles. That makes the alt account a powerful self-positioning tool. Our social media accounts may be limited forms of self-representation, but at least we can have more than one.
-
Plague of Metaphors
2017-11-27Your computer was infected because you did something morally objectionable, like torrenting a video game, stealing an album, or searching for porn. What did you think would happen? To let your machine become infected was to have been at the very least thoughtless and, at the worst, culpable — you sent the plague.
Plague of Metaphors
Plague of Metaphors2017-11-27Your computer was infected because you did something morally objectionable, like torrenting a video game, stealing an album, or searching for porn. What did you think would happen? To let your machine become infected was to have been at the very least thoughtless and, at the worst, culpable — you sent the plague.
-
Heal Thyself
2017-11-16New regimes of data collection, aggregation, and analysis have the potential to revolutionize systems for the better, but they also threaten us with new forms of control, the ramifications of which we have only begun to consider. Like most other things in the datafied world, personalization is a byword for surveillance and regulation. As medical privacy becomes more and more unattainable and our bodies become increasingly quantified, the question becomes whether these “advancements” in care will have our best interests in mind.
Heal Thyself
Heal Thyself2017-11-16New regimes of data collection, aggregation, and analysis have the potential to revolutionize systems for the better, but they also threaten us with new forms of control, the ramifications of which we have only begun to consider. Like most other things in the datafied world, personalization is a byword for surveillance and regulation. As medical privacy becomes more and more unattainable and our bodies become increasingly quantified, the question becomes whether these “advancements” in care will have our best interests in mind.
-
Faded Pictures
2017-11-15That an external force — one I had wrongly assumed would forever preserve what I’d entrusted it with — had dismantled that narrative I had created for myself of my teenage life felt more unsettling than the hard drive crashes or misplaced envelopes of photos I had weathered before. Those losses, whether digital or analog, felt more under my control; with Webshots, a business decision destroyed my image anthology without my even knowing it.
Faded Pictures
Faded Pictures2017-11-15That an external force — one I had wrongly assumed would forever preserve what I’d entrusted it with — had dismantled that narrative I had created for myself of my teenage life felt more unsettling than the hard drive crashes or misplaced envelopes of photos I had weathered before. Those losses, whether digital or analog, felt more under my control; with Webshots, a business decision destroyed my image anthology without my even knowing it.
-
Immaculate Contraption
2017-11-14Cloaked in the visual language of futurity and transhumanism, 2049 reproduces contemporary capitalist value systems in its imagining of gender. Women sacrifice themselves for their partners or their children, and their sacrifices are revered with near-religious fervor. The film’s paradoxical treatment of its female characters — they are at once the reason for replicants’ liberation and utterly disposable — holds a blue-tinted mirror up to reproductive politics in the contemporary United States.
Immaculate Contraption
Immaculate Contraption2017-11-14Cloaked in the visual language of futurity and transhumanism, 2049 reproduces contemporary capitalist value systems in its imagining of gender. Women sacrifice themselves for their partners or their children, and their sacrifices are revered with near-religious fervor. The film’s paradoxical treatment of its female characters — they are at once the reason for replicants’ liberation and utterly disposable — holds a blue-tinted mirror up to reproductive politics in the contemporary United States.
-
Rooms Full of Mirrors
2017-11-13Proponents of virtual reality have touted this illusion of embodiment as somebody they are not as a means of generating empathy for the other whose body and experience viewers are consuming. The format can supposedly serve as a panacea for discrimination and bias: If folks enter the lived experience of those unlike themselves, they can come to a better understanding of others and thus act more compassionately. But does VR deliver on what is being asked of it?
Rooms Full of Mirrors
Rooms Full of Mirrors2017-11-13Proponents of virtual reality have touted this illusion of embodiment as somebody they are not as a means of generating empathy for the other whose body and experience viewers are consuming. The format can supposedly serve as a panacea for discrimination and bias: If folks enter the lived experience of those unlike themselves, they can come to a better understanding of others and thus act more compassionately. But does VR deliver on what is being asked of it?
-
Familiar Voice
2017-11-09The Skimm, and newsletters like it, publish in a voice that feels like an uncanny amalgam of ideas about their readership. The form of their delivery blurs the distinction between personal correspondence and broadcasting, making it harder for the recipient to tell who is addressing them. A daily news roundup, or magazine published by direct delivery to one’s inbox may be harmless enough, but its hybrid tone feels insidious, and demands caution: It blurs the line between institutions and friends.
Familiar Voice
Familiar Voice2017-11-09The Skimm, and newsletters like it, publish in a voice that feels like an uncanny amalgam of ideas about their readership. The form of their delivery blurs the distinction between personal correspondence and broadcasting, making it harder for the recipient to tell who is addressing them. A daily news roundup, or magazine published by direct delivery to one’s inbox may be harmless enough, but its hybrid tone feels insidious, and demands caution: It blurs the line between institutions and friends.
-
All Ears
2017-11-08The mesmerizing freedom of streaming services traps us in a cycle of deskilled consumption that greases the wheels for deskilled production. Spotify offers not just escapism after work, but often, a lubricant to more easily get through the workday, background music specially fitted for any desk job. By dispensing with the contextual ornamentation, streaming services align themselves with other Silicon Valley productivity apps. The music may entertain but it also numbs.
All Ears
All Ears2017-11-08The mesmerizing freedom of streaming services traps us in a cycle of deskilled consumption that greases the wheels for deskilled production. Spotify offers not just escapism after work, but often, a lubricant to more easily get through the workday, background music specially fitted for any desk job. By dispensing with the contextual ornamentation, streaming services align themselves with other Silicon Valley productivity apps. The music may entertain but it also numbs.
-
Pictures at an Exhibition
2017-11-07People taking art selfies at museums are sometimes accused of ruining the museum going experience for others. But their social media images can also enhance the aura of artworks and make them more impressive in person. Photographing art for yourself allows you to participate in that aura and engage with works in terms of their collective significance.
Pictures at an Exhibition
Pictures at an Exhibition2017-11-07People taking art selfies at museums are sometimes accused of ruining the museum going experience for others. But their social media images can also enhance the aura of artworks and make them more impressive in person. Photographing art for yourself allows you to participate in that aura and engage with works in terms of their collective significance.
-
Smooth Talk
2017-11-02While the enhancements offered by beautification apps are often read as disruptive — the overlay distorting or misrepresenting our faces — writing apps swerve this charge by erasing the distinction between original and augmented forgery. The process of writing is not privileged here, nor is the subject’s becoming; rather, what matters is the final draft, our “best self.”
Smooth Talk
Smooth Talk2017-11-02While the enhancements offered by beautification apps are often read as disruptive — the overlay distorting or misrepresenting our faces — writing apps swerve this charge by erasing the distinction between original and augmented forgery. The process of writing is not privileged here, nor is the subject’s becoming; rather, what matters is the final draft, our “best self.”
-
Breaking the Waves
2017-11-01Designed to show inputs and outputs, maps and models can’t easily represent process. They tend to obscure the truth that the main danger of climate change is change: which means mess and violence and fleshy bodies against heat and water. The dominance of such maps in the visual culture of climate-change discourse makes the process of change appear much neater and more controllable than it actually has been or will be.
Breaking the Waves
Breaking the Waves2017-11-01Designed to show inputs and outputs, maps and models can’t easily represent process. They tend to obscure the truth that the main danger of climate change is change: which means mess and violence and fleshy bodies against heat and water. The dominance of such maps in the visual culture of climate-change discourse makes the process of change appear much neater and more controllable than it actually has been or will be.
-
Net Shop Boys
2017-10-30That American masculinity considers shopping a taboo speaks, in a way, to its parameters, its limits. Derided as superficial and frivolous, shopping is in fact often a process of serious consideration about how you modulate your body in the world, how the interior life can be communicated by way of the visible presence. Grailed — part social network, part editorial outlet, and part resale store — is an aperture, albeit a narrow one, into how men negotiate their masculinity, how they resolve their bodies with the world.
Net Shop Boys
Net Shop Boys2017-10-30That American masculinity considers shopping a taboo speaks, in a way, to its parameters, its limits. Derided as superficial and frivolous, shopping is in fact often a process of serious consideration about how you modulate your body in the world, how the interior life can be communicated by way of the visible presence. Grailed — part social network, part editorial outlet, and part resale store — is an aperture, albeit a narrow one, into how men negotiate their masculinity, how they resolve their bodies with the world.
-
Echo Location
2017-10-24The remixes on From Another Room are a recreation of “aura” with their invocation of physical space and sensory experience of distance. Listening to a song “from another room” does not immerse the listener in the drama of the song but rather in a new drama, a private one, partially removed, creating a voyeuristic disconnect, the same velvety thrill of eavesdropping. It is an active experience that replicates a passive one, cushions the listener, creates enough emotional space to envision a different room, a different life, past or imagined.
Echo Location
Echo Location2017-10-24The remixes on From Another Room are a recreation of “aura” with their invocation of physical space and sensory experience of distance. Listening to a song “from another room” does not immerse the listener in the drama of the song but rather in a new drama, a private one, partially removed, creating a voyeuristic disconnect, the same velvety thrill of eavesdropping. It is an active experience that replicates a passive one, cushions the listener, creates enough emotional space to envision a different room, a different life, past or imagined.
-
Where the Streets Have No Numbers
2017-10-23While Richard Florida’s past prescriptions of turning downtowns into adult playgrounds were indeed partly to blame for cities’ present inequalities, his latest work, The New Urban Crisis, perpetuates a much more fundamental error endemic to liberals’ approaches to solving social issues: the belief that measurements and rankings can be used to effectively administer means-tested redistribution programs. Though his faith in lattes and film festivals has been shaken, he still believes in the essential benefit of regulating a capitalist marketplace through a patchwork of conditional programs like a campaign for collectively owned property through land banks or co-ops. Nowhere do we get a universal program that is up to the task of eliminating the problems he has so dutifully measured.
Where the Streets Have No Numbers
Where the Streets Have No Numbers2017-10-23While Richard Florida’s past prescriptions of turning downtowns into adult playgrounds were indeed partly to blame for cities’ present inequalities, his latest work, The New Urban Crisis, perpetuates a much more fundamental error endemic to liberals’ approaches to solving social issues: the belief that measurements and rankings can be used to effectively administer means-tested redistribution programs. Though his faith in lattes and film festivals has been shaken, he still believes in the essential benefit of regulating a capitalist marketplace through a patchwork of conditional programs like a campaign for collectively owned property through land banks or co-ops. Nowhere do we get a universal program that is up to the task of eliminating the problems he has so dutifully measured.
-
Error Messages
2017-10-17We rely on autocorrect as we once did spell check, but there is a difference between the two. Spell check brings the mistake to our attention. Autocorrect makes the correction without our permission — without understanding the error. When “fucking” becomes “ducking,” the word sheds its intended meaning and function for something new and senseless. What is meant to heighten a phrase to a certain degree of intensity (“fucking”) makes it a blunder instead. Each letter is a unit of communication, a symbolic material measuring carefully what we mean, what we do not mean, what tone we intend.
Error Messages
Error Messages2017-10-17We rely on autocorrect as we once did spell check, but there is a difference between the two. Spell check brings the mistake to our attention. Autocorrect makes the correction without our permission — without understanding the error. When “fucking” becomes “ducking,” the word sheds its intended meaning and function for something new and senseless. What is meant to heighten a phrase to a certain degree of intensity (“fucking”) makes it a blunder instead. Each letter is a unit of communication, a symbolic material measuring carefully what we mean, what we do not mean, what tone we intend.
-
To Be Discontinued
2017-10-16Unlike the canvas or blank page, the camera is a tool of exclusion: Its frame and focal field subtract from an already existing scene. Motion picture editing and the logic of continuity is a check on this quality. During the same period, discontinuity was a refutation of this artificial consensus. In the aesthetics of discontinuity, the cinema has preserved the energetic cruelty of the avant-garde and waited for its politics to bleed out, leaving behind only the exclusionary mechanism of the camera and its frame.
To Be Discontinued
To Be Discontinued2017-10-16Unlike the canvas or blank page, the camera is a tool of exclusion: Its frame and focal field subtract from an already existing scene. Motion picture editing and the logic of continuity is a check on this quality. During the same period, discontinuity was a refutation of this artificial consensus. In the aesthetics of discontinuity, the cinema has preserved the energetic cruelty of the avant-garde and waited for its politics to bleed out, leaving behind only the exclusionary mechanism of the camera and its frame.
-
Close Reading
2017-10-12There is warmth in the feed of images: a steady cavalcade of tiny, precious detail, a gentle flood of affection for both others and ourselves. For the lonely, sitting by themselves in quiet rooms and apartments, it represents an emergent social field, a kind of extra-bodily space in which one communes. The modal shift of ambient intimacy from text to the image is itself a minor analog of the broader one, from mass media to the network, from the body to its holographic pairing.
Close Reading
Close Reading2017-10-12There is warmth in the feed of images: a steady cavalcade of tiny, precious detail, a gentle flood of affection for both others and ourselves. For the lonely, sitting by themselves in quiet rooms and apartments, it represents an emergent social field, a kind of extra-bodily space in which one communes. The modal shift of ambient intimacy from text to the image is itself a minor analog of the broader one, from mass media to the network, from the body to its holographic pairing.
-
External Memory
2017-10-11It is increasingly obvious that the internet is less an immersive playground, less a virtual environment, than it is an archive — a Library of Babel that is sometimes incomprehensible, sometimes sinister, but occasionally beautiful. What we encounter in that archive is an experience that is distinctly embodied and stands in stark contrast to the fantasy of virtual space.
External Memory
External Memory2017-10-11It is increasingly obvious that the internet is less an immersive playground, less a virtual environment, than it is an archive — a Library of Babel that is sometimes incomprehensible, sometimes sinister, but occasionally beautiful. What we encounter in that archive is an experience that is distinctly embodied and stands in stark contrast to the fantasy of virtual space.
-
Sex Positivism
2017-10-10People are allowed to be who they really are out of a presumed respect for this inner truth, but a fluid sexuality is rendered suspect if not impossible. If the media interpretations of the Pornhub data are any indication, society is less ready to accept the idea that sexual desires may represent only who we are at a given time or that we may not have a coherent and definite sexual “self” at all.
Sex Positivism
Sex Positivism2017-10-10People are allowed to be who they really are out of a presumed respect for this inner truth, but a fluid sexuality is rendered suspect if not impossible. If the media interpretations of the Pornhub data are any indication, society is less ready to accept the idea that sexual desires may represent only who we are at a given time or that we may not have a coherent and definite sexual “self” at all.
-
Doomsday Pattern
2017-10-09Climate change accelerates natural disasters. Earthquakes cause tsunamis and volcanoes, and volcanoes and earthquakes cause tsunamis; global warming leads to increases in all three. You can’t prepare for the worst-case scenario when the scenario keeps getting rapidly worse.
Doomsday Pattern
Doomsday Pattern2017-10-09Climate change accelerates natural disasters. Earthquakes cause tsunamis and volcanoes, and volcanoes and earthquakes cause tsunamis; global warming leads to increases in all three. You can’t prepare for the worst-case scenario when the scenario keeps getting rapidly worse.
-
Hate Maps
2017-10-05For their intended percipients, a map of hate groups burns a painful symbology into the American landscape. A map of the U.S. dotted with swastikas and Klan hoods instead of place names is both familiar and unrecognizable — a layer has been added, or, perhaps, scraped away. A map raked with swaths of violent feeling makes hatred seem like corn or barley, something America is actively cultivating.
Hate Maps
Hate Maps2017-10-05For their intended percipients, a map of hate groups burns a painful symbology into the American landscape. A map of the U.S. dotted with swastikas and Klan hoods instead of place names is both familiar and unrecognizable — a layer has been added, or, perhaps, scraped away. A map raked with swaths of violent feeling makes hatred seem like corn or barley, something America is actively cultivating.
-
Time After Time
2017-10-04Often algorithmically sorted feeds are seen as the opposite of “unsorted” chronological feeds. But this overlooks that chronology is a basic sorting algorithm. Linear time is so deeply foundational to our worldview that it’s almost impossible to conceive of time any other way, but social media feeds do show that there are other ways of organizing temporal events.
Time After Time
Time After Time2017-10-04Often algorithmically sorted feeds are seen as the opposite of “unsorted” chronological feeds. But this overlooks that chronology is a basic sorting algorithm. Linear time is so deeply foundational to our worldview that it’s almost impossible to conceive of time any other way, but social media feeds do show that there are other ways of organizing temporal events.
-
Back to the Land
2017-10-03The representation of exploitation of data users generate through use as an “act of friendship” recalls feudal ideology, which treated bonds of servitude as natural expressions of quasi-familial duty. Facebook and other social media sites replace the patriarchal hierarchy of feudalism with the seeming egalitarianism of a hangout session, making themselves the means by which we keep up with our peers, so that if we decide to disengage, we seem to reject not our oppressors, but our communities.
Back to the Land
Back to the Land2017-10-03The representation of exploitation of data users generate through use as an “act of friendship” recalls feudal ideology, which treated bonds of servitude as natural expressions of quasi-familial duty. Facebook and other social media sites replace the patriarchal hierarchy of feudalism with the seeming egalitarianism of a hangout session, making themselves the means by which we keep up with our peers, so that if we decide to disengage, we seem to reject not our oppressors, but our communities.
-
Square Pegs
2017-09-28The new genre of Republican visuals — Republican Instagram — looks like an emphatic effort to socialize in a foreign medium, like an alien trying to blend into the midwest, like Governor Scott Walker enjoying a ham and cheese out of a brown bag lunch: the working man’s dose. He’s an example of the Republican sculpting the never-before really seen politician, a previously unimagined narrative far beyond the aristocratic duties of the seasonal thank-you card. On Republican Instagram, their fear — or our hope — of their quick fade into irrelevancy is imaginatively stalled.
Square Pegs
Square Pegs2017-09-28The new genre of Republican visuals — Republican Instagram — looks like an emphatic effort to socialize in a foreign medium, like an alien trying to blend into the midwest, like Governor Scott Walker enjoying a ham and cheese out of a brown bag lunch: the working man’s dose. He’s an example of the Republican sculpting the never-before really seen politician, a previously unimagined narrative far beyond the aristocratic duties of the seasonal thank-you card. On Republican Instagram, their fear — or our hope — of their quick fade into irrelevancy is imaginatively stalled.
-
Edible Creations
2017-09-27Hampton Creek is one of a cadre of food startups advertising hefty scientific and technological qualifications, while advancing a vision of a future in which their product will be indispensable, woven into the fabric of everyday life. These visions have inspired outsize anxiety, scorn, mirth and suspicion, and the reactions make sense: Though the futures these companies propose are far from being realized, they still shape what is imaginable in the present.
Edible Creations
Edible Creations2017-09-27Hampton Creek is one of a cadre of food startups advertising hefty scientific and technological qualifications, while advancing a vision of a future in which their product will be indispensable, woven into the fabric of everyday life. These visions have inspired outsize anxiety, scorn, mirth and suspicion, and the reactions make sense: Though the futures these companies propose are far from being realized, they still shape what is imaginable in the present.
-
It’s All You
2017-09-26Relatability memes, once a tool against universalizing discourses, can end up being deployed in favor of general participation and reiterating the very discourses that they were once against. It becomes a mechanism of virality divorced from particular content or the expectation of interpretation.
It’s All You
It’s All You2017-09-26Relatability memes, once a tool against universalizing discourses, can end up being deployed in favor of general participation and reiterating the very discourses that they were once against. It becomes a mechanism of virality divorced from particular content or the expectation of interpretation.
-
Fancy Feast
2017-09-21What to make of Moon Dust, rainbow bowls, and mermaid toast? These culinary artifacts are odes to a specific ideal of the modern capitalist woman: the woman who can have it all, the entrepreneur who can get a quirky idea to land in the overcrowded marketplace of quirky ideas, the well-off person who can turn their love for travel into profitable expertise, all while being beautiful and decidedly nonthreatening. They signify being able to chase your dreams and catch them, the sparkling fairy dust of success.
Fancy Feast
Fancy Feast2017-09-21What to make of Moon Dust, rainbow bowls, and mermaid toast? These culinary artifacts are odes to a specific ideal of the modern capitalist woman: the woman who can have it all, the entrepreneur who can get a quirky idea to land in the overcrowded marketplace of quirky ideas, the well-off person who can turn their love for travel into profitable expertise, all while being beautiful and decidedly nonthreatening. They signify being able to chase your dreams and catch them, the sparkling fairy dust of success.
-
Against Immortality
2017-09-20Science and the state are the synecdochic hands of a puritanical society, excising the unhealthy, the cancerous, pushing death to the margins. The outcome of the decision is entirely unimportant — we have explicitly held that the patient is dead in the first place. What exists is a warm cadaver onto whom all manner of ethical mess and biopower is inscribed. This two-pronged apparatus would have us all liminally alive, on life support, patiently waiting to be allowed our death.
Against Immortality
Against Immortality2017-09-20Science and the state are the synecdochic hands of a puritanical society, excising the unhealthy, the cancerous, pushing death to the margins. The outcome of the decision is entirely unimportant — we have explicitly held that the patient is dead in the first place. What exists is a warm cadaver onto whom all manner of ethical mess and biopower is inscribed. This two-pronged apparatus would have us all liminally alive, on life support, patiently waiting to be allowed our death.
-
Infinite Binge
2017-09-19If the show is to be influential and have a second, third, and fourth life in streaming channels and continued conversation, the plates have to stay spinning, forever, persisting through a viewer’s experience with other shows, other stories. Finales conclude their specific show, but in the process are also charged with imbuing the entire medium with a sense of renewable possibility: Though this story ends, all stories keep going, indefinitely.
Infinite Binge
Infinite Binge2017-09-19If the show is to be influential and have a second, third, and fourth life in streaming channels and continued conversation, the plates have to stay spinning, forever, persisting through a viewer’s experience with other shows, other stories. Finales conclude their specific show, but in the process are also charged with imbuing the entire medium with a sense of renewable possibility: Though this story ends, all stories keep going, indefinitely.
-
Trash Life
2017-09-18Political philosopher Jane Bennett asks in her book Vital Materialism, “Why advocate the vitality of matter? Because my hunch is that the image of dead or thoroughly instrumentalized matter feeds human hubris and our earth-destroying fantasies of conquest and consumption.” If we flatten the hierarchy of being and more humbly commune with non-human matter, humans might — here’s hoping — not extinguish that which we have assumed is already lifeless by treating it as less than alive.
Trash Life
Trash Life2017-09-18Political philosopher Jane Bennett asks in her book Vital Materialism, “Why advocate the vitality of matter? Because my hunch is that the image of dead or thoroughly instrumentalized matter feeds human hubris and our earth-destroying fantasies of conquest and consumption.” If we flatten the hierarchy of being and more humbly commune with non-human matter, humans might — here’s hoping — not extinguish that which we have assumed is already lifeless by treating it as less than alive.
-
Dinner Theater
2017-09-14In its evocation of a family dinner table with no past and no future — having no leftovers is one of the key advertising promises of these services — meal-kit delivery services promise that traditional family life can continue undisturbed even as its underlying structures undergo extreme disruption. If becoming an adult is learning to parent yourself, meal-kit delivery imagines that parent at sea in the overwhelming churn of an unmoored and unrecognizable life.
Dinner Theater
Dinner Theater2017-09-14In its evocation of a family dinner table with no past and no future — having no leftovers is one of the key advertising promises of these services — meal-kit delivery services promise that traditional family life can continue undisturbed even as its underlying structures undergo extreme disruption. If becoming an adult is learning to parent yourself, meal-kit delivery imagines that parent at sea in the overwhelming churn of an unmoored and unrecognizable life.
-
Being There
2017-09-13“Being there” should be understood in terms of impact rather than mere physical manifestation. Online practice can generate presence in ways that are as powerful as physically showing up at protests is sometimes taken to be.
Being There
Being There2017-09-13“Being there” should be understood in terms of impact rather than mere physical manifestation. Online practice can generate presence in ways that are as powerful as physically showing up at protests is sometimes taken to be.
-
Touch Screen
2017-09-12Over time, one’s interaction with a phone becomes a series of muscle-memory patterns accompanied by visual and aural confirmation that, after a while, become almost Pavlovian. One might talk of interfaces as tool-like, or even ideological, but perhaps at root they are not merely mechanisms of interaction, but ways of channeling affect — of giving shape to the emotional dimensions of information.
Touch Screen
Touch Screen2017-09-12Over time, one’s interaction with a phone becomes a series of muscle-memory patterns accompanied by visual and aural confirmation that, after a while, become almost Pavlovian. One might talk of interfaces as tool-like, or even ideological, but perhaps at root they are not merely mechanisms of interaction, but ways of channeling affect — of giving shape to the emotional dimensions of information.
-
Seeing Red
2017-09-07The act of seeing Mars has always been vicarious, it can only be known “virtually” through images. Mars thus exemplifies how screens and algorithms, rather than undermining our ability to see “reality,” can be key to making our understanding of real places possible in the first place.
Seeing Red
Seeing Red2017-09-07The act of seeing Mars has always been vicarious, it can only be known “virtually” through images. Mars thus exemplifies how screens and algorithms, rather than undermining our ability to see “reality,” can be key to making our understanding of real places possible in the first place.
-
Sublime Athletics
2017-09-06Digging through the statistics of one player’s season can quickly become complex. Sometimes complexity is beautiful. The search for clarity, for objectivity, brings a feeling of awe. If in sports, cameras can present the viewer with moments of catharsis, then analytics may express the inherent ingredients that go into those moments.
Sublime Athletics
Sublime Athletics2017-09-06Digging through the statistics of one player’s season can quickly become complex. Sometimes complexity is beautiful. The search for clarity, for objectivity, brings a feeling of awe. If in sports, cameras can present the viewer with moments of catharsis, then analytics may express the inherent ingredients that go into those moments.
-
Immaterial Girls
2017-09-05Digital beauty brands like Glossier, who promise to merely enhance one’s face as it is, sell an aesthetic of “effortlessness” that obscures the labor that creates it. Pretending neutrality, these brands sell an image of the supposed “real girl” that is painfully class- and race-specific.
Immaterial Girls
Immaterial Girls2017-09-05Digital beauty brands like Glossier, who promise to merely enhance one’s face as it is, sell an aesthetic of “effortlessness” that obscures the labor that creates it. Pretending neutrality, these brands sell an image of the supposed “real girl” that is painfully class- and race-specific.
-
Warped Image
2017-08-31Stock photos have always seemed a little eerie, no matter what they depict; they are purely affective gestures, void of the visual difference that sets most photos apart as unique. In that way, an account like Dark Stock Photo is more of a fine-tuning of what makes the form so jarring to begin with. As Vic Berger’s grimly comedic video edits did for coverage of the 2016 election, or the comedy duo Tim & Eric did for cable-access television, this comedy works by isolating the already absurd within what attempts to pass as normal.
Warped Image
Warped Image2017-08-31Stock photos have always seemed a little eerie, no matter what they depict; they are purely affective gestures, void of the visual difference that sets most photos apart as unique. In that way, an account like Dark Stock Photo is more of a fine-tuning of what makes the form so jarring to begin with. As Vic Berger’s grimly comedic video edits did for coverage of the 2016 election, or the comedy duo Tim & Eric did for cable-access television, this comedy works by isolating the already absurd within what attempts to pass as normal.
-
Panic City
2017-08-30Given how valuable the data collected from and within cities have already been for tech companies, it is no surprise that they would seek to design whole cities directly. These cities are purported for “all humans,” but their basis in surveillance will further bifurcate society into elites and the left behind. Their quantifying oversimplification of what cities do would impoverish the richness of urban life.
Panic City
Panic City2017-08-30Given how valuable the data collected from and within cities have already been for tech companies, it is no surprise that they would seek to design whole cities directly. These cities are purported for “all humans,” but their basis in surveillance will further bifurcate society into elites and the left behind. Their quantifying oversimplification of what cities do would impoverish the richness of urban life.
-
Proactive Paranoia
2017-08-24While “proactive paranoia” sounds like a pathological condition reserved for users of hidden web sites, OPSEC politics — borrowed tactics for the dark web from military jargon for “operations security” — functions as a means to structure online social relations and from there build a social order. After all, despite scams, exploitation, and arrests, dark web markets continue to thrive. OPSEC politics need not be limited to the dark web.
Proactive Paranoia
Proactive Paranoia2017-08-24While “proactive paranoia” sounds like a pathological condition reserved for users of hidden web sites, OPSEC politics — borrowed tactics for the dark web from military jargon for “operations security” — functions as a means to structure online social relations and from there build a social order. After all, despite scams, exploitation, and arrests, dark web markets continue to thrive. OPSEC politics need not be limited to the dark web.
-
Truth or Consequences
2017-08-23Receipts — shorthand for a broader desire for hard, objective documentation — come in the form of text messages, photos, footage, voicemails, and emails: the harder and more indisputable the proof, the better. Once receipts are unveiled, social media users are invited to investigate a situation for themselves, and then rejoice in “the truth,”an ostensibly democratic and decentralized practice that says less about the nature of truth than the fetish for objectivity.
Truth or Consequences
Truth or Consequences2017-08-23Receipts — shorthand for a broader desire for hard, objective documentation — come in the form of text messages, photos, footage, voicemails, and emails: the harder and more indisputable the proof, the better. Once receipts are unveiled, social media users are invited to investigate a situation for themselves, and then rejoice in “the truth,”an ostensibly democratic and decentralized practice that says less about the nature of truth than the fetish for objectivity.
-
Spectral Power
2017-08-22B’Tselem is an Israeli NGO that has been distributing cameras to Palestinians living in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip since 2007, with the belief that seeing injustice on film can cause change. The power to see can counter an uneven distribution of power within a conflict zone; the camera can also become the locus of a surrogate conflict.
Spectral Power
Spectral Power2017-08-22B’Tselem is an Israeli NGO that has been distributing cameras to Palestinians living in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip since 2007, with the belief that seeing injustice on film can cause change. The power to see can counter an uneven distribution of power within a conflict zone; the camera can also become the locus of a surrogate conflict.
-
Motion Pictures
2017-08-21Via gif-based memes, our person-to-person language of motion is gaining a writing system. Like the photograph, which clips a moment out of time and freezes it forever, the gif has captured how it was that we moved in that moment. It liberates motion itself from time and elevates it to a mythology of movement; and it’s in this technological middle space where we find ourselves, right now, able to write this captured motion but simultaneously experience it as art.
Motion Pictures
Motion Pictures2017-08-21Via gif-based memes, our person-to-person language of motion is gaining a writing system. Like the photograph, which clips a moment out of time and freezes it forever, the gif has captured how it was that we moved in that moment. It liberates motion itself from time and elevates it to a mythology of movement; and it’s in this technological middle space where we find ourselves, right now, able to write this captured motion but simultaneously experience it as art.
-
Easy Action
2017-08-17Four years before Tinder was founded, I was painted a picture of radical sexual practice that looked something like the stereotype ideal of a liberated sexuality. Now Tinder, Bumble, Feeld and any number more hook-up apps sit snug on our screens, and I’m skeptical — not of technology’s ability to deliver a platform for radical sex but of the very idea of “radical sex” tout court.
Easy Action
Easy Action2017-08-17Four years before Tinder was founded, I was painted a picture of radical sexual practice that looked something like the stereotype ideal of a liberated sexuality. Now Tinder, Bumble, Feeld and any number more hook-up apps sit snug on our screens, and I’m skeptical — not of technology’s ability to deliver a platform for radical sex but of the very idea of “radical sex” tout court.
-
Vox Populi
2017-08-16Without the aesthetic pleasure of music, sound relies on its indexical content, sociality and physicality. So musical anhedonics seek out sounds for what they signify: culturally shared narratives and new entry-points for relation; radio stories, oral histories, films, music-making with others. Listening this way synthesizes the individual and the commons, reinscribing one’s place in the world through encounters with other subjects, both real and fictional.
Vox Populi
Vox Populi2017-08-16Without the aesthetic pleasure of music, sound relies on its indexical content, sociality and physicality. So musical anhedonics seek out sounds for what they signify: culturally shared narratives and new entry-points for relation; radio stories, oral histories, films, music-making with others. Listening this way synthesizes the individual and the commons, reinscribing one’s place in the world through encounters with other subjects, both real and fictional.
-
Taking Turns
2017-08-15Cards are played and dice are rolled, token markers are placed and subsequently taken away, all in service to a simulative model that offers quiet moments of contemplation rather than relentless stimuli and vicarious violence. But board games, no less than video games, are synthesized reflections of the society from which they spring. So also encoded in Labyrinth’s narratives are Western assumptions regarding the “true” nature of terrorism, and Western heuristics for understanding the cause-and-effect chain associated with terrorism are meant to be contemplated through play.
Taking Turns
Taking Turns2017-08-15Cards are played and dice are rolled, token markers are placed and subsequently taken away, all in service to a simulative model that offers quiet moments of contemplation rather than relentless stimuli and vicarious violence. But board games, no less than video games, are synthesized reflections of the society from which they spring. So also encoded in Labyrinth’s narratives are Western assumptions regarding the “true” nature of terrorism, and Western heuristics for understanding the cause-and-effect chain associated with terrorism are meant to be contemplated through play.
-
Fascism
2017-08-14Online platforms have become instruments for meting out brutality, suppressing freedom of thought, reinforcing marginalization and social exclusion, and enforcing orthodoxy. But it makes sense also to think of fascism itself as a political technology, an approach to social control that relies on negating the truth, sowing confusion, destabilizing shared values, and setting unmoored bureaucracies against the population and one another.
Fascism
Fascism2017-08-14Online platforms have become instruments for meting out brutality, suppressing freedom of thought, reinforcing marginalization and social exclusion, and enforcing orthodoxy. But it makes sense also to think of fascism itself as a political technology, an approach to social control that relies on negating the truth, sowing confusion, destabilizing shared values, and setting unmoored bureaucracies against the population and one another.
-
I Remember
2017-08-10Nostalgia for the online past comes with a distinctive sense of loss: Outdated tech aesthetics are replaced by faster, cleaner, and more modern iterations. But newer games like Arc Symphony are designed with that in mind, extracting what was best about an era made obsolete.
I Remember
I Remember2017-08-10Nostalgia for the online past comes with a distinctive sense of loss: Outdated tech aesthetics are replaced by faster, cleaner, and more modern iterations. But newer games like Arc Symphony are designed with that in mind, extracting what was best about an era made obsolete.
-
Public Enemies
2017-08-09We don’t have to look too far back for another moment when dangerous new forms of political feeling seemed to correspond to novel forms of communication that were assumed to encourage the opposite. After World War I, it became imperative to understand not only how masses of people had been driven by their governments to violence and destruction on a scale never before possible, but also the networks through which these masses understood themselves to be part of a public. These theories weren’t necessarily in conversation with one another, but they shared a desire to understand a moving target: the politics emerging from emerging media.
Public Enemies
Public Enemies2017-08-09We don’t have to look too far back for another moment when dangerous new forms of political feeling seemed to correspond to novel forms of communication that were assumed to encourage the opposite. After World War I, it became imperative to understand not only how masses of people had been driven by their governments to violence and destruction on a scale never before possible, but also the networks through which these masses understood themselves to be part of a public. These theories weren’t necessarily in conversation with one another, but they shared a desire to understand a moving target: the politics emerging from emerging media.
-
The Authoritarian Surround
2017-08-08One of the defining features of authoritarian personalities is a revulsion toward things, and people, that complicate their established categories. In the suburbs, everything is designed to have its specific place, and to walk or work in the wrong place is to transgress legal, technical, and cultural boundaries.
The Authoritarian Surround
The Authoritarian Surround2017-08-08One of the defining features of authoritarian personalities is a revulsion toward things, and people, that complicate their established categories. In the suburbs, everything is designed to have its specific place, and to walk or work in the wrong place is to transgress legal, technical, and cultural boundaries.
-
To Forgive
2017-08-07If lengthy public confession of complicity in collective sin seems self-indulgent, a quieter, private ritual of building a feed that will keep personal change at the forefront of one’s mind could be a part of a meaningful move towards atonement facilitated by digital space. While forgiveness may be a lure that attracts people to atonement, and moral restitution may allow for the most powerful changes when it reaches the public sphere, atonement for some may be a personal goal that does not come attached to any public act. For most, it certainly starts out that way.
To Forgive
To Forgive2017-08-07If lengthy public confession of complicity in collective sin seems self-indulgent, a quieter, private ritual of building a feed that will keep personal change at the forefront of one’s mind could be a part of a meaningful move towards atonement facilitated by digital space. While forgiveness may be a lure that attracts people to atonement, and moral restitution may allow for the most powerful changes when it reaches the public sphere, atonement for some may be a personal goal that does not come attached to any public act. For most, it certainly starts out that way.
-
Picture Yourself Happy
2017-08-02Advertising images of people taking selfies are quoting Instagram to put the idea of an attainable happiness on display, not as a lasting thing you can buy but as something that can be orchestrated. These images sell the world to us as a curated context for the selfies we’d like to take.
Picture Yourself Happy
Picture Yourself Happy2017-08-02Advertising images of people taking selfies are quoting Instagram to put the idea of an attainable happiness on display, not as a lasting thing you can buy but as something that can be orchestrated. These images sell the world to us as a curated context for the selfies we’d like to take.
-
Closed Captions
2017-08-01The most defining characteristic of infinite scroll is its illusion of limitlessness. For that, it needs opacity: Anything that could cause friction has to be tucked away or sidelined. That’s why embedded metadata and quick hashtags work so much better than visible who-what-where captions do. Metadata nudges from behind, finessing photographs’ position in searches and the stream.
Closed Captions
Closed Captions2017-08-01The most defining characteristic of infinite scroll is its illusion of limitlessness. For that, it needs opacity: Anything that could cause friction has to be tucked away or sidelined. That’s why embedded metadata and quick hashtags work so much better than visible who-what-where captions do. Metadata nudges from behind, finessing photographs’ position in searches and the stream.
-
Poetic License
2017-07-31Rebounding from its problematic beginnings as a rap translator, Genius claimed its mission was to “annotate the world.” However, the site still relies on Black music and Black culture for its branding, and the attempt to translate or distill the genius of Black music through lyrical annotation only shows the fruitlessness of the task itself.
Poetic License
Poetic License2017-07-31Rebounding from its problematic beginnings as a rap translator, Genius claimed its mission was to “annotate the world.” However, the site still relies on Black music and Black culture for its branding, and the attempt to translate or distill the genius of Black music through lyrical annotation only shows the fruitlessness of the task itself.
-
Scanners
2017-07-27It’s impossible to have read more than a fraction of the texts that become cultural touchstones, let alone all the texts we actually cast our eyes over and read. Seeing text is often all that’s necessary to construct and maintain an ethos. As text available approaches infinity, reading becomes reinvented less as a matter of comprehension or interpretation then as something visual and affective.
Scanners
Scanners2017-07-27It’s impossible to have read more than a fraction of the texts that become cultural touchstones, let alone all the texts we actually cast our eyes over and read. Seeing text is often all that’s necessary to construct and maintain an ethos. As text available approaches infinity, reading becomes reinvented less as a matter of comprehension or interpretation then as something visual and affective.
-
Through the Wires
2017-07-26In 19th-century “telegraph plays,” both novel and realistic, the telegraph returned a literal edge to the metaphor of deus ex machina — “god from the machine.” With the telegraph onstage, audiences knew there would eventually be news of some sort; it was no longer a surprise, as with the earlier device of having a messenger arrive suddenly in the last act. Instead the question became, How fast would the news arrive? Would it arrive in time?
Through the Wires
Through the Wires2017-07-26In 19th-century “telegraph plays,” both novel and realistic, the telegraph returned a literal edge to the metaphor of deus ex machina — “god from the machine.” With the telegraph onstage, audiences knew there would eventually be news of some sort; it was no longer a surprise, as with the earlier device of having a messenger arrive suddenly in the last act. Instead the question became, How fast would the news arrive? Would it arrive in time?
-
Up and Away
2017-07-25Drone technologies, used to surveil populations and commit mass murder, have long spilled out of the military sphere and become an acceptable part of everyday life. The aesthetic of drones — the way their presence is seen, heard, and felt, as well as the drone’s way of “seeing” — influences the way we perceive our environments, as well as other people.
Up and Away
Up and Away2017-07-25Drone technologies, used to surveil populations and commit mass murder, have long spilled out of the military sphere and become an acceptable part of everyday life. The aesthetic of drones — the way their presence is seen, heard, and felt, as well as the drone’s way of “seeing” — influences the way we perceive our environments, as well as other people.
-
In Labor
2017-07-24Artificial wombs may help undermine the idea that women’s lives are — and should be — invested in making and caring for babies. But automating childbirth won’t automatically abolish all forms of gendered labor. Gender has shown an astonishing ability to reinvent itself according to the particular technological needs of capitalism.
In Labor
In Labor2017-07-24Artificial wombs may help undermine the idea that women’s lives are — and should be — invested in making and caring for babies. But automating childbirth won’t automatically abolish all forms of gendered labor. Gender has shown an astonishing ability to reinvent itself according to the particular technological needs of capitalism.
-
Advance Screening
2017-07-20Computer-based technologies change the way media operates as a tool of communication, establishing complex matrices of relationships in a way that fractures the previously unified narrative. In order for cinema to adapt, it has to bend back on the tropes it was founded on, letting them splinter.
Advance Screening
Advance Screening2017-07-20Computer-based technologies change the way media operates as a tool of communication, establishing complex matrices of relationships in a way that fractures the previously unified narrative. In order for cinema to adapt, it has to bend back on the tropes it was founded on, letting them splinter.
-
Diminishing Returns
2017-07-19Novelty is typically framed as offering some direct advantage for the consumer. A soda company, for example, might try to attract customers with a new flavor or a more ergonomic bottle. Novelty implemented on online platforms, however, often tends to alienate rather than attract users. How many Twitter renovations have sparked a predictable wave of outrage? Such changes often generate criticism and hostility from users, but that pushback is integrated into a larger calculation: Some degree of user grievance is tolerable if it ends up improving ad performance.
Diminishing Returns
Diminishing Returns2017-07-19Novelty is typically framed as offering some direct advantage for the consumer. A soda company, for example, might try to attract customers with a new flavor or a more ergonomic bottle. Novelty implemented on online platforms, however, often tends to alienate rather than attract users. How many Twitter renovations have sparked a predictable wave of outrage? Such changes often generate criticism and hostility from users, but that pushback is integrated into a larger calculation: Some degree of user grievance is tolerable if it ends up improving ad performance.
-
Escape Pod
2017-07-18Unlike the Walkman, which played one album or mixtape and had no room for spontaneous choice, the iPod offered the opportunity to play anything from a given record collection in any environment. Different songs could shield the listener from different situations; if you listened enough, you learned which music worked best to drown out the noise of a subway commute, what sounded good on an airplane, what evaporated the shouts of a fighting couple into distant haze.
Escape Pod
Escape Pod2017-07-18Unlike the Walkman, which played one album or mixtape and had no room for spontaneous choice, the iPod offered the opportunity to play anything from a given record collection in any environment. Different songs could shield the listener from different situations; if you listened enough, you learned which music worked best to drown out the noise of a subway commute, what sounded good on an airplane, what evaporated the shouts of a fighting couple into distant haze.
-
Mandatory Updates
2017-07-17That I should feel similar guilt for my slow phone as I have felt about my slow eyes makes perfect sense: More and more, ability means the ability to do jobs that the economy requires. Upgrading one’s devices diligently forms a part of contemporary compulsory able-bodiedness. Having the technology that most effectively enhances the speed and efficiency with which we can access, process, and respond to information is a prerequisite for being a productive worker in the 21st century. To refuse is to fail.
Mandatory Updates
Mandatory Updates2017-07-17That I should feel similar guilt for my slow phone as I have felt about my slow eyes makes perfect sense: More and more, ability means the ability to do jobs that the economy requires. Upgrading one’s devices diligently forms a part of contemporary compulsory able-bodiedness. Having the technology that most effectively enhances the speed and efficiency with which we can access, process, and respond to information is a prerequisite for being a productive worker in the 21st century. To refuse is to fail.
-
Still Lives
2017-07-13We collect images to remind ourselves of what matters to us, but the wish to make meaning is obfuscated by the sheer volume of images we take, make, or collect. The more we storify our pasts and futures with images, the more the self becomes subject to broader prevailing styles of aspirational imagery.
Still Lives
Still Lives2017-07-13We collect images to remind ourselves of what matters to us, but the wish to make meaning is obfuscated by the sheer volume of images we take, make, or collect. The more we storify our pasts and futures with images, the more the self becomes subject to broader prevailing styles of aspirational imagery.
-
Off the Map
2017-07-12I wonder if the new residents will ever ask about the people who lived there before them — whether, like my sister and I, they will try to excavate, in soil or online, the relics of lives that once took place there. Most likely, they will never piece together the past with the clues available, piecemeal, just as my sister and I were ignorant of the flood that had once changed the neighborhood where we used to play. My childhood home has become a thing defined by non-existence, a placemark for something that is missing.
Off the Map
Off the Map2017-07-12I wonder if the new residents will ever ask about the people who lived there before them — whether, like my sister and I, they will try to excavate, in soil or online, the relics of lives that once took place there. Most likely, they will never piece together the past with the clues available, piecemeal, just as my sister and I were ignorant of the flood that had once changed the neighborhood where we used to play. My childhood home has become a thing defined by non-existence, a placemark for something that is missing.
-
Job Dream
2017-07-11If work — geared to your personality or not — is more difficult to come by, then what purpose does vocational guidance serve? The proposition of career guidance assumes that the problem is not a lack of jobs, but the market’s inability to connect you with them — it assumes that the work is out there in the first place. A service targeting job seekers while doing little to improve the material conditions of a precarious labor market risks offering little more than cajoling: Rather than connect you with meaningful work, it can help you derive meaning from whatever work you manage to find.
Job Dream
Job Dream2017-07-11If work — geared to your personality or not — is more difficult to come by, then what purpose does vocational guidance serve? The proposition of career guidance assumes that the problem is not a lack of jobs, but the market’s inability to connect you with them — it assumes that the work is out there in the first place. A service targeting job seekers while doing little to improve the material conditions of a precarious labor market risks offering little more than cajoling: Rather than connect you with meaningful work, it can help you derive meaning from whatever work you manage to find.
-
Bugs as Features
2017-07-10A growing awareness of the enteric nervous system as a signal mediator between the microbiome and the human body has led to comparisons to data transmission — what one reviewer at Nature has termed “bacterial broadband.” Endowing the organisms that live inside our bodies with the qualities of software lends credence and charm to the possibility of a complete system reboot.
Bugs as Features
Bugs as Features2017-07-10A growing awareness of the enteric nervous system as a signal mediator between the microbiome and the human body has led to comparisons to data transmission — what one reviewer at Nature has termed “bacterial broadband.” Endowing the organisms that live inside our bodies with the qualities of software lends credence and charm to the possibility of a complete system reboot.
-
For the Moment
2017-06-29To treat ephemerality as a practice of withdrawal is to reinforce the narrow, static understanding of public and private that informs too many discussions around digital communication, framing online privacy as a matter of choosing between the normativity of mass communication or the implied deviancy of the secret. The anxiety and vulnerability of being “undulatory, in orbit, in a continuous network” (as Deleuze has famously described life under “societies of control”) leaves us scared or shamed into keeping secret the very forms of intimacy that make social media compelling.
For the Moment
For the Moment2017-06-29To treat ephemerality as a practice of withdrawal is to reinforce the narrow, static understanding of public and private that informs too many discussions around digital communication, framing online privacy as a matter of choosing between the normativity of mass communication or the implied deviancy of the secret. The anxiety and vulnerability of being “undulatory, in orbit, in a continuous network” (as Deleuze has famously described life under “societies of control”) leaves us scared or shamed into keeping secret the very forms of intimacy that make social media compelling.
-
Fidget Spinners
2017-06-28Waiting isn’t essentially a wasted in-between time; instead waiting is a core part of messages we send each other across the fiber optic lines. The time it takes to receive and interpret a message is also part of its content. We take the moment of waiting and give it meaning; it becomes a message of its own.
Fidget Spinners
Fidget Spinners2017-06-28Waiting isn’t essentially a wasted in-between time; instead waiting is a core part of messages we send each other across the fiber optic lines. The time it takes to receive and interpret a message is also part of its content. We take the moment of waiting and give it meaning; it becomes a message of its own.
-
Instant Recall
2017-06-27As the work of memory keeping is offshored to social media companies and cloud storage, we are giving up the work of remembering ourselves for the convenience of being reminded. We are surrendering the physical mementos, we previously relied on as containers of memory, leaving us more susceptible to algorithmic forms of manipulations.
Instant Recall
Instant Recall2017-06-27As the work of memory keeping is offshored to social media companies and cloud storage, we are giving up the work of remembering ourselves for the convenience of being reminded. We are surrendering the physical mementos, we previously relied on as containers of memory, leaving us more susceptible to algorithmic forms of manipulations.
-
Language Arts
2017-06-26Just as a society cannot function without language, soon our societies will not operate without networked systems. But much as with the dominant languages we speak, we have a very limited amount of control over the structures we make use of online. Our agency and range of expression is inevitably curtailed by platforms as well as enabled. Artworks that function as “minor literature” of the internet can expose these limitations, as well as exemplify how we might still develop our own voice within them and despite them.
Language Arts
Language Arts2017-06-26Just as a society cannot function without language, soon our societies will not operate without networked systems. But much as with the dominant languages we speak, we have a very limited amount of control over the structures we make use of online. Our agency and range of expression is inevitably curtailed by platforms as well as enabled. Artworks that function as “minor literature” of the internet can expose these limitations, as well as exemplify how we might still develop our own voice within them and despite them.
-
Star Search
2017-06-22We were 15, 16, and 17 years old. Taking pictures, whether moving or still, was a stab at ascertaining information that felt like it should be attainable even as it could never be definitively grasped: Who were we — to each other, to ourselves, to ourselves when we were with each other? Filming was an attempt to interpret and further indulge in our access to unparsable personalities. Adolescence was our first confrontation with the magnetic unknowability of other humans, and we turned towards documentation in search of explication.
Star Search
Star Search2017-06-22We were 15, 16, and 17 years old. Taking pictures, whether moving or still, was a stab at ascertaining information that felt like it should be attainable even as it could never be definitively grasped: Who were we — to each other, to ourselves, to ourselves when we were with each other? Filming was an attempt to interpret and further indulge in our access to unparsable personalities. Adolescence was our first confrontation with the magnetic unknowability of other humans, and we turned towards documentation in search of explication.
-
Player One
2017-06-21In the 1950s and 1960s, video games were the redemptive project with a project that might redeem the horrific effects of surplus war technology. Today the fantasy has shifted: They seem to offer a loosely redemptive path out of the immiserating economy that depends on information technology. In both cases, games are the heroic catalyst that transforms the bad to good, the solipsist to hero, the pain of the present to the gentle embrace of the future.
Player One
Player One2017-06-21In the 1950s and 1960s, video games were the redemptive project with a project that might redeem the horrific effects of surplus war technology. Today the fantasy has shifted: They seem to offer a loosely redemptive path out of the immiserating economy that depends on information technology. In both cases, games are the heroic catalyst that transforms the bad to good, the solipsist to hero, the pain of the present to the gentle embrace of the future.
-
The Story of a New Brain
2017-06-20Brain scanners promise the opportunity to track our minds so that we may retrain them without necessarily understanding them any better. Its techniques coincide with the prevailing neoliberal approach to care, in which health is framed as a product of personal responsibility while economic and environmental etiologies are ignored.
The Story of a New Brain
The Story of a New Brain2017-06-20Brain scanners promise the opportunity to track our minds so that we may retrain them without necessarily understanding them any better. Its techniques coincide with the prevailing neoliberal approach to care, in which health is framed as a product of personal responsibility while economic and environmental etiologies are ignored.
-
Web of Lies
2017-06-19Bad digital sci-fi isn’t necessarily propagandistic, but it does tend to stoke the wrong fears, leaving us complacent in the face of the genuinely fearsome; and it very rarely comes close to identifying the nature of modern authoritarianism, or to questioning our complicity. These are not compelling, artful or thoughtful representations of the digital era — they rely on flawed, and badly outdated conceptions of the internet, which they reduce to a narrative “Other”: a mysterious imposition on our lives, or an alternative reality controlled by malevolent forces, rather than a feature of reality itself. Media that attempts to depict “the way we live now” by envisioning the way we might live tomorrow should not be so simple.
Web of Lies
Web of Lies2017-06-19Bad digital sci-fi isn’t necessarily propagandistic, but it does tend to stoke the wrong fears, leaving us complacent in the face of the genuinely fearsome; and it very rarely comes close to identifying the nature of modern authoritarianism, or to questioning our complicity. These are not compelling, artful or thoughtful representations of the digital era — they rely on flawed, and badly outdated conceptions of the internet, which they reduce to a narrative “Other”: a mysterious imposition on our lives, or an alternative reality controlled by malevolent forces, rather than a feature of reality itself. Media that attempts to depict “the way we live now” by envisioning the way we might live tomorrow should not be so simple.
-
Mass Appeal
2017-06-15Fascism uses the state to accelerate the power of the capitalist classes at the expense of designated scapegoats and “undesirables.” To make this palatable, it turns to aesthetics. Today’s fascist style works not with monumentality but symbolic distance from what they are trying to do, to fall within liberal democracies’ commitment to tolerance. Fascist memes are now often marked by a slapdash, cut-and-paste aesthetic, which, like Trump’s clumsy braggadocio, is precisely what makes them appear accessible.
Mass Appeal
Mass Appeal2017-06-15Fascism uses the state to accelerate the power of the capitalist classes at the expense of designated scapegoats and “undesirables.” To make this palatable, it turns to aesthetics. Today’s fascist style works not with monumentality but symbolic distance from what they are trying to do, to fall within liberal democracies’ commitment to tolerance. Fascist memes are now often marked by a slapdash, cut-and-paste aesthetic, which, like Trump’s clumsy braggadocio, is precisely what makes them appear accessible.
-
Forced Smiles
2017-06-14I couldn’t help but feel that forcing the past to smile isn’t pure comedy. The smiles made the originals feel withholding, as if they had been deliberately cheating me of a level of interaction I had a right to expect. As the interactivity that governs the digital world influences our relationships with institutions, creators, and art pieces, it can feel as though art that doesn’t respond to us — that doesn’t signal an awareness of our presence — is refusing or rejecting our advances. We pay attention to it; why doesn’t it pay attention to us? The resolute deadness of the past can feel like a form of abandonment.
Forced Smiles
Forced Smiles2017-06-14I couldn’t help but feel that forcing the past to smile isn’t pure comedy. The smiles made the originals feel withholding, as if they had been deliberately cheating me of a level of interaction I had a right to expect. As the interactivity that governs the digital world influences our relationships with institutions, creators, and art pieces, it can feel as though art that doesn’t respond to us — that doesn’t signal an awareness of our presence — is refusing or rejecting our advances. We pay attention to it; why doesn’t it pay attention to us? The resolute deadness of the past can feel like a form of abandonment.
-
All My Ghosts
2017-06-13In an age where we meticulously scrutinize every opinion we place online and often post on “best behavior,” it can be a relief to encounter someone in the ocean of online performativity to be frank with behind the closed doors of a private chat. Before ever cultivating a meeting to look forward to, a stranger can be familiar in their strangeness.
All My Ghosts
All My Ghosts2017-06-13In an age where we meticulously scrutinize every opinion we place online and often post on “best behavior,” it can be a relief to encounter someone in the ocean of online performativity to be frank with behind the closed doors of a private chat. Before ever cultivating a meeting to look forward to, a stranger can be familiar in their strangeness.
-
Domain Name
2017-06-12But in the term ndn’s notes of subversion and irreverence, as well as its widespread use in forming digital collectives and connections, ndn also signals the ways in which ndns build worlds even as ours are invaded and denigrated. This remains true in the ways ndns emerged on the internet and continue to use internet spaces for cultural expression, consciousness-raising and political organization. In my time on the ndn internet, the term has come to signify not just a clever transfiguration but also a digital model for how ndns might form new kinds of relationships at the outer limits of colonial categories.
Domain Name
Domain Name2017-06-12But in the term ndn’s notes of subversion and irreverence, as well as its widespread use in forming digital collectives and connections, ndn also signals the ways in which ndns build worlds even as ours are invaded and denigrated. This remains true in the ways ndns emerged on the internet and continue to use internet spaces for cultural expression, consciousness-raising and political organization. In my time on the ndn internet, the term has come to signify not just a clever transfiguration but also a digital model for how ndns might form new kinds of relationships at the outer limits of colonial categories.
-
Horror Head
2017-06-08Many horror films position the digital world as a place we consciously enter that is corruptible by other humans and vulnerable to haunting. They’re at the very least tech-anxious, if not techno-phobic, although more dated films did not anticipate the more insidious ways that tech actually became embedded in our embodied lives, nor the utopian promise of tech and cybernetics that Silicon Valley would sell consumers in the twenty-first century. In Cronenberg’s worlds, the digital is made flesh, and that is horrific. In our world the horror comes from our inability to escape our flesh and what we encounter in it.
Horror Head
Horror Head2017-06-08Many horror films position the digital world as a place we consciously enter that is corruptible by other humans and vulnerable to haunting. They’re at the very least tech-anxious, if not techno-phobic, although more dated films did not anticipate the more insidious ways that tech actually became embedded in our embodied lives, nor the utopian promise of tech and cybernetics that Silicon Valley would sell consumers in the twenty-first century. In Cronenberg’s worlds, the digital is made flesh, and that is horrific. In our world the horror comes from our inability to escape our flesh and what we encounter in it.
-
My Manchester
2017-06-07The last terrorist attack we had in Manchester was in 1996. At the time, I was not old enough to really understand what had happened, but I can remember broad brushstrokes: breaking news on the television, announcements at school, overheard conversations that I understood little of, and a halt in our family visits to Manchester city center. This time, my phone took on the role of meting out information to me as I scrolled through to see, almost in real time, what was happening in my city. Knowing it was in real time made it feel treacherously close, but the events themselves were gut-wrenchingly distant from the city I know.
My Manchester
My Manchester2017-06-07The last terrorist attack we had in Manchester was in 1996. At the time, I was not old enough to really understand what had happened, but I can remember broad brushstrokes: breaking news on the television, announcements at school, overheard conversations that I understood little of, and a halt in our family visits to Manchester city center. This time, my phone took on the role of meting out information to me as I scrolled through to see, almost in real time, what was happening in my city. Knowing it was in real time made it feel treacherously close, but the events themselves were gut-wrenchingly distant from the city I know.
-
Necessary Purity
2017-06-06The case for the “reality” of food allergy is complicated by the current state of food allergy diagnostics. Food allergies trouble biomedical biases about the borders and definitions of disease, and cannot be fought with oversimplified motions of purity. We must remain vigilant that necessary purity practices do not translate into exploitive and exclusionary purity politics.
Necessary Purity
Necessary Purity2017-06-06The case for the “reality” of food allergy is complicated by the current state of food allergy diagnostics. Food allergies trouble biomedical biases about the borders and definitions of disease, and cannot be fought with oversimplified motions of purity. We must remain vigilant that necessary purity practices do not translate into exploitive and exclusionary purity politics.
-
Clearings
2017-06-05Historical wounds are recalled, distorted, and even forgotten, but living with nuclear waste means remembering on a different scale. As a demonstrator against a French nuclear waste facility told me, “We don’t even send it to another continent. We send it into the future.”
Clearings
Clearings2017-06-05Historical wounds are recalled, distorted, and even forgotten, but living with nuclear waste means remembering on a different scale. As a demonstrator against a French nuclear waste facility told me, “We don’t even send it to another continent. We send it into the future.”
-
Object Lessons
2017-06-01Though it remains nominally a taboo (and in the eyes of the BDSM community a subversive, liberatory act), for my purposes, masochism, like sleeping enough and getting my caffeine and paying my bills on time, is a coping mechanism. For the person with the urge to escape selfhood every once in awhile, it’s one of the most direct routes to objectification; both self-care and stress release, it’s a mental health practice that’s gotten me through many years’ worth of work weeks. But since selfhood has a way of redefining itself, so too must the meanings of self-care, pain, and pleasure continue to change.
Object Lessons
Object Lessons2017-06-01Though it remains nominally a taboo (and in the eyes of the BDSM community a subversive, liberatory act), for my purposes, masochism, like sleeping enough and getting my caffeine and paying my bills on time, is a coping mechanism. For the person with the urge to escape selfhood every once in awhile, it’s one of the most direct routes to objectification; both self-care and stress release, it’s a mental health practice that’s gotten me through many years’ worth of work weeks. But since selfhood has a way of redefining itself, so too must the meanings of self-care, pain, and pleasure continue to change.
-
Songs of Myself
2017-05-31Though psychographic profiling has been around for decades, big data analytics and distributed computing have made it easier and more powerful to execute and implement, capable of targeting not just populations or market segments, but individuals. Such big-data driven psychographics (often called “psychometrics”) purport to be capable of both perceiving and predicting individual preferences and behaviors. Replacing essentializing stereotypes with abstractions that better account for intersectionality and individual situatedness, psychometrics represents identity-based political categories in a way that superficially resembles the way progressive academics have urged for decades.
Songs of Myself
Songs of Myself2017-05-31Though psychographic profiling has been around for decades, big data analytics and distributed computing have made it easier and more powerful to execute and implement, capable of targeting not just populations or market segments, but individuals. Such big-data driven psychographics (often called “psychometrics”) purport to be capable of both perceiving and predicting individual preferences and behaviors. Replacing essentializing stereotypes with abstractions that better account for intersectionality and individual situatedness, psychometrics represents identity-based political categories in a way that superficially resembles the way progressive academics have urged for decades.
-
A Warm Place
2017-05-30In “altgames,” mood is the key more than polish or mechanics or length. Altgames represent a revolutionary undercurrent in modern-day video game design, an ethos encompassing meditative peace as well as gut-churning dread. They offer players the ability to induce a feeling in themselves, like a song rather than a novel — a mood space unburdened by reminders of day-to-day life, and the power structures that make living difficult.
A Warm Place
A Warm Place2017-05-30In “altgames,” mood is the key more than polish or mechanics or length. Altgames represent a revolutionary undercurrent in modern-day video game design, an ethos encompassing meditative peace as well as gut-churning dread. They offer players the ability to induce a feeling in themselves, like a song rather than a novel — a mood space unburdened by reminders of day-to-day life, and the power structures that make living difficult.
-
The Domino Effect
2017-05-25Food apps repurpose unseen human labor as machine magic. No one is working for you, only empowering you to make your own decisions, based on your own tastes, as your tastes slowly shift in a direction that suits the logic of a database. Abstracting away the reality of labor creates a permission structure in which you’re more comfortable asking for what you think you want.
The Domino Effect
The Domino Effect2017-05-25Food apps repurpose unseen human labor as machine magic. No one is working for you, only empowering you to make your own decisions, based on your own tastes, as your tastes slowly shift in a direction that suits the logic of a database. Abstracting away the reality of labor creates a permission structure in which you’re more comfortable asking for what you think you want.
-
No Contest
2017-05-24The format of reality TV competition licenses and structures the cruelty staged for the audience’s delight. Manipulation, cutthroat morality, and contempt for weakness are represented as practical, even laudable means for attention and success; helping others is framed as a quick way to disappear. This narrative not only draws in and caters to audiences who are attracted to sadistic spectacle; it creates a pedagogy through which more and more viewers learn to enjoy conflict and humiliation as the rationale and reward for participating in contemporary capitalism.
No Contest
No Contest2017-05-24The format of reality TV competition licenses and structures the cruelty staged for the audience’s delight. Manipulation, cutthroat morality, and contempt for weakness are represented as practical, even laudable means for attention and success; helping others is framed as a quick way to disappear. This narrative not only draws in and caters to audiences who are attracted to sadistic spectacle; it creates a pedagogy through which more and more viewers learn to enjoy conflict and humiliation as the rationale and reward for participating in contemporary capitalism.
-
Influencing Machines
2017-05-23The members of the resulting subculture call themselves “Targeted Individuals” (TIs). Self-identified TIs believe that they are the victims of systematic harassment by organized civilian groups linked to the state; they call this “gangstalking.” Over time and through internet-mediated discussion, they have developed a standard nomenclature to refer to the influencing machines used against them.
Influencing Machines
Influencing Machines2017-05-23The members of the resulting subculture call themselves “Targeted Individuals” (TIs). Self-identified TIs believe that they are the victims of systematic harassment by organized civilian groups linked to the state; they call this “gangstalking.” Over time and through internet-mediated discussion, they have developed a standard nomenclature to refer to the influencing machines used against them.
-
Fiber Optics
2017-05-22Images of textiles and fabric art on social media sites metaphorically testify to how we weave our way through the internet and how our lives are interwoven online and off. They also provide a sense of tactility to our image consumption, and mold digital spaces into places where women’s heritage is no longer silent or invisible.
Fiber Optics
Fiber Optics2017-05-22Images of textiles and fabric art on social media sites metaphorically testify to how we weave our way through the internet and how our lives are interwoven online and off. They also provide a sense of tactility to our image consumption, and mold digital spaces into places where women’s heritage is no longer silent or invisible.
-
Space Men
2017-05-18But between these two phases in the technological life cycle — critical science fiction studies and the careful analysis of futurist visionaries — is a larval process of quantification undertaken in documents like NASA’s Habitability Guidelines. Hidden in these intermediary steps is the codification of the techno-magic, the incantation books that both set out the rituals for making new technology and cloak its subjectivity and irrationality in the Organization Man’s native tongue.
Space Men
Space Men2017-05-18But between these two phases in the technological life cycle — critical science fiction studies and the careful analysis of futurist visionaries — is a larval process of quantification undertaken in documents like NASA’s Habitability Guidelines. Hidden in these intermediary steps is the codification of the techno-magic, the incantation books that both set out the rituals for making new technology and cloak its subjectivity and irrationality in the Organization Man’s native tongue.
-
Sick of Myself
2017-05-17Under economic conditions in which maximizing our “human capital” is paramount, we are under unremitting pressure to make the most of ourselves and our social connections and put it all on display to maintain our social viability. Having algorithms track and posit our identity as a coherent whole may serve as a respite from all that work of producing ourselves as assets.
Sick of Myself
Sick of Myself2017-05-17Under economic conditions in which maximizing our “human capital” is paramount, we are under unremitting pressure to make the most of ourselves and our social connections and put it all on display to maintain our social viability. Having algorithms track and posit our identity as a coherent whole may serve as a respite from all that work of producing ourselves as assets.
-
Scattered Attention
2017-05-16The design of online spaces seems to work against the intimacy of effective listening. The immediate tools available for broadcasting my reactions have button faces: I can like or love, feel sad or angry, laugh or be shocked. But these reactions are about naming and sharing my own emotions. They implicitly encourage me to respond by making a public declaration of my sensitivity to the joys or sorrows of others. This framing threatens to make me into the kind of person I most distrust: the kind of person who is always telling people what kind of person they are.
Scattered Attention
Scattered Attention2017-05-16The design of online spaces seems to work against the intimacy of effective listening. The immediate tools available for broadcasting my reactions have button faces: I can like or love, feel sad or angry, laugh or be shocked. But these reactions are about naming and sharing my own emotions. They implicitly encourage me to respond by making a public declaration of my sensitivity to the joys or sorrows of others. This framing threatens to make me into the kind of person I most distrust: the kind of person who is always telling people what kind of person they are.
-
The Apophenic Machine
2017-05-15Think of a network graph. A simple one with just a few nodes and connecting lines spidering out. It makes intuitive sense. Even if it’s one of those brightly colored clustered network graphs with thousands of points and connections, you can still grasp what it’s trying to tell you. Now imagine one of those conspiracy […]
The Apophenic Machine
The Apophenic Machine2017-05-15Think of a network graph. A simple one with just a few nodes and connecting lines spidering out. It makes intuitive sense. Even if it’s one of those brightly colored clustered network graphs with thousands of points and connections, you can still grasp what it’s trying to tell you. Now imagine one of those conspiracy […]
-
City Folk
2017-05-11The normalization of suffering is a consequence of all systematization, implicit in all data collection. It has the air of a natural law, like entropy, which West describes as guaranteeing that every attempt to produce order and structure also produces disorder, and that progress in any given area must produce regression in another. It frontloads any system-wide view of life with a haunted anxiety about that system being unviable, something that will become self-evident when angry mobs start to form or corpses begin piling up where they weren’t expected. At some point, the two orders of magnitude — the individual and the urban — must collide.
City Folk
City Folk2017-05-11The normalization of suffering is a consequence of all systematization, implicit in all data collection. It has the air of a natural law, like entropy, which West describes as guaranteeing that every attempt to produce order and structure also produces disorder, and that progress in any given area must produce regression in another. It frontloads any system-wide view of life with a haunted anxiety about that system being unviable, something that will become self-evident when angry mobs start to form or corpses begin piling up where they weren’t expected. At some point, the two orders of magnitude — the individual and the urban — must collide.
-
Eyes Without a Face
2017-05-10AI researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky described the feeling of intuition as the way our “cognitive algorithms happen to look from the inside.” An intangibly human gut response is just as socialized (programmed) as anything an algorithm might “feel” on the inside, clinging to its intuitions as well. It should be enough to take the algorithms’ output at face value, the preferences they ascribe to me, or to trust that it is the best entity to relay its own experience. But I’m greedy; I want to know more. What does it see when it looks at me?
Eyes Without a Face
Eyes Without a Face2017-05-10AI researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky described the feeling of intuition as the way our “cognitive algorithms happen to look from the inside.” An intangibly human gut response is just as socialized (programmed) as anything an algorithm might “feel” on the inside, clinging to its intuitions as well. It should be enough to take the algorithms’ output at face value, the preferences they ascribe to me, or to trust that it is the best entity to relay its own experience. But I’m greedy; I want to know more. What does it see when it looks at me?
-
End Notes
2017-05-09The video of the mother’s death by escalator in China (in a public mall, on another mechanism of transport) took this horror one step further. It was no freelance cameraman who had caught death on film and then sold it to a tabloid for a fee. Her death was captured by a surveillance video that was then shared with the media and forwarded to millions across the country in an instant. Her death was not appropriated from her unjustly by a paper, or by a cameraman. Her death never belonged to her at all.
End Notes
End Notes2017-05-09The video of the mother’s death by escalator in China (in a public mall, on another mechanism of transport) took this horror one step further. It was no freelance cameraman who had caught death on film and then sold it to a tabloid for a fee. Her death was captured by a surveillance video that was then shared with the media and forwarded to millions across the country in an instant. Her death was not appropriated from her unjustly by a paper, or by a cameraman. Her death never belonged to her at all.
-
Play to Win
2017-05-08Scavenger hunts attempt to exploit fans’ desire to command some attention of their own. They offer an opportunity to share something exclusive and scarce, something that might attract feedback, shares, and likes. While these promotions try to give fans a rare and engaging experience above and beyond the music, they are also designed to incentivize fans to perform free promotional labor, funneling the aura of the “real” back online to re-enchant the dematerialized music product for sale.
Play to Win
Play to Win2017-05-08Scavenger hunts attempt to exploit fans’ desire to command some attention of their own. They offer an opportunity to share something exclusive and scarce, something that might attract feedback, shares, and likes. While these promotions try to give fans a rare and engaging experience above and beyond the music, they are also designed to incentivize fans to perform free promotional labor, funneling the aura of the “real” back online to re-enchant the dematerialized music product for sale.
-
Here to Help
2017-05-04People share their lives on Facebook, and that includes expressions of mental anguish. While it would be nice to think that such expressions will always be met with unstinting support and empathy from friends and loved ones, recent history indicates that our networks might not be so reliable. Social media users have a shaky track record when it comes to helping one another; a version of the bystander effect at times seems to come into play. That is what distinguishes Facebook’s new suicide prevention tool; it is a technology that exhibits both care and control, stewardship and intrusion.
Here to Help
Here to Help2017-05-04People share their lives on Facebook, and that includes expressions of mental anguish. While it would be nice to think that such expressions will always be met with unstinting support and empathy from friends and loved ones, recent history indicates that our networks might not be so reliable. Social media users have a shaky track record when it comes to helping one another; a version of the bystander effect at times seems to come into play. That is what distinguishes Facebook’s new suicide prevention tool; it is a technology that exhibits both care and control, stewardship and intrusion.
-
On Seeing Blackness
2017-05-03Images of anti-Black violence have been used to promote white supremacy since the beginning of photography’s practice. This complicates the idea that disseminating these images could be a means of combating anti-Black brutality. But the ways these images are contextualized, repurposed and reconstituted by Black people are part of an infinite field of possibility for cultural and identity creation and assertion.
On Seeing Blackness
On Seeing Blackness2017-05-03Images of anti-Black violence have been used to promote white supremacy since the beginning of photography’s practice. This complicates the idea that disseminating these images could be a means of combating anti-Black brutality. But the ways these images are contextualized, repurposed and reconstituted by Black people are part of an infinite field of possibility for cultural and identity creation and assertion.
-
In Our Midst
2017-05-02What, in the world, are we supposed to care about, and how much? I don’t think the problem is entirely trivial — because we can’t actually care about everything equally, especially not all at once. My responsibility may be infinite, but my empathy is not, and there is more evil in the world at any given moment than I feel physically capable of processing, much less addressing with due thought and care.
In Our Midst
In Our Midst2017-05-02What, in the world, are we supposed to care about, and how much? I don’t think the problem is entirely trivial — because we can’t actually care about everything equally, especially not all at once. My responsibility may be infinite, but my empathy is not, and there is more evil in the world at any given moment than I feel physically capable of processing, much less addressing with due thought and care.
-
Consider the Lost Glove
2017-05-01Through sheer repetition in a collection of images, something arbitrary and familiar — a single lost glove — can take on surrealistic significance. Has the act of looking at a photograph ever been to remember “an object in its entirety,” if that were possible? Is it an empty glove on the pavement pointing to nothing that we remember, or some new thing entirely?
Consider the Lost Glove
Consider the Lost Glove2017-05-01Through sheer repetition in a collection of images, something arbitrary and familiar — a single lost glove — can take on surrealistic significance. Has the act of looking at a photograph ever been to remember “an object in its entirety,” if that were possible? Is it an empty glove on the pavement pointing to nothing that we remember, or some new thing entirely?
-
Help Wanted
2017-04-27Advice forums have given rise to their own, call-and-response genre, with a set of rules and a narrative structure. The advice-seeker describes a problem typically in 500 words or less, condensing and cutting away the details of their life to leave familiar forms of trouble; advice-givers respond in recognizable tropes that, memorized, can filter down into day-to-day conversations.
Help Wanted
Help Wanted2017-04-27Advice forums have given rise to their own, call-and-response genre, with a set of rules and a narrative structure. The advice-seeker describes a problem typically in 500 words or less, condensing and cutting away the details of their life to leave familiar forms of trouble; advice-givers respond in recognizable tropes that, memorized, can filter down into day-to-day conversations.
-
Routine Procedure
2017-04-26When protesters came with signs, one clinic responded by hanging a 1-800-ABORTION sign in view so any media coverage came with free promotion. Another pretty effective tool is lawn care: remote activated sprinklers soak protesters, so landscape work is scheduled to coincide with protests, drowning out chants and giving protestors a choice between getting covered in mulch or going away. One clinic put up a rather effective hedge until police determined it’d be a perfect place for anti-choice protestors to hide a bomb.
Routine Procedure
Routine Procedure2017-04-26When protesters came with signs, one clinic responded by hanging a 1-800-ABORTION sign in view so any media coverage came with free promotion. Another pretty effective tool is lawn care: remote activated sprinklers soak protesters, so landscape work is scheduled to coincide with protests, drowning out chants and giving protestors a choice between getting covered in mulch or going away. One clinic put up a rather effective hedge until police determined it’d be a perfect place for anti-choice protestors to hide a bomb.
-
Hate the Player
2017-04-25It’s not the sort of game you would want to play again and again, and that is part of the point: to problematize the kind of repetition that structures other games. But the estrangement of PUA language from its customary context also allows players to focus on its strategic logic and form, and perhaps recognize, disturbingly, how often they have already been exposed to such rhetoric — how often they have been brought to play this game in the world.
Hate the Player
Hate the Player2017-04-25It’s not the sort of game you would want to play again and again, and that is part of the point: to problematize the kind of repetition that structures other games. But the estrangement of PUA language from its customary context also allows players to focus on its strategic logic and form, and perhaps recognize, disturbingly, how often they have already been exposed to such rhetoric — how often they have been brought to play this game in the world.
-
Updating Our Nightmares
2017-04-24The stories we tell about surveillance are stuck in 1984 authoritarian dystopia, in which individual targets are tracked by governments. Now surveillance is often implemented commercially, and is depicted as and experienced (by some) as beneficial. Entire populations are collectively at risk, not as singled-out targets but categorically, by new forms of discrimination. New stories about surveillance should acknowledge these new forms, and how our subjectivity is shaped by rather than constrained by being watched.
Updating Our Nightmares
Updating Our Nightmares2017-04-24The stories we tell about surveillance are stuck in 1984 authoritarian dystopia, in which individual targets are tracked by governments. Now surveillance is often implemented commercially, and is depicted as and experienced (by some) as beneficial. Entire populations are collectively at risk, not as singled-out targets but categorically, by new forms of discrimination. New stories about surveillance should acknowledge these new forms, and how our subjectivity is shaped by rather than constrained by being watched.
-
New Skin
2017-04-20Like for the militant Tom Cruise in The Edge of Tomorrow, suspended in a 24-hour time loop to “save the day” and repeating his mission from the beginning every time he dies, the interchangeable role of reality and fantasy stands in for a “reset” button we press as we forge ahead. Both the visual lexicon and format of the film are identical to computer games where you “lose” — not always accidentally — and repeat the round.
New Skin
New Skin2017-04-20Like for the militant Tom Cruise in The Edge of Tomorrow, suspended in a 24-hour time loop to “save the day” and repeating his mission from the beginning every time he dies, the interchangeable role of reality and fantasy stands in for a “reset” button we press as we forge ahead. Both the visual lexicon and format of the film are identical to computer games where you “lose” — not always accidentally — and repeat the round.
-
Sky Mining
2017-04-19Capitalism has spent more than two centuries spewing out carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and other pollutants, causing profound planetary harm. And yet we inhabit a world where political leaders deny this reality. NASA is thus positing an alternative to trying to anticipate and forestall the chaos that global warming will unleash: space colonization.
Sky Mining
Sky Mining2017-04-19Capitalism has spent more than two centuries spewing out carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and other pollutants, causing profound planetary harm. And yet we inhabit a world where political leaders deny this reality. NASA is thus positing an alternative to trying to anticipate and forestall the chaos that global warming will unleash: space colonization.
-
World Domination
2017-04-18Rewilding is a term for a number of conservation techniques that involve the reintroduction of plants and animals to landscapes where they have been extirpated by human activity. Supposedly, it lets nature do its own restoration, but it is really just another extension of human power.
World Domination
World Domination2017-04-18Rewilding is a term for a number of conservation techniques that involve the reintroduction of plants and animals to landscapes where they have been extirpated by human activity. Supposedly, it lets nature do its own restoration, but it is really just another extension of human power.
-
Forever Now
2017-04-17I’d always thought that to believe you are part of something bigger was mere pacification — I’m predisposed to a sensation of cosmic solitude — but the idea of a long now gives me comfort, like a light bouncing off the moon reassures us there is something familiar out there in the void. The future, like the past, is something to hold onto.
Forever Now
Forever Now2017-04-17I’d always thought that to believe you are part of something bigger was mere pacification — I’m predisposed to a sensation of cosmic solitude — but the idea of a long now gives me comfort, like a light bouncing off the moon reassures us there is something familiar out there in the void. The future, like the past, is something to hold onto.
-
Wicked Game
2017-04-13Conventional wisdom around videogames states that the more reactive and responsive a world is to players, the more involving it becomes. Den vänstra handens stig trades back-of-the-box variety for a ruthlessly clear vision: one that allows players the space to contemplate the ideas in the game without the incessant distraction of playing it. Den vänstra handens stig is not the player’s story; or if it is, they play the role of death: lurking in the shadows until they extend a single withered finger and end the story.
Wicked Game
Wicked Game2017-04-13Conventional wisdom around videogames states that the more reactive and responsive a world is to players, the more involving it becomes. Den vänstra handens stig trades back-of-the-box variety for a ruthlessly clear vision: one that allows players the space to contemplate the ideas in the game without the incessant distraction of playing it. Den vänstra handens stig is not the player’s story; or if it is, they play the role of death: lurking in the shadows until they extend a single withered finger and end the story.
-
Code of Conduct
2017-04-12Platforms are the means for this enclosure, mediating activity for the purposes of controlling all forms of exchange around it. The sheer quantity of platforms that purport to be “Like Uber, but for X” shows how this process continues, with the goal of finding pieces of life that aren’t already commodified to bring them into the orbit of capital, taking things that were once free and selling them to us. Marxists call this “dispossession,” and platforms excel at it.
Code of Conduct
Code of Conduct2017-04-12Platforms are the means for this enclosure, mediating activity for the purposes of controlling all forms of exchange around it. The sheer quantity of platforms that purport to be “Like Uber, but for X” shows how this process continues, with the goal of finding pieces of life that aren’t already commodified to bring them into the orbit of capital, taking things that were once free and selling them to us. Marxists call this “dispossession,” and platforms excel at it.
-
Mercy Markets
2017-04-11There is always hardship in the world, always a person in need of a leg up financially, but social media have collapsed these tragedies indiscriminately into our lives, forcing us to decide when and how to give on the basis of how well suffering has been packaged for our consumption.
Mercy Markets
Mercy Markets2017-04-11There is always hardship in the world, always a person in need of a leg up financially, but social media have collapsed these tragedies indiscriminately into our lives, forcing us to decide when and how to give on the basis of how well suffering has been packaged for our consumption.
-
Spooky Action
2017-04-10In recognizing the language of technology as the language of the mysterious, we are also recognizing a limit on our ability to understand our evolving world in purely rational terms. The fact that technology continues to feel like magic, even when we acknowledge its earthly origins, suggests that the rational veneer over this aspect of our lives conceals a deep well of uncertainty.
Spooky Action
Spooky Action2017-04-10In recognizing the language of technology as the language of the mysterious, we are also recognizing a limit on our ability to understand our evolving world in purely rational terms. The fact that technology continues to feel like magic, even when we acknowledge its earthly origins, suggests that the rational veneer over this aspect of our lives conceals a deep well of uncertainty.
-
Networked Listening
2017-04-05Streaming services, by delineating the post-possession future, are also stoking demand for its opposite, re-enchanting vinyl in the process. In on-demand streaming services, one listens to individual recordings, but these are not the “ceremonies of a solitary,” not as long as every click spins off information that is instantly privatized by outside parties. These contradictions keep the our understandings of public and private in motion.
Networked Listening
Networked Listening2017-04-05Streaming services, by delineating the post-possession future, are also stoking demand for its opposite, re-enchanting vinyl in the process. In on-demand streaming services, one listens to individual recordings, but these are not the “ceremonies of a solitary,” not as long as every click spins off information that is instantly privatized by outside parties. These contradictions keep the our understandings of public and private in motion.
-
Stuck in the Middle
2017-04-04On Facebook or Twitter, the content of an article is never the whole story; it is only the jumping off point for signaling and discussions by the very cultures bubble-bursting services seek to explain. What proves most galvanizing on social media is often unreliable; often its reliability is not the point.
Stuck in the Middle
Stuck in the Middle2017-04-04On Facebook or Twitter, the content of an article is never the whole story; it is only the jumping off point for signaling and discussions by the very cultures bubble-bursting services seek to explain. What proves most galvanizing on social media is often unreliable; often its reliability is not the point.
-
Computer Moves
2017-04-03There’s a famous moment in Deep Blue vs. Kasparov that I find revealing. After staying up all night with his team trying to figure out a particular Deep Blue move, an exhausted Kasparov accused IBM of cheating. The move was genius, incredibly far-sighted, far above any move that Deep Blue had played so far, so much so that Kasparov believed it must have been illegal: He was convinced that only a human could have made it. Years later, it came out that Kasparov was kind of right; Deep Blue had selected the move at random, something it was programmed to do in the event of a certain malfunction. A main reason human-computer hybrids do so well at Advanced Chess is because the human ability to make a strategically random decision is still unmatched.
Computer Moves
Computer Moves2017-04-03There’s a famous moment in Deep Blue vs. Kasparov that I find revealing. After staying up all night with his team trying to figure out a particular Deep Blue move, an exhausted Kasparov accused IBM of cheating. The move was genius, incredibly far-sighted, far above any move that Deep Blue had played so far, so much so that Kasparov believed it must have been illegal: He was convinced that only a human could have made it. Years later, it came out that Kasparov was kind of right; Deep Blue had selected the move at random, something it was programmed to do in the event of a certain malfunction. A main reason human-computer hybrids do so well at Advanced Chess is because the human ability to make a strategically random decision is still unmatched.
-
Persistence of Vision
2017-03-30Livestreaming heightens the violence it shows. It can be an instrument of violence in itself. Some with hateful intentions are emboldened by the knowledge of an audience; for those being filmed, the exposure can add humiliation and shame to mounting fear. Those of us who watch from our iPhones and computers know that what we are witnessing is not over. We are helpless and complicit.
Persistence of Vision
Persistence of Vision2017-03-30Livestreaming heightens the violence it shows. It can be an instrument of violence in itself. Some with hateful intentions are emboldened by the knowledge of an audience; for those being filmed, the exposure can add humiliation and shame to mounting fear. Those of us who watch from our iPhones and computers know that what we are witnessing is not over. We are helpless and complicit.
-
Where Are You Really From
2017-03-29For all the 1990s utopian dreams of the internet as a space where nation-state borders don’t matter, what we’ve ended up with is an online version of our offline realities, in which borders are not transcended but instead exaggerated. Citizenships aren’t ignored but instead enforced more strongly, with internet users being put into stronger categories rather than having boundaries blurred like we had hoped. Data and the categorization of people and their identities have become more important than we ever imagined it would.
Where Are You Really From
Where Are You Really From2017-03-29For all the 1990s utopian dreams of the internet as a space where nation-state borders don’t matter, what we’ve ended up with is an online version of our offline realities, in which borders are not transcended but instead exaggerated. Citizenships aren’t ignored but instead enforced more strongly, with internet users being put into stronger categories rather than having boundaries blurred like we had hoped. Data and the categorization of people and their identities have become more important than we ever imagined it would.
-
Free Roaming
2017-03-28Many RPG computer games allow you to keep playing after you’ve finished the main story. In a world gone slack without a narrative, a character, alone and aimless, has a life for the first time. His movements become ultimately absurd. This RPG existentialism reminds us we’re often stuck in somebody else’s computer game, life devoted to the frantic pursuit of all-consuming means to paltry ends.
Free Roaming
Free Roaming2017-03-28Many RPG computer games allow you to keep playing after you’ve finished the main story. In a world gone slack without a narrative, a character, alone and aimless, has a life for the first time. His movements become ultimately absurd. This RPG existentialism reminds us we’re often stuck in somebody else’s computer game, life devoted to the frantic pursuit of all-consuming means to paltry ends.
-
Dividing Lines
2017-03-27There is no denying Google Earth has a sleek, handsome interface. When I log on to it, a cerulean blue orb pivots along an arc against a pitch-black sky dotted with stars, suggesting a reckoning with vastness. It evokes childlike wonder within me; I feel as if I’m an astronaut orbiting the world. But Google Earth is not a vaccine for everyone’s homesickness. For those of us whose corners of the world are considered “remote” or “uncharted” from an essentialist white, Western perspective, the interface is far from seamless.
Dividing Lines
Dividing Lines2017-03-27There is no denying Google Earth has a sleek, handsome interface. When I log on to it, a cerulean blue orb pivots along an arc against a pitch-black sky dotted with stars, suggesting a reckoning with vastness. It evokes childlike wonder within me; I feel as if I’m an astronaut orbiting the world. But Google Earth is not a vaccine for everyone’s homesickness. For those of us whose corners of the world are considered “remote” or “uncharted” from an essentialist white, Western perspective, the interface is far from seamless.
-
Sleep Country
2017-03-23Imagination aids and sleep aids are not necessarily at odds with each other — part of what people seem to be looking for in relaxation sounds and videos is to be transported outside of themselves. Going to a café costs money, but listening to “Relaxing Sounds of Busy Cafe Ambient Noise for Creative Productivity – 2 hrs” on YouTube is free. For some listeners, these are the sounds of home, while for others they may connote travel. But for the duration of the audio experience, all are mentally inhabiting the same space, listening to the same birds singing, the same door flapping open to the desert.
Sleep Country
Sleep Country2017-03-23Imagination aids and sleep aids are not necessarily at odds with each other — part of what people seem to be looking for in relaxation sounds and videos is to be transported outside of themselves. Going to a café costs money, but listening to “Relaxing Sounds of Busy Cafe Ambient Noise for Creative Productivity – 2 hrs” on YouTube is free. For some listeners, these are the sounds of home, while for others they may connote travel. But for the duration of the audio experience, all are mentally inhabiting the same space, listening to the same birds singing, the same door flapping open to the desert.
-
Longing for Tomorrow
2017-03-22Amid the divisiveness of the current political climate, a subcategory of sci-fi cinema becomes newly relevant. Romantic science fiction films shift the genre’s focus to the future of human connection. The emotional worlds we create together, and the way we provide care within them have everything to do with justice and quality of life; why shouldn’t science fiction, in addition to imagining new paradigms for social and political life, offer new paradigms for how to treat each other?
Longing for Tomorrow
Longing for Tomorrow2017-03-22Amid the divisiveness of the current political climate, a subcategory of sci-fi cinema becomes newly relevant. Romantic science fiction films shift the genre’s focus to the future of human connection. The emotional worlds we create together, and the way we provide care within them have everything to do with justice and quality of life; why shouldn’t science fiction, in addition to imagining new paradigms for social and political life, offer new paradigms for how to treat each other?
-
Safety in Numbers
2017-03-21Facebook’s Safety Check recontextualizes any event as mainly of personal interest, or not — it is embedded as more immediate or more relevant based on personal connections rather than any other gauge of its significance: how they occurred, who was vulnerable, who was most affected, and who received aid and attention. It impedes a broader understanding of how tragedies can be politicized.
Safety in Numbers
Safety in Numbers2017-03-21Facebook’s Safety Check recontextualizes any event as mainly of personal interest, or not — it is embedded as more immediate or more relevant based on personal connections rather than any other gauge of its significance: how they occurred, who was vulnerable, who was most affected, and who received aid and attention. It impedes a broader understanding of how tragedies can be politicized.
-
Money Talks
2017-03-20A rare artist or polemicist might be able to captivate and persuade millions through mere words and some luck. But in today’s fragmented media environment, amid unprecedented wealth inequality, the fight for truth on a large scale is waged by those with money and material power. Attacks on the media by rich bullies were still seen as a private matter; the panelists didn’t seem to appreciate the unified threat they posed to the fundamentals of the institution in a post-truth world.
Money Talks
Money Talks2017-03-20A rare artist or polemicist might be able to captivate and persuade millions through mere words and some luck. But in today’s fragmented media environment, amid unprecedented wealth inequality, the fight for truth on a large scale is waged by those with money and material power. Attacks on the media by rich bullies were still seen as a private matter; the panelists didn’t seem to appreciate the unified threat they posed to the fundamentals of the institution in a post-truth world.
-
The Beautiful Ones
2017-03-16For people marginalized by white supremacist beauty standards, online communities create space for self and collective affirmation. These channels don’t change the oppressive nature of beauty politics, but they hold the possibility of aesthetics as a healing practice.
The Beautiful Ones
The Beautiful Ones2017-03-16For people marginalized by white supremacist beauty standards, online communities create space for self and collective affirmation. These channels don’t change the oppressive nature of beauty politics, but they hold the possibility of aesthetics as a healing practice.
-
Tender Buttons
2017-03-15In an age where machines are supposedly about to take over our jobs, elevating our interactions with interfaces from the drudgery of work to the virtuosity of art tells a tale that valorizes the human over the machine.
Tender Buttons
Tender Buttons2017-03-15In an age where machines are supposedly about to take over our jobs, elevating our interactions with interfaces from the drudgery of work to the virtuosity of art tells a tale that valorizes the human over the machine.
-
Suspicious Minds
2017-03-14Journalists bent on revealing the racism and incompetence of the Trump regime are exposing a different unpleasant truth: that uncovering the conspiracy doesn’t actually do anything. “Paranoid readings” of our current climate expose open secrets and distract us from their structural bases.
Suspicious Minds
Suspicious Minds2017-03-14Journalists bent on revealing the racism and incompetence of the Trump regime are exposing a different unpleasant truth: that uncovering the conspiracy doesn’t actually do anything. “Paranoid readings” of our current climate expose open secrets and distract us from their structural bases.
-
Talk Therapy
2017-03-13The concept of self-sourced care is barely new, it’s not as though people are born with a therapist attached. Most self-sourced care requires a lot of money, time, resources, a supportive community or family environment, the ability to take time off work and everything else that many of us don’t have. Initial bereavement counseling usually seeks to reassure the bereaved that with time their feelings will subside and they will no longer need that same level of care. But in reality there is no timeline for grief, nor logic.
Talk Therapy
Talk Therapy2017-03-13The concept of self-sourced care is barely new, it’s not as though people are born with a therapist attached. Most self-sourced care requires a lot of money, time, resources, a supportive community or family environment, the ability to take time off work and everything else that many of us don’t have. Initial bereavement counseling usually seeks to reassure the bereaved that with time their feelings will subside and they will no longer need that same level of care. But in reality there is no timeline for grief, nor logic.
-
Illicit Material
2017-03-07When images are restricted and coveted, image quality becomes irrelevant. Instead, accessibility trumps technical quality, and “poor images” capable of being easily spread, optimized for the broadest possible availability under adverse circumstances, become the most valuable — for the people, if no longer for markets. These images do not conform to any sovereign nation’s intellectual property law. They become mass art by and for the masses, not because of their content (which is mostly U.S. entertainment industry product) but because of how they are circulated.
Illicit Material
Illicit Material2017-03-07When images are restricted and coveted, image quality becomes irrelevant. Instead, accessibility trumps technical quality, and “poor images” capable of being easily spread, optimized for the broadest possible availability under adverse circumstances, become the most valuable — for the people, if no longer for markets. These images do not conform to any sovereign nation’s intellectual property law. They become mass art by and for the masses, not because of their content (which is mostly U.S. entertainment industry product) but because of how they are circulated.
-
Cover Stories
2017-03-06I made many LiveJournal friends — many of whom eventually became close friends off the platform — but Alex was my one real LiveJournal crush. Of course, Alex was improbable, but when I was a teenager, the sheer fact of adulthood felt improbable. Every time I indicated, in diary form, my own desires, Alex would seem to not just understand them but fulfill them. The platform allowed him to appear as a deeply attentive reader of me.
Cover Stories
Cover Stories2017-03-06I made many LiveJournal friends — many of whom eventually became close friends off the platform — but Alex was my one real LiveJournal crush. Of course, Alex was improbable, but when I was a teenager, the sheer fact of adulthood felt improbable. Every time I indicated, in diary form, my own desires, Alex would seem to not just understand them but fulfill them. The platform allowed him to appear as a deeply attentive reader of me.
-
Ode to the Void
2017-03-02The compulsion to blog, despite the overwhelming indifference of the internet writ large, is not new. What is unique to it, what distinguishes it from scribbling in a notebook you can secure with a key, is that an audience does exist — if only theoretically. And it’s that phantom presence, out there somewhere in the void, that shapes the work into something distinct from entries in a diary. That’s why when a trawler happens onto these strangers’ musings, he lingers for a while, entranced. It’s in those moments, more than during any Periscope stream or exchange of Snapchats, that the promise of the internet seems closest: watching and admiring another person’s brain, functioning privately.
Ode to the Void
Ode to the Void2017-03-02The compulsion to blog, despite the overwhelming indifference of the internet writ large, is not new. What is unique to it, what distinguishes it from scribbling in a notebook you can secure with a key, is that an audience does exist — if only theoretically. And it’s that phantom presence, out there somewhere in the void, that shapes the work into something distinct from entries in a diary. That’s why when a trawler happens onto these strangers’ musings, he lingers for a while, entranced. It’s in those moments, more than during any Periscope stream or exchange of Snapchats, that the promise of the internet seems closest: watching and admiring another person’s brain, functioning privately.
-
Considered Alternatives
2017-03-01The reified world both does and does not hold the monopoly on our lived experience. For many of those who felt Trump’s victory as a rip in the cosmos as they understood it, there has been a second reality dogging ours, a phantom limb they can still feel moving. Our propensity for imagining what could happen — both positive and negative — means that other worlds continually press against us, dimpling the contours of what is. At times, their pressure can be hard to bear. Where can we go to explore the worlds that did not come to be?
Considered Alternatives
Considered Alternatives2017-03-01The reified world both does and does not hold the monopoly on our lived experience. For many of those who felt Trump’s victory as a rip in the cosmos as they understood it, there has been a second reality dogging ours, a phantom limb they can still feel moving. Our propensity for imagining what could happen — both positive and negative — means that other worlds continually press against us, dimpling the contours of what is. At times, their pressure can be hard to bear. Where can we go to explore the worlds that did not come to be?
-
Force Fed
2017-02-28Algorithmic feeds deployed to track preferences and tastes are better understood as means for reproducing prevailing social conditions, organized in terms of prescribed identities. Wealthy, white, and male subjects face algorithmic sorting meant to stoke their supremacist desires. The rest face a more vulgar, violent kind of sorting in terms of race, gender, sexuality, or ability.
Force Fed
Force Fed2017-02-28Algorithmic feeds deployed to track preferences and tastes are better understood as means for reproducing prevailing social conditions, organized in terms of prescribed identities. Wealthy, white, and male subjects face algorithmic sorting meant to stoke their supremacist desires. The rest face a more vulgar, violent kind of sorting in terms of race, gender, sexuality, or ability.
-
Eating Dirt
2017-02-27Along the spectrum of good taste and the lack of it, dirt presents the uncanny illusion of common ground in the middle, providing the hungry a compulsive and sensual experience while offering something emotionally raw to the well-fed to help them pass the time. We all take pleasure in fakes and mimicries. The unconscious joy of fraudulence is in its dependence on us as participants; accepting the deceptive confusion is the price we pay to maintain the illusion that our tastes, feelings, or reactions are somehow central.
Eating Dirt
Eating Dirt2017-02-27Along the spectrum of good taste and the lack of it, dirt presents the uncanny illusion of common ground in the middle, providing the hungry a compulsive and sensual experience while offering something emotionally raw to the well-fed to help them pass the time. We all take pleasure in fakes and mimicries. The unconscious joy of fraudulence is in its dependence on us as participants; accepting the deceptive confusion is the price we pay to maintain the illusion that our tastes, feelings, or reactions are somehow central.
-
Word Perfect
2017-02-23Correct pronunciations are something one has to learn: there’s a physicality and practice involved in learning to say “Nietzsche,” which confers a distinct cachet within the dominant culture. If you can learn how to say Nietzsche, you can learn to say Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
Word Perfect
Word Perfect2017-02-23Correct pronunciations are something one has to learn: there’s a physicality and practice involved in learning to say “Nietzsche,” which confers a distinct cachet within the dominant culture. If you can learn how to say Nietzsche, you can learn to say Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
-
The Learning Annex
2017-02-22Self-described “Deplorable Prof” Michael Rectenwald recently called his followers, which include self-described White Nationalists, his “Twitter family,” while at NYU he felt like he was “being exiled.” Like many other defectors, he belongs to a movement that seeks to be for white men, in an ironic turn of which they are fully conscious, a safe space. For these defectors, perhaps hurt feelings and defensiveness could be said to have hijacked values and political convictions; the way this community made them feel about themselves became more important than what it stood for.
The Learning Annex
The Learning Annex2017-02-22Self-described “Deplorable Prof” Michael Rectenwald recently called his followers, which include self-described White Nationalists, his “Twitter family,” while at NYU he felt like he was “being exiled.” Like many other defectors, he belongs to a movement that seeks to be for white men, in an ironic turn of which they are fully conscious, a safe space. For these defectors, perhaps hurt feelings and defensiveness could be said to have hijacked values and political convictions; the way this community made them feel about themselves became more important than what it stood for.
-
Rule by Nobody
2017-02-21Algorithms may be sold as reducing bias, but their chief aim is to generate profit, power, and control. When they are working well, they are not working at all for us. They function as the equivalent of bureaucracy rendered in digital code, implementing outcomes while defraying responsibility.
Fairness is the alibi for the way algorithmic systems reduce human subjects to only the attributes expressible as data, which makes us easier to monitor, manipulate, sell to, and exploit. They transfer risk from their operators to those caught up within their gears. So
Rule by Nobody
Rule by Nobody2017-02-21Algorithms may be sold as reducing bias, but their chief aim is to generate profit, power, and control. When they are working well, they are not working at all for us. They function as the equivalent of bureaucracy rendered in digital code, implementing outcomes while defraying responsibility.
Fairness is the alibi for the way algorithmic systems reduce human subjects to only the attributes expressible as data, which makes us easier to monitor, manipulate, sell to, and exploit. They transfer risk from their operators to those caught up within their gears. So
-
Tactical Virality
2017-02-14The Trump campaign played to a media structured to ultimately privilege attention over fact checking. The attention he garnered would become the only relevant fact about him; attention itself plays as its own form of truth. Any politician who, like Clinton, depends on the media to tout the dignity and decorum of the establishment’s political rituals is now vulnerable, regardless of their ideology. The demand that media be viral has unsettled any symbiosis between political pomp and media tact.
Tactical Virality
Tactical Virality2017-02-14The Trump campaign played to a media structured to ultimately privilege attention over fact checking. The attention he garnered would become the only relevant fact about him; attention itself plays as its own form of truth. Any politician who, like Clinton, depends on the media to tout the dignity and decorum of the establishment’s political rituals is now vulnerable, regardless of their ideology. The demand that media be viral has unsettled any symbiosis between political pomp and media tact.
-
Minor Infractions
2017-02-09As a parent, surveilling your kid can feel both like a violation of their privacy and a safety imperative: You become complicit in removing their agency over what they wish to reveal, but also you are not the only one watching them. What’s worrisome isn’t the “trouble” a parent might discover their kid has gotten into so much as its persistence on their public record.
Minor Infractions
Minor Infractions2017-02-09As a parent, surveilling your kid can feel both like a violation of their privacy and a safety imperative: You become complicit in removing their agency over what they wish to reveal, but also you are not the only one watching them. What’s worrisome isn’t the “trouble” a parent might discover their kid has gotten into so much as its persistence on their public record.
-
Interiority Complex
2017-02-08In online groups, tastes can begin to converge, focusing on the same stores, the same pieces, the same safe ideas. The sense that one’s decor is always potentially on display, capable of being posted to social media whenever, tightens the feedback loop between what is in actual homes, and what appears in the design-themed posts of our carefully chosen peers. Instead of extravagant creative visions, it’s the same couches, the same rugs, the same curtains, remixed slightly into a different combination, and then settling back into sameness — a comfortable familiarity cast in the image of furniture.
Interiority Complex
Interiority Complex2017-02-08In online groups, tastes can begin to converge, focusing on the same stores, the same pieces, the same safe ideas. The sense that one’s decor is always potentially on display, capable of being posted to social media whenever, tightens the feedback loop between what is in actual homes, and what appears in the design-themed posts of our carefully chosen peers. Instead of extravagant creative visions, it’s the same couches, the same rugs, the same curtains, remixed slightly into a different combination, and then settling back into sameness — a comfortable familiarity cast in the image of furniture.
-
Virtual Atrocities
2017-02-07Simulations have myriad advantages over static memorials and museum displays: They are protected from prejudicial defacement and wear from hordes of visitors, and the scenes they depict can, in theory, be made available to anyone, anywhere. CEOs at the World Economic Forum in Davos can enter the Za’atari refugee camp from the plush comfort of Switzerland. But technology has a tendency to fail and to age, quickly. When it takes on such condemnable subjects, the failure of the medium may be an affront to the victims whose reality it has seized.
Virtual Atrocities
Virtual Atrocities2017-02-07Simulations have myriad advantages over static memorials and museum displays: They are protected from prejudicial defacement and wear from hordes of visitors, and the scenes they depict can, in theory, be made available to anyone, anywhere. CEOs at the World Economic Forum in Davos can enter the Za’atari refugee camp from the plush comfort of Switzerland. But technology has a tendency to fail and to age, quickly. When it takes on such condemnable subjects, the failure of the medium may be an affront to the victims whose reality it has seized.
-
Terminal Democracy
2017-02-06Positioned at the nexus of so many different frontiers, physical and conceptual, airports seem to be foretold sites of vulnerability and inevitable chaos. Airports are where ideals of free movement collide with protocols of restriction and privilege. That makes them vital sites of protest.
Terminal Democracy
Terminal Democracy2017-02-06Positioned at the nexus of so many different frontiers, physical and conceptual, airports seem to be foretold sites of vulnerability and inevitable chaos. Airports are where ideals of free movement collide with protocols of restriction and privilege. That makes them vital sites of protest.
-
Selfwork
2017-02-02In the realm of perpetual work, it would seem that sheer exhaustion would overwhelm the possibility of continual productivity. Taylorist time-and-motion studies would seem beside the point if we are always working. But the spirit of measurement remains central to the project of reconciling workers to their work. Only now, workers are invited to seemingly measure themselves, and use the data for their own personal betterment. This calls for different form of measuring that can assess the worker’s body as valuable property.
Selfwork
Selfwork2017-02-02In the realm of perpetual work, it would seem that sheer exhaustion would overwhelm the possibility of continual productivity. Taylorist time-and-motion studies would seem beside the point if we are always working. But the spirit of measurement remains central to the project of reconciling workers to their work. Only now, workers are invited to seemingly measure themselves, and use the data for their own personal betterment. This calls for different form of measuring that can assess the worker’s body as valuable property.
-
Gunsight
2017-02-01Gunshots recorded on police dashcams are choppy, the muzzle flash is too quick to be picked up by the camera sensor. But the timestamp in the lower right-hand corner tells us the duration and date of the shooting. Technical details, like the mechanics of a firearm. The cataloging of a killing with little gore. Body cameras supposedly promote police accountability. But body cameras are prone to malfunctioning and panicked camera movements, the obvious stability issues of mounting a low-resolution camera on a person’s chest.
Gunsight
Gunsight2017-02-01Gunshots recorded on police dashcams are choppy, the muzzle flash is too quick to be picked up by the camera sensor. But the timestamp in the lower right-hand corner tells us the duration and date of the shooting. Technical details, like the mechanics of a firearm. The cataloging of a killing with little gore. Body cameras supposedly promote police accountability. But body cameras are prone to malfunctioning and panicked camera movements, the obvious stability issues of mounting a low-resolution camera on a person’s chest.
-
Jury Duty
2017-01-31These material incentives line up to make the most toxic aspects of contemporary internet culture — things like ideological bubbles or fake news or harassment campaigns — unfixable under the most prevalent media business models. From the perspective of driving user engagement, these behaviors are features. This is why newspapers allow readers to vandalize articles with racist and otherwise hateful comments — engagement is engagement! A good-faith reader is worth one click, whereas a devoted racist troll could be worth dozens.
Jury Duty
Jury Duty2017-01-31These material incentives line up to make the most toxic aspects of contemporary internet culture — things like ideological bubbles or fake news or harassment campaigns — unfixable under the most prevalent media business models. From the perspective of driving user engagement, these behaviors are features. This is why newspapers allow readers to vandalize articles with racist and otherwise hateful comments — engagement is engagement! A good-faith reader is worth one click, whereas a devoted racist troll could be worth dozens.
-
Re: Doctor James Kelly
2017-01-27Watching a doctor work possesses a lovely mystery. You know what the motive is — figuring out what is or isn’t killing you — but you don’t know how which gesture will uncover whatever scary information is there to be uncovered. You know when the game is won but not how it’s played. Often, it’s as though a doctor sees you with more accuracy than you could muster yourself.
Re: Doctor James Kelly
Re: Doctor James Kelly2017-01-27Watching a doctor work possesses a lovely mystery. You know what the motive is — figuring out what is or isn’t killing you — but you don’t know how which gesture will uncover whatever scary information is there to be uncovered. You know when the game is won but not how it’s played. Often, it’s as though a doctor sees you with more accuracy than you could muster yourself.
-
Close Calls
2017-01-26When calls drop, my mother worries. What if something terrible just happened? That one monthly phone call is her way of finding out about her brother, her cousins, her sister in law, her nieces and nephews, her school friends and their families, and of updating them on how we’re all doing, too. Talking is worse than not talking, but hearing voices triggers an emotional response far beyond that of the written word, and the janky technology amplifies that, for good and bad.
Close Calls
Close Calls2017-01-26When calls drop, my mother worries. What if something terrible just happened? That one monthly phone call is her way of finding out about her brother, her cousins, her sister in law, her nieces and nephews, her school friends and their families, and of updating them on how we’re all doing, too. Talking is worse than not talking, but hearing voices triggers an emotional response far beyond that of the written word, and the janky technology amplifies that, for good and bad.
-
Liquid Lunch
2017-01-25Meal replacement drinks like Soylent, and its predecessor, SlimFast, fetishize austerity and promise transcendence through self-denial. SlimFast, marketed to women, sells bodies without minds, while Soylent, masculinized, sells minds without the encumbrance of bodies, disguised as “biohacking.”
Liquid Lunch
Liquid Lunch2017-01-25Meal replacement drinks like Soylent, and its predecessor, SlimFast, fetishize austerity and promise transcendence through self-denial. SlimFast, marketed to women, sells bodies without minds, while Soylent, masculinized, sells minds without the encumbrance of bodies, disguised as “biohacking.”
-
Worlds of Pain
2017-01-24Machines, especially ones cold to the touch, seem robotic to us, displaying no affection. When a panel snaps, or a program loops infinitely, we notice without pity, recalculating our way around the breakage. Pain works inductively. Here none has been seen. So we respond robotically.
Worlds of Pain
Worlds of Pain2017-01-24Machines, especially ones cold to the touch, seem robotic to us, displaying no affection. When a panel snaps, or a program loops infinitely, we notice without pity, recalculating our way around the breakage. Pain works inductively. Here none has been seen. So we respond robotically.
-
The Laugherators
2017-01-23Irony, despite its instability, is highly normative: If nothing else, it delineates an in-group and an out-group. Small-d democratic idioms of humor tend to reveal the arbitrariness of moral conventions and to mock the pretensions of elites, but irony often has a profoundly aristocratic cast. You always need to double-check with the vanguard (whoever they might be) to make sure that you are on the right side of the ironic divide. You can never be sure that you have verified — properly, completely, finally — whether you are at the table or on the menu.
The Laugherators
The Laugherators2017-01-23Irony, despite its instability, is highly normative: If nothing else, it delineates an in-group and an out-group. Small-d democratic idioms of humor tend to reveal the arbitrariness of moral conventions and to mock the pretensions of elites, but irony often has a profoundly aristocratic cast. You always need to double-check with the vanguard (whoever they might be) to make sure that you are on the right side of the ironic divide. You can never be sure that you have verified — properly, completely, finally — whether you are at the table or on the menu.
-
Camp Dread
2017-01-19In viewing Melania as “camp,” a hateful figure is reimagined as farcical. By reconfiguring and repurposing Melania as an absurdist character whose presence momentarily undermines the legitimacy of her much more sinister husband, viewers can act as curators of the Trump spectacle, restoring some sense of agency and hope when it is in short supply. The camping of Melania isn’t a radical or necessarily effective political strategy. Rather, it’s a meaningful and distinctly queer method of poking fun that offers fleeting moments of catharsis.
Camp Dread
Camp Dread2017-01-19In viewing Melania as “camp,” a hateful figure is reimagined as farcical. By reconfiguring and repurposing Melania as an absurdist character whose presence momentarily undermines the legitimacy of her much more sinister husband, viewers can act as curators of the Trump spectacle, restoring some sense of agency and hope when it is in short supply. The camping of Melania isn’t a radical or necessarily effective political strategy. Rather, it’s a meaningful and distinctly queer method of poking fun that offers fleeting moments of catharsis.
-
Hearing Things
2017-01-18We’ve already acknowledged headphones as shorthand for “Do Not Disturb,” and their presence often affords us the refuge of at least being able to act as though we don’t hear the noise of, say, catcallers, even though much of the time we still do. For hearing persons, the sense of sound is a crucial one to human companionship; we equate quiet with distance. It was probably inevitable that the technology would proceed in this direction as soon as we had the means to facilitate it. We’re moving beyond the idea of shutting out the world. We’re entering the era of curating it.
Hearing Things
Hearing Things2017-01-18We’ve already acknowledged headphones as shorthand for “Do Not Disturb,” and their presence often affords us the refuge of at least being able to act as though we don’t hear the noise of, say, catcallers, even though much of the time we still do. For hearing persons, the sense of sound is a crucial one to human companionship; we equate quiet with distance. It was probably inevitable that the technology would proceed in this direction as soon as we had the means to facilitate it. We’re moving beyond the idea of shutting out the world. We’re entering the era of curating it.
-
All I Know Is What’s on the Internet
2017-01-17“Information literacy” has been proposed by many educators as the antidote to “fake news.” But its assumptions about journalism, citizenship, and information consumption are outdated. It cannot deal with bad-faith authority figures, news recast as entertainment, and the emotional rewards of individualized filter bubbles.
All I Know Is What’s on the Internet
All I Know Is What’s on the Internet2017-01-17“Information literacy” has been proposed by many educators as the antidote to “fake news.” But its assumptions about journalism, citizenship, and information consumption are outdated. It cannot deal with bad-faith authority figures, news recast as entertainment, and the emotional rewards of individualized filter bubbles.
-
Emergency Dialect
2017-01-12Human language use isn’t amenable to the kind of crisp snapshots we would like it to produce — we speak in incomplete sentences, interrupt each other, and mishear. What matters isn’t so much that we have a perfect specimen, but that we have a grasp on the mechanisms that produce them. Indeed, linguistic and cognitive science research increasingly suggests that there is only a single human language — the language of thought, of which every other language is simply a type of dialect.
Emergency Dialect
Emergency Dialect2017-01-12Human language use isn’t amenable to the kind of crisp snapshots we would like it to produce — we speak in incomplete sentences, interrupt each other, and mishear. What matters isn’t so much that we have a perfect specimen, but that we have a grasp on the mechanisms that produce them. Indeed, linguistic and cognitive science research increasingly suggests that there is only a single human language — the language of thought, of which every other language is simply a type of dialect.
-
Clickbait Thanatos
2017-01-11Poetry, which was once itself a searching engine, exists in abundance in the age of Trump, as searchable and as immaterial as any other information. As it always has, poetry experiments in fashionable confusions, excels in the popular substitutive fantasies of its time, mistakes self-expression for sovereignty. But in making the world blurry, distressing, and forgettable, poetry now has near limitless competition.
Clickbait Thanatos
Clickbait Thanatos2017-01-11Poetry, which was once itself a searching engine, exists in abundance in the age of Trump, as searchable and as immaterial as any other information. As it always has, poetry experiments in fashionable confusions, excels in the popular substitutive fantasies of its time, mistakes self-expression for sovereignty. But in making the world blurry, distressing, and forgettable, poetry now has near limitless competition.
-
Come Into My World
2017-01-10At worst, it seems like all the information I consume — to say nothing of the systems that deliver it to me — is somehow cancerous. Even the best news curdles in context. But goodness strobes in and out, and the pleasures of Couch Mode feel oddly pure, even under the auspices of Twitter: ordinary life beams through.
Come Into My World
Come Into My World2017-01-10At worst, it seems like all the information I consume — to say nothing of the systems that deliver it to me — is somehow cancerous. Even the best news curdles in context. But goodness strobes in and out, and the pleasures of Couch Mode feel oddly pure, even under the auspices of Twitter: ordinary life beams through.
-
Solve for Why
2017-01-09The shifting of meaning of the equals sign is a movement to take away the mathematical teaching of the idea of equality and replace it with the mathematical teaching of the idea of finality. Instead of giving students the metaphor that on either side of equality is a set of contexts and thoughts that combine in different ways but mean the same thing, we give them the metaphor that if you do things in order you end up getting an answer, and then you are done.
Solve for Why
Solve for Why2017-01-09The shifting of meaning of the equals sign is a movement to take away the mathematical teaching of the idea of equality and replace it with the mathematical teaching of the idea of finality. Instead of giving students the metaphor that on either side of equality is a set of contexts and thoughts that combine in different ways but mean the same thing, we give them the metaphor that if you do things in order you end up getting an answer, and then you are done.
-
SPECIAL ISSUES: The Collection
2017-01-06Real Life presents the complete SPECIAL ISSUES for your consideration. Please enjoy these re-runs until we return to our usual scheduled program.
The Collection
The Collection2017-01-06Real Life presents the complete SPECIAL ISSUES for your consideration. Please enjoy these re-runs until we return to our usual scheduled program.
-
SPECIAL ISSUES: Transcendence
2017-01-05As a kid bored on a car ride or a teen stoned in afternoon class I imagined zones of psychic communion, immaterial common rooms where everyone I knew lived a second life. These spaces are now mundane, although, if anything, the internet proves that mundanity is an illusion and that everything is shot through with magic, or whatever you want to call it. Online doesn’t feel new at all.
Transcendence
Transcendence2017-01-05As a kid bored on a car ride or a teen stoned in afternoon class I imagined zones of psychic communion, immaterial common rooms where everyone I knew lived a second life. These spaces are now mundane, although, if anything, the internet proves that mundanity is an illusion and that everything is shot through with magic, or whatever you want to call it. Online doesn’t feel new at all.
-
SPECIAL ISSUES: Repetition
2017-01-04Repetition has a way of meting out time; in recollection I have a way of meeting myself again, and giving me, as I do, the time of day. Restatements of a theme hold immense sway in figuring out why things, happening as they did, ever induced rapture or heartbreak, turning a lifelong project into a more digestible course.
Repetition
Repetition2017-01-04Repetition has a way of meting out time; in recollection I have a way of meeting myself again, and giving me, as I do, the time of day. Restatements of a theme hold immense sway in figuring out why things, happening as they did, ever induced rapture or heartbreak, turning a lifelong project into a more digestible course.
-
SPECIAL ISSUES: Fascism
2017-01-03Online platforms have become instruments for meting out brutality, suppressing freedom of thought, reinforcing marginalization and social exclusion, and enforcing orthodoxy. But it makes sense also to think of fascism itself as a political technology, an approach to social control that relies on negating the truth, sowing confusion, destabilizing shared values, and setting unmoored bureaucracies against the population and one another.
Fascism
Fascism2017-01-03Online platforms have become instruments for meting out brutality, suppressing freedom of thought, reinforcing marginalization and social exclusion, and enforcing orthodoxy. But it makes sense also to think of fascism itself as a political technology, an approach to social control that relies on negating the truth, sowing confusion, destabilizing shared values, and setting unmoored bureaucracies against the population and one another.
-
SPECIAL ISSUES: Structure
2017-01-02Cities, buildings, clothing, transportation systems may not seem technological in the same way as digital devices, but they all are means by which social relations are sustained and given a graspable order. They all shape what kinds of thought are possible, what collective and individual aspirations can be conceived, what sorts of failure we may face. That is to say, they structure, and the innumerable iterative choices that have gone into them afford and preclude experience, extending new freedoms — and risks.
Structure
Structure2017-01-02Cities, buildings, clothing, transportation systems may not seem technological in the same way as digital devices, but they all are means by which social relations are sustained and given a graspable order. They all shape what kinds of thought are possible, what collective and individual aspirations can be conceived, what sorts of failure we may face. That is to say, they structure, and the innumerable iterative choices that have gone into them afford and preclude experience, extending new freedoms — and risks.
-
SPECIAL ISSUES: Bots
2016-12-29We can only trust bots when they say they can think, though we will have no incentive to believe them. Economists have long insisted that humans respond only to incentives and believing anything else is false sentimentality. We will demand that our bots be equally as self-centered, otherwise we will find it impossible to control them.
Bots
Bots2016-12-29We can only trust bots when they say they can think, though we will have no incentive to believe them. Economists have long insisted that humans respond only to incentives and believing anything else is false sentimentality. We will demand that our bots be equally as self-centered, otherwise we will find it impossible to control them.
-
SPECIAL ISSUES: Blood Ties
2016-12-28Some stretch of primordial time passed — I imagine, I can’t look it up right now — during which blood was only shed, spilled or stolen, before it was ever drawn or given. Blood is magnetic wealth; it is the stuff of lifelong pacts and biohazards. The life of a creature is in the blood, and we are bloody symbolic creatures.
Blood Ties
Blood Ties2016-12-28Some stretch of primordial time passed — I imagine, I can’t look it up right now — during which blood was only shed, spilled or stolen, before it was ever drawn or given. Blood is magnetic wealth; it is the stuff of lifelong pacts and biohazards. The life of a creature is in the blood, and we are bloody symbolic creatures.
-
SPECIAL ISSUES: Static
2016-12-27Getting together is a need — to withhold it from others is a form of deprivation or torture; to refuse it can be a form of self-harm, or evil — and there is no having gotten together, only a never-satisfied effort whose requirements change by the moment, detectable by its failures, identified as longing, longing alongside. Empathy is insufficient. But it makes life livable.
Static
Static2016-12-27Getting together is a need — to withhold it from others is a form of deprivation or torture; to refuse it can be a form of self-harm, or evil — and there is no having gotten together, only a never-satisfied effort whose requirements change by the moment, detectable by its failures, identified as longing, longing alongside. Empathy is insufficient. But it makes life livable.
-
SPECIAL ISSUES: Ways of Speaking
2016-12-26New ways of asking yield different ways of knowing, redefining what can be thought and who typically gets to be heard. A sense of information abundance brings a sense of omnipotence and hopeless inundation in equal measure. How we listen, too, is altered, as we hear content in tandem with its virality, and momentum (rather than the medium) becomes the message.
Ways of Speaking
Ways of Speaking2016-12-26New ways of asking yield different ways of knowing, redefining what can be thought and who typically gets to be heard. A sense of information abundance brings a sense of omnipotence and hopeless inundation in equal measure. How we listen, too, is altered, as we hear content in tandem with its virality, and momentum (rather than the medium) becomes the message.
-
End of the Line
2016-12-22When San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) responded to its passengers on Twitter with thorough, pessimistically tinged transparency, it became a hot topic for newsrooms both regional and national, and the subject of general praise: Here was a public institution, daring not to think positively. But this strategic spokesmanship embodied a disconcerting trend: the illusion of transparency through pessimism, even while only a fraction of the truth was being revealed.
End of the Line
End of the Line2016-12-22When San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) responded to its passengers on Twitter with thorough, pessimistically tinged transparency, it became a hot topic for newsrooms both regional and national, and the subject of general praise: Here was a public institution, daring not to think positively. But this strategic spokesmanship embodied a disconcerting trend: the illusion of transparency through pessimism, even while only a fraction of the truth was being revealed.
-
Memetic Mori
2016-12-21The desire to seek out some sort of unvarnished truth, beyond the influence of “media” reflects the same cultural current that has brought us hyperpartisan Facebook echo chambers and fake news. It’s a confirmation bias of sorts. The “truth” that MyDeathSpace users are seeking to confirm is one in which death is neither wholly random nor taboo; MyDeathSpace both quantifies and qualifies death, in a way that death, in reality, resists.
Memetic Mori
Memetic Mori2016-12-21The desire to seek out some sort of unvarnished truth, beyond the influence of “media” reflects the same cultural current that has brought us hyperpartisan Facebook echo chambers and fake news. It’s a confirmation bias of sorts. The “truth” that MyDeathSpace users are seeking to confirm is one in which death is neither wholly random nor taboo; MyDeathSpace both quantifies and qualifies death, in a way that death, in reality, resists.
-
Fight From the Inside
2016-12-20Trolling doesn’t always need to be elaborate, of course. Sometimes it means throwing a wrench in the general direction of a machine, like swinging the tenor of a Reddit discussion with a strategic half-dozen downvotes. Trolling can be as much an act of empathy as of cynicism.
Fight From the Inside
Fight From the Inside2016-12-20Trolling doesn’t always need to be elaborate, of course. Sometimes it means throwing a wrench in the general direction of a machine, like swinging the tenor of a Reddit discussion with a strategic half-dozen downvotes. Trolling can be as much an act of empathy as of cynicism.
-
Telling Time
2016-12-19If you don’t have a good video game culture of your own, you might not believe a video game can teach you about love. When my brother and I were binging on digital fantasy like the controllers were IV lines to a morphine drip, the common belief was that video games instantly atrophied every admirable human quality: curiosity, intelligence, extroversion. Maybe bad games do that, as can bad movies or bad books. But Chrono Trigger was not a bad game, and it was our favorite.
Telling Time
Telling Time2016-12-19If you don’t have a good video game culture of your own, you might not believe a video game can teach you about love. When my brother and I were binging on digital fantasy like the controllers were IV lines to a morphine drip, the common belief was that video games instantly atrophied every admirable human quality: curiosity, intelligence, extroversion. Maybe bad games do that, as can bad movies or bad books. But Chrono Trigger was not a bad game, and it was our favorite.
-
Re: Shogo Garcia
2016-12-16Although I’m not the intended audience for Garcia’s coaching, I’ve kept his videos in my web of soothing content. To me, there is something “oddly satisfying” about the way he draws in men searching for pick-up advice and then offers them an alternative to patriarchal selfhood. It feels good to believe that he is staging an effective anti-sexist intervention in the online realm of masculinist self-help.
Re: Shogo Garcia
Re: Shogo Garcia2016-12-16Although I’m not the intended audience for Garcia’s coaching, I’ve kept his videos in my web of soothing content. To me, there is something “oddly satisfying” about the way he draws in men searching for pick-up advice and then offers them an alternative to patriarchal selfhood. It feels good to believe that he is staging an effective anti-sexist intervention in the online realm of masculinist self-help.
-
Stop Motion
2016-12-15Stillness offers the chance to reflect, to meditate. But it is also hard work. Maintaining motionlessness is a feat of physical endurance, as shown by the quivering arms of the carefully balanced participants in many Mannequin Challenge videos. Ultimately, stillness is a struggle between one’s mind and body in the quest to reach a controlled state.
Stop Motion
Stop Motion2016-12-15Stillness offers the chance to reflect, to meditate. But it is also hard work. Maintaining motionlessness is a feat of physical endurance, as shown by the quivering arms of the carefully balanced participants in many Mannequin Challenge videos. Ultimately, stillness is a struggle between one’s mind and body in the quest to reach a controlled state.
-
Life Support
2016-12-14When you depend on glycemic control, blood goes into your device, data comes out, and self-tracking is not a choice. Upwards of eight times daily I press a spring-loaded lancet against a fingertip, release the mechanism, and massage the fleshy digit until a neat globule of blood pools upon it. I peer at the small screen as I wait for my body to talk in numbers.
Life Support
Life Support2016-12-14When you depend on glycemic control, blood goes into your device, data comes out, and self-tracking is not a choice. Upwards of eight times daily I press a spring-loaded lancet against a fingertip, release the mechanism, and massage the fleshy digit until a neat globule of blood pools upon it. I peer at the small screen as I wait for my body to talk in numbers.
-
Apocalypse Whatever
2016-12-13Shitposting tends to defy analysis. Shitposters, who are bound by nothing, set a rhetorical trap for their enemies, who tend to be bound by having an actual point. Attempts to analyze what shitposters are doing, or what their posts really mean, does nothing to defuse them; instead it reinforces their project by amplifying their signal.
Apocalypse Whatever
Apocalypse Whatever2016-12-13Shitposting tends to defy analysis. Shitposters, who are bound by nothing, set a rhetorical trap for their enemies, who tend to be bound by having an actual point. Attempts to analyze what shitposters are doing, or what their posts really mean, does nothing to defuse them; instead it reinforces their project by amplifying their signal.
-
Defending Your Life
2016-12-12Why does the public feel entitled to displays of vulnerability from women, especially women of color, in the public eye, as though their success is a reflection of neoliberalism’s tendency to reward model minorities for their climb up the socioeconomic ladder until they start to “slip up”? For those most at risk of involuntary exposure — those expected to apologize simply for existing in public — self-exposure can be a form of strategy.
Defending Your Life
Defending Your Life2016-12-12Why does the public feel entitled to displays of vulnerability from women, especially women of color, in the public eye, as though their success is a reflection of neoliberalism’s tendency to reward model minorities for their climb up the socioeconomic ladder until they start to “slip up”? For those most at risk of involuntary exposure — those expected to apologize simply for existing in public — self-exposure can be a form of strategy.
-
Image Feed
2016-12-08Food is a visual medium. Consuming images of food offers a different satisfaction from eating that food, and often a better one. We use “food porn” to imagine ourselves in situations we may or may not want to be in, to experience desire over food we might not dare to actually consume. Staging meals for photos is its own pleasure too, lending permanence to a transitory occasion.
Image Feed
Image Feed2016-12-08Food is a visual medium. Consuming images of food offers a different satisfaction from eating that food, and often a better one. We use “food porn” to imagine ourselves in situations we may or may not want to be in, to experience desire over food we might not dare to actually consume. Staging meals for photos is its own pleasure too, lending permanence to a transitory occasion.
-
Selfless Devotion
2016-12-07The robotics field tends not to question the idea that exploitation is part of the human condition. If the robot’s function is to “empower people,” then must it be created to make humans into masters? Must robots be created to be content with exploitation? Are they by definition the perfectly colonized mind? In one video online, “Jia Jia” — a Japanese female robot “goddess” in the words of her bot maker — is subtitled in English as saying, “Yes, my lord. What can I do for you?”
Selfless Devotion
Selfless Devotion2016-12-07The robotics field tends not to question the idea that exploitation is part of the human condition. If the robot’s function is to “empower people,” then must it be created to make humans into masters? Must robots be created to be content with exploitation? Are they by definition the perfectly colonized mind? In one video online, “Jia Jia” — a Japanese female robot “goddess” in the words of her bot maker — is subtitled in English as saying, “Yes, my lord. What can I do for you?”
-
Open Window
2016-12-06Anybody who expected the 21st century’s horror films to represent women much better than their predecessors must not read the news, since masculine rage appears to increase in proportion to female autonomy. Women may be more visible — in higher education, in the workplace, leading in mainstream films — but in contemporary horror, a girl’s visibility is her vulnerability. Violence begins with the camera, and with these women’s willingness to appear, dressed or undressed, in front of it. Being seen is its own sick punishment. In these kinds of pictures, exposure is torture.
Open Window
Open Window2016-12-06Anybody who expected the 21st century’s horror films to represent women much better than their predecessors must not read the news, since masculine rage appears to increase in proportion to female autonomy. Women may be more visible — in higher education, in the workplace, leading in mainstream films — but in contemporary horror, a girl’s visibility is her vulnerability. Violence begins with the camera, and with these women’s willingness to appear, dressed or undressed, in front of it. Being seen is its own sick punishment. In these kinds of pictures, exposure is torture.
-
Class Actions
2016-12-05It may not surprise you to learn that, despite its professed concern for what happens “inside the classroom,” Professor Watchlist spends nearly all its time and energy documenting activity that goes on outside the classroom. The unspoken argument that fuels the whole site is that if someone holds radical or even liberal ideas, this must inevitably carry over into classroom bias; the expression of a political point of view can be taken as evidence of a pattern of discrimination. One thing transforms into another: This is the magic trick Professor Watchlist performs over and over again.
Class Actions
Class Actions2016-12-05It may not surprise you to learn that, despite its professed concern for what happens “inside the classroom,” Professor Watchlist spends nearly all its time and energy documenting activity that goes on outside the classroom. The unspoken argument that fuels the whole site is that if someone holds radical or even liberal ideas, this must inevitably carry over into classroom bias; the expression of a political point of view can be taken as evidence of a pattern of discrimination. One thing transforms into another: This is the magic trick Professor Watchlist performs over and over again.
-
Survival Guides
2016-12-01The end of the world has arrived at many points throughout history. But the recent history of the AIDS crisis shows that communities themselves are the strongest survival mechanisms, metabolizing the technologies of their moments and creating their own.
Survival Guides
Survival Guides2016-12-01The end of the world has arrived at many points throughout history. But the recent history of the AIDS crisis shows that communities themselves are the strongest survival mechanisms, metabolizing the technologies of their moments and creating their own.
-
Sonic Youth
2016-11-30Now more than ever, new speculative forms feel necessary to help realize what a world beyond oppression and inequality can look like in better service of the individual. Protest music must build movements around the technological possibilities of global resistance — and across the world, new modes of electronic music have begun to do just that. Leveraging “noise-sound” as an expressive tool of dissent, such artists have flipped music’s most fundamental elements, pulling the violence of modern warfare into loaded audio weapons with sights set on larger reform.
Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth2016-11-30Now more than ever, new speculative forms feel necessary to help realize what a world beyond oppression and inequality can look like in better service of the individual. Protest music must build movements around the technological possibilities of global resistance — and across the world, new modes of electronic music have begun to do just that. Leveraging “noise-sound” as an expressive tool of dissent, such artists have flipped music’s most fundamental elements, pulling the violence of modern warfare into loaded audio weapons with sights set on larger reform.
-
Distress Calls
2016-11-29Who was Nicky’s brother? Why did he kill himself? Was his story like my own? We all found our space for therapy as listeners in these questions. For representations of suicide to have this deterrent effect, it can be essential that they seem real. But how can it be ethical to seek refuge in a real person’s death? Blurring the provenance to the point of ambiguity, as this call’s digital footprint does, perhaps offers one solution to this problem. The mediating technology itself facilitates an ambiguity that makes this artifact potent.
Distress Calls
Distress Calls2016-11-29Who was Nicky’s brother? Why did he kill himself? Was his story like my own? We all found our space for therapy as listeners in these questions. For representations of suicide to have this deterrent effect, it can be essential that they seem real. But how can it be ethical to seek refuge in a real person’s death? Blurring the provenance to the point of ambiguity, as this call’s digital footprint does, perhaps offers one solution to this problem. The mediating technology itself facilitates an ambiguity that makes this artifact potent.
-
Magnificent Desolation
2016-11-28All three incidents — the sinking of the Titanic, the Challenger explosion, and 9/11 — forced people to either watch or imagine huge man-made objects, monuments of engineering, fail catastrophically, being torn apart or exploding in the sky. These are events we rarely see except in movies. The destruction of the Challenger and the World Trade Center are now movies themselves, clips we can watch again and again. The proliferation of camera technology, including our cell-phone cameras, makes disaster easier to witness and to reproduce; it may even create a kind of cultural demand for disasters. Also on film are reaction shots: We get both the special effects and the human drama.
Magnificent Desolation
Magnificent Desolation2016-11-28All three incidents — the sinking of the Titanic, the Challenger explosion, and 9/11 — forced people to either watch or imagine huge man-made objects, monuments of engineering, fail catastrophically, being torn apart or exploding in the sky. These are events we rarely see except in movies. The destruction of the Challenger and the World Trade Center are now movies themselves, clips we can watch again and again. The proliferation of camera technology, including our cell-phone cameras, makes disaster easier to witness and to reproduce; it may even create a kind of cultural demand for disasters. Also on film are reaction shots: We get both the special effects and the human drama.
-
Instant Replay
2016-11-22The default for gifs on Twitter is to autoplay, and many users do not opt out. I was among them. There was no warning that I was about to see something graphic and disturbing, as there was on the cable networks that were also showing the video. The gif of McDonald’s death was instead indiscriminately injected in between my banal tweets about Thanksgiving prep. Unmoored from even minimal context, the gif felt cheap and tawdry, with each loop replay increasing some engagement metric, while righteously confronting nothing.
Instant Replay
Instant Replay2016-11-22The default for gifs on Twitter is to autoplay, and many users do not opt out. I was among them. There was no warning that I was about to see something graphic and disturbing, as there was on the cable networks that were also showing the video. The gif of McDonald’s death was instead indiscriminately injected in between my banal tweets about Thanksgiving prep. Unmoored from even minimal context, the gif felt cheap and tawdry, with each loop replay increasing some engagement metric, while righteously confronting nothing.
-
Cult of One
2016-11-21To speak of a life lived publicly, in both digital and nondigital forms, can be to imply a duality of the self: the “real person” (whose being, thoughts, and circumstances determine who she is) and the “artificial” double who appears before others: a doppelgänger that is, generously, an aspirational figure and, ungenerously, a total sham. This duality rests upon an assumption that one’s true self is static, determined ultimately by the conditions into which one was born.
Cult of One
Cult of One2016-11-21To speak of a life lived publicly, in both digital and nondigital forms, can be to imply a duality of the self: the “real person” (whose being, thoughts, and circumstances determine who she is) and the “artificial” double who appears before others: a doppelgänger that is, generously, an aspirational figure and, ungenerously, a total sham. This duality rests upon an assumption that one’s true self is static, determined ultimately by the conditions into which one was born.
-
Re: Hydraulic Press Accounts
2016-11-18Hydraulic press videos, featuring objects flattening under heavy machinery, feel delightfully primitive. Not everything needs to bear the weight of profundity. Sometimes it’s enough to simply enjoy a little destruction.
Re: Hydraulic Press Accounts
Re: Hydraulic Press Accounts2016-11-18Hydraulic press videos, featuring objects flattening under heavy machinery, feel delightfully primitive. Not everything needs to bear the weight of profundity. Sometimes it’s enough to simply enjoy a little destruction.
-
Every Place at Once
2016-11-17Digital artifacts are new vehicles through which we can grieve. Digital traces bear witness of our proximity to the deceased. Digital capsules are encouraging us to convert mundane memories into effusive memorials. Digital, digital, digital. Do they have wi-fi in heaven?
Every Place at Once
Every Place at Once2016-11-17Digital artifacts are new vehicles through which we can grieve. Digital traces bear witness of our proximity to the deceased. Digital capsules are encouraging us to convert mundane memories into effusive memorials. Digital, digital, digital. Do they have wi-fi in heaven?
-
What Was the Nerd?
2016-11-16Today’s American fascist youth is neither the strapping Aryan jock-patriot nor the skinheaded, jackbooted punk but the nerd. The jock-nerd conflict appeared in pop culture to mystify true social conflict around race, gender, class, and sexuality, transforming it into a spectacle of entitled white male suffering. The nerds believe they are victims of a thwarted meritocracy, but their sexist, racist actions align them with the far right.
What Was the Nerd?
What Was the Nerd?2016-11-16Today’s American fascist youth is neither the strapping Aryan jock-patriot nor the skinheaded, jackbooted punk but the nerd. The jock-nerd conflict appeared in pop culture to mystify true social conflict around race, gender, class, and sexuality, transforming it into a spectacle of entitled white male suffering. The nerds believe they are victims of a thwarted meritocracy, but their sexist, racist actions align them with the far right.
-
Creature Suite
2016-11-15If you have been to a zoo, you have probably seen passive and hidden zoo and aquarium species, which want no part of the public outside their cage or tank. At animal attractions in theme parks, live animals are mostly declawed or sedated for safety and security reasons. How can a fast and predatory wild mammal such as a Bengal tiger stay calm and nonviolent in a hotel “habitat,” as in Las Vegas’s MGM Grand? How much “medicine” and “training” are given to these wild lives to contain them? The animal bodies appear to be what they are, but there is hardly any behavioral semblance to their former wild beings. They may as well be machines.
Creature Suite
Creature Suite2016-11-15If you have been to a zoo, you have probably seen passive and hidden zoo and aquarium species, which want no part of the public outside their cage or tank. At animal attractions in theme parks, live animals are mostly declawed or sedated for safety and security reasons. How can a fast and predatory wild mammal such as a Bengal tiger stay calm and nonviolent in a hotel “habitat,” as in Las Vegas’s MGM Grand? How much “medicine” and “training” are given to these wild lives to contain them? The animal bodies appear to be what they are, but there is hardly any behavioral semblance to their former wild beings. They may as well be machines.
-
Worlds Apart
2016-11-14Skype and FaceTime are designed to allow us to feel together when we’re apart: long-distance couples use them to keep in touch; some therapists and doctors now conduct clinical sessions over video. The video visiting technology used in the carceral setting can do the opposite. The technology seems designed to prevent intimacy and create a sense of disconnection. If Skype can simulate the feeling of being in a room with someone, carceral video technology can simulate being in a room filled with a dense fog and loud static; if you stretch out your hand in front of you, it’s not clear what you’ll touch, or whether you’ll touch anything at all.
Worlds Apart
Worlds Apart2016-11-14Skype and FaceTime are designed to allow us to feel together when we’re apart: long-distance couples use them to keep in touch; some therapists and doctors now conduct clinical sessions over video. The video visiting technology used in the carceral setting can do the opposite. The technology seems designed to prevent intimacy and create a sense of disconnection. If Skype can simulate the feeling of being in a room with someone, carceral video technology can simulate being in a room filled with a dense fog and loud static; if you stretch out your hand in front of you, it’s not clear what you’ll touch, or whether you’ll touch anything at all.
-
Watch Again
2016-11-07The worst thing about housework, I always think, is that it doesn’t end. No sooner have you made everything tidy then you dirty a dish, or drop your laundry in the corner, leave a glass on a table. I’m accustomed to thinking about tasks as things you complete and forget about, like films. But the season of “finished” housework is vanishingly short, like the life of a gnat. You have to find a way to enjoy the process, or you are doomed to disappointment as you seek to enjoy its fleeting effects. It’s a serial mini-drama, completely predictable, often maddening.
Watch Again
Watch Again2016-11-07The worst thing about housework, I always think, is that it doesn’t end. No sooner have you made everything tidy then you dirty a dish, or drop your laundry in the corner, leave a glass on a table. I’m accustomed to thinking about tasks as things you complete and forget about, like films. But the season of “finished” housework is vanishingly short, like the life of a gnat. You have to find a way to enjoy the process, or you are doomed to disappointment as you seek to enjoy its fleeting effects. It’s a serial mini-drama, completely predictable, often maddening.
-
Your Brands and Lovers
2016-11-02Brands function more optimally than our friends. We continue to engage our friends on Instagram, of course, if we aren’t monsters, and because we do like the way the quilt is coming along, but brands would never do the feed-cluttering photo dumps from vacations that our friends might. Brands wouldn’t post virtually indistinguishable selfies every day without at least doing us the courtesy of saying which makeup products they’re wearing.
Your Brands and Lovers
Your Brands and Lovers2016-11-02Brands function more optimally than our friends. We continue to engage our friends on Instagram, of course, if we aren’t monsters, and because we do like the way the quilt is coming along, but brands would never do the feed-cluttering photo dumps from vacations that our friends might. Brands wouldn’t post virtually indistinguishable selfies every day without at least doing us the courtesy of saying which makeup products they’re wearing.
-
Sing to Me
2016-11-01When I was growing up in Toronto, karaoke was reviled for reasons that now seem crass: There is nothing more nobodyish than pretending you’re somebody. The ’90s were less empathetic, too, and karaoke lays bare the need to be seen, and accepted; such needs are universal, and repulsive. We live now, you could say, in a karaoke age, in which you’re encouraged to show yourself, through a range of creative presets. Participating online implies that you’re worthy of being perceived, that some spark of you deserves to exist in public.
Sing to Me
Sing to Me2016-11-01When I was growing up in Toronto, karaoke was reviled for reasons that now seem crass: There is nothing more nobodyish than pretending you’re somebody. The ’90s were less empathetic, too, and karaoke lays bare the need to be seen, and accepted; such needs are universal, and repulsive. We live now, you could say, in a karaoke age, in which you’re encouraged to show yourself, through a range of creative presets. Participating online implies that you’re worthy of being perceived, that some spark of you deserves to exist in public.
-
It Came in Through the Bathroom Mirror
2016-10-31My bathroom ghost sits somewhere liminal in my web of belief; he’s not part of how I typically navigate the world, which requires constant banal prediction. That it remains there, however, is ethically important. Your ghosts, too, your demons, your holy visions don’t need to exist; you could no doubt account for them scientifically. The bombastic tendency of Western science is to pathologize, and thus dismiss such things. But the question of what realities are possible should not just be answered by the measurable components of what already has been. Does maintaining the reality of your ghost hurt you or help you? Does a collective commitment to something mystical, outside “reason,” cause more harm than good?
It Came in Through the Bathroom Mirror
It Came in Through the Bathroom Mirror2016-10-31My bathroom ghost sits somewhere liminal in my web of belief; he’s not part of how I typically navigate the world, which requires constant banal prediction. That it remains there, however, is ethically important. Your ghosts, too, your demons, your holy visions don’t need to exist; you could no doubt account for them scientifically. The bombastic tendency of Western science is to pathologize, and thus dismiss such things. But the question of what realities are possible should not just be answered by the measurable components of what already has been. Does maintaining the reality of your ghost hurt you or help you? Does a collective commitment to something mystical, outside “reason,” cause more harm than good?
-
Verbal Tics
2016-10-27Recently, I had to write the lines for an artificially intelligent bot, and, as I imagined where it was coming from, I tried to do so seriously. I wanted my bot to express itself authentically, in a way consistent with its experience, rather than being constrained to answer questions either by impersonating a human or by parroting back similar questions, performing semantic backflips like a SmarterChild. Later, as I tested it, asking questions, I was charmed by some of the responses, errors, choices no human would have made. The labored mistakes implied effort, and they were idiosyncratic, implying a self. “Oh, bot,” I felt like saying, “That’s not at all right. But what an interesting choice.”
Verbal Tics
Verbal Tics2016-10-27Recently, I had to write the lines for an artificially intelligent bot, and, as I imagined where it was coming from, I tried to do so seriously. I wanted my bot to express itself authentically, in a way consistent with its experience, rather than being constrained to answer questions either by impersonating a human or by parroting back similar questions, performing semantic backflips like a SmarterChild. Later, as I tested it, asking questions, I was charmed by some of the responses, errors, choices no human would have made. The labored mistakes implied effort, and they were idiosyncratic, implying a self. “Oh, bot,” I felt like saying, “That’s not at all right. But what an interesting choice.”
-
Advanced Search
2016-10-26Through the interests of people I opted to follow, and the people they followed, the well of knowledge was bottomless. On Twitter and other social media platforms, as many critics have argued, users volunteer to be bombarded with the consciousnesses of hundreds of thousands of other people. What naysayers fail to realize is that this unique characteristic is what makes social media inherently mystical.
Advanced Search
Advanced Search2016-10-26Through the interests of people I opted to follow, and the people they followed, the well of knowledge was bottomless. On Twitter and other social media platforms, as many critics have argued, users volunteer to be bombarded with the consciousnesses of hundreds of thousands of other people. What naysayers fail to realize is that this unique characteristic is what makes social media inherently mystical.
-
Fierce Attachments
2016-10-25Given how ambivalent and deeply personal the act of citation online can become, it makes sense that social media is littered with disclaimers about accreditation. “Retweets aren’t endorsements,” we say, trying to protect ourselves against accusations of referential irresponsibility. Cycles of social media seem to exacerbate the dangers of acknowledging bad ideas on the way to good ones. If we enable an idea’s circulation, even with the intention of critiquing it, we might be complicit in its potential misuse.
Fierce Attachments
Fierce Attachments2016-10-25Given how ambivalent and deeply personal the act of citation online can become, it makes sense that social media is littered with disclaimers about accreditation. “Retweets aren’t endorsements,” we say, trying to protect ourselves against accusations of referential irresponsibility. Cycles of social media seem to exacerbate the dangers of acknowledging bad ideas on the way to good ones. If we enable an idea’s circulation, even with the intention of critiquing it, we might be complicit in its potential misuse.
-
Chaos of Facts
2016-10-19With his steady supply of metacommentary, Trump embodied the pundit-candidate. While his repugnant politics have had material consequences, he campaigned more explicitly at the level of the symbolic, of branding, of the image. His representation of himself as the candidate who rejects political correctness epitomized this: How he talked about issues was trumpeted by the candidate and many of his supporters as the essential point. It has been clear for decades that presidential politics have turned toward the performance of an image. But away from what reality?
Chaos of Facts
Chaos of Facts2016-10-19With his steady supply of metacommentary, Trump embodied the pundit-candidate. While his repugnant politics have had material consequences, he campaigned more explicitly at the level of the symbolic, of branding, of the image. His representation of himself as the candidate who rejects political correctness epitomized this: How he talked about issues was trumpeted by the candidate and many of his supporters as the essential point. It has been clear for decades that presidential politics have turned toward the performance of an image. But away from what reality?
-
The Edifice Complex
2016-10-18Slow and steady changes can accomplish a lot with little pushback, whereas dramatic changes invite equal but opposite reactions. This is never more true than when political changes take shape in physical artifacts. But no labor dispute, lawsuit, direct action, Senate confirmation hearing, or eviscerating architectural review could stop Empire State Plaza. Through sheer executive force, Rockefeller got what he wanted. The ways in which a technology gains champions or becomes tightly interwoven with a culture over time did not have to happen for the plaza to persevere. This makes Empire State Plaza a rare example of a petrified vulgar technology.
The Edifice Complex
The Edifice Complex2016-10-18Slow and steady changes can accomplish a lot with little pushback, whereas dramatic changes invite equal but opposite reactions. This is never more true than when political changes take shape in physical artifacts. But no labor dispute, lawsuit, direct action, Senate confirmation hearing, or eviscerating architectural review could stop Empire State Plaza. Through sheer executive force, Rockefeller got what he wanted. The ways in which a technology gains champions or becomes tightly interwoven with a culture over time did not have to happen for the plaza to persevere. This makes Empire State Plaza a rare example of a petrified vulgar technology.
-
Auto Format
2016-10-17To use Twitter is to become both its consumer, but also its bureaucrat. We propagate and internalize the logic of the platform, hundreds of millions of us performing these new behaviors in lockstep, beckoning each other to join in. It is a kind of auto-colonization: adopting the notion that a public digital self is a way to temporarily exceed the body, and embracing the personal brand as a mode of existence. We bend to the imagined Other like plants craning to maximize their exposure to sunlight.
Auto Format
Auto Format2016-10-17To use Twitter is to become both its consumer, but also its bureaucrat. We propagate and internalize the logic of the platform, hundreds of millions of us performing these new behaviors in lockstep, beckoning each other to join in. It is a kind of auto-colonization: adopting the notion that a public digital self is a way to temporarily exceed the body, and embracing the personal brand as a mode of existence. We bend to the imagined Other like plants craning to maximize their exposure to sunlight.
-
The Poetry of Digital Life
2016-10-13Memes are our quintessential contemporary poetry because they tap into the essence of what poetry does in any medium, seizing upon the possibilities and juxtapositions of being page and text simultaneously to permit a range of expression. They derive meaning from the tension between word and image, and they also straddle the line between personal and collective experience, between popular and elite forms.
The Poetry of Digital Life
The Poetry of Digital Life2016-10-13Memes are our quintessential contemporary poetry because they tap into the essence of what poetry does in any medium, seizing upon the possibilities and juxtapositions of being page and text simultaneously to permit a range of expression. They derive meaning from the tension between word and image, and they also straddle the line between personal and collective experience, between popular and elite forms.
-
Lucid Streaming
2016-10-11Perhaps we’ll get virtual-reality storytelling right when we learn to switch codes; creators can offer immersive experiences when the story calls for them, and they can use a limited, cinematic field of vision when they need to advance the plot. Maybe, instead of replacing the language of film, then, VR must absorb it. VR is both a radical new medium and an inadequate version of a preexisting one; it challenges narrative conventions and shows us how much we rely on them.
Lucid Streaming
Lucid Streaming2016-10-11Perhaps we’ll get virtual-reality storytelling right when we learn to switch codes; creators can offer immersive experiences when the story calls for them, and they can use a limited, cinematic field of vision when they need to advance the plot. Maybe, instead of replacing the language of film, then, VR must absorb it. VR is both a radical new medium and an inadequate version of a preexisting one; it challenges narrative conventions and shows us how much we rely on them.
-
Remote Control
2016-10-06Recently, I took a day to listen to a tiny fraction of Stefan Molyneux’s podcasts, which now number more than 5,000. It was an oddly pleasant experience, like taking a mild sedative and watching Polka Dot Door. Molyneux’s friendly voice ranged freely from topic to topic, circling the benefits of small government before touching on gun violence and flitting from there to peaceful parenting tactics and then to the moral ill of single motherhood. The effect is of allowing oneself to dissolve into a surreal universe where the laws of gravity are reversed and everyone is so much safer standing on the ceiling.
Remote Control
Remote Control2016-10-06Recently, I took a day to listen to a tiny fraction of Stefan Molyneux’s podcasts, which now number more than 5,000. It was an oddly pleasant experience, like taking a mild sedative and watching Polka Dot Door. Molyneux’s friendly voice ranged freely from topic to topic, circling the benefits of small government before touching on gun violence and flitting from there to peaceful parenting tactics and then to the moral ill of single motherhood. The effect is of allowing oneself to dissolve into a surreal universe where the laws of gravity are reversed and everyone is so much safer standing on the ceiling.
-
Ground Control
2016-10-05What it is about airborne sights that makes them worth not just capturing but also sharing, cataloging, indexing for search engines? It has to do with airportness, an underlying spirit of flight that crystallizes the whole ensemble of experiences that make up commercial air travel. Airportness transcends airports themselves. It has to do not so much with surface-level features such as sloping hallways and undulating rooflines, but a host of more disparate effects that make air travel something humans can internalize and learn to live with. Airportness is how flight becomes natural to us, expected and accepted: contrails in the sky, layovers between flights.
Ground Control
Ground Control2016-10-05What it is about airborne sights that makes them worth not just capturing but also sharing, cataloging, indexing for search engines? It has to do with airportness, an underlying spirit of flight that crystallizes the whole ensemble of experiences that make up commercial air travel. Airportness transcends airports themselves. It has to do not so much with surface-level features such as sloping hallways and undulating rooflines, but a host of more disparate effects that make air travel something humans can internalize and learn to live with. Airportness is how flight becomes natural to us, expected and accepted: contrails in the sky, layovers between flights.
-
Daymares
2016-10-04I’m not afraid of the dark because it’s light that has me not sleeping, keeping tabs on the public executions that are happening in the Middle East or in the Midwest, six time zones each way. “Blue light” — of screens, fluorescents, LCDs — is a sun that never goes down, upsetting our circadian rhythms. Texturally it’s thin, wan, and sickifying, a light that brings out the hangover in your face. It’s made to expose, cueing us into building trust through clarifying our perception, though it leaves us, too, in plain sight. Spanning a spectrum of technology we think is safe because it makes us feel that way, whether we’re sharing our location with an app to get a ride home or getting confessional with a friend via email, its omniscient eye comforts those with more to show off than to hide. Brightness tricks us into being unafraid.
Daymares
Daymares2016-10-04I’m not afraid of the dark because it’s light that has me not sleeping, keeping tabs on the public executions that are happening in the Middle East or in the Midwest, six time zones each way. “Blue light” — of screens, fluorescents, LCDs — is a sun that never goes down, upsetting our circadian rhythms. Texturally it’s thin, wan, and sickifying, a light that brings out the hangover in your face. It’s made to expose, cueing us into building trust through clarifying our perception, though it leaves us, too, in plain sight. Spanning a spectrum of technology we think is safe because it makes us feel that way, whether we’re sharing our location with an app to get a ride home or getting confessional with a friend via email, its omniscient eye comforts those with more to show off than to hide. Brightness tricks us into being unafraid.
-
Time Capsules
2016-09-29Productivity drugs don’t take a “normal” or “average” person and “boost” their productivity. That is not their nature. Their true nature, misnomer notwithstanding, is to struggle to patch up the gap between our body’s capacities and the social idea of those capacities. Productivity drugs may incidentally help us make things; but they are prescribed to help us resolve the cognitive tension between what we’re doing and what we think we should be doing. Productivity drugs, in short, are better ethics through chemistry.
Time Capsules
Time Capsules2016-09-29Productivity drugs don’t take a “normal” or “average” person and “boost” their productivity. That is not their nature. Their true nature, misnomer notwithstanding, is to struggle to patch up the gap between our body’s capacities and the social idea of those capacities. Productivity drugs may incidentally help us make things; but they are prescribed to help us resolve the cognitive tension between what we’re doing and what we think we should be doing. Productivity drugs, in short, are better ethics through chemistry.
-
Night Visions
2016-09-26Brian De Palma has always been an early adopter, disorienting the eye with Steadicams and split lenses; he was digitizing his storyboards by the early ’90s. He exploits new technology to shoot from high, cloistered angles and cramped positions — positions only a voyeur could love. “Even pretending you aren’t catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you’re unseen,” the old Margaret Atwood line goes. “You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.” But now you’re also your own exhibitionist. You can offer selective details through frosted screens; you can overlay versions of reality on semi-transparent frames. You can let watchers know that you’re watching yourself be watched.
Night Visions
Night Visions2016-09-26Brian De Palma has always been an early adopter, disorienting the eye with Steadicams and split lenses; he was digitizing his storyboards by the early ’90s. He exploits new technology to shoot from high, cloistered angles and cramped positions — positions only a voyeur could love. “Even pretending you aren’t catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you’re unseen,” the old Margaret Atwood line goes. “You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.” But now you’re also your own exhibitionist. You can offer selective details through frosted screens; you can overlay versions of reality on semi-transparent frames. You can let watchers know that you’re watching yourself be watched.
-
The Parallax View
2016-09-22Video-game realism is less a practice of using computation to simulate reality than the practice of defending the visual from political or social meaning. To render a cube in a vacuum and give it a mathematical skin for players to marvel at, even if it looks like nothing but a block of wood — it’s strangely impossible to recall ever having touched or smelled or felt anything like it.
The Parallax View
The Parallax View2016-09-22Video-game realism is less a practice of using computation to simulate reality than the practice of defending the visual from political or social meaning. To render a cube in a vacuum and give it a mathematical skin for players to marvel at, even if it looks like nothing but a block of wood — it’s strangely impossible to recall ever having touched or smelled or felt anything like it.
-
Quick Fix
2016-09-21Anything, even heartbreak, can be framed as a do-it-yourself project. DIY gives a sense of agency over one’s needs, suggesting a barrel-chested confidence in one’s own ability to complete a task usually left for a paid expert. WikiHow provides endless, collaborative DIY guides for the task of remaining alive.
Quick Fix
Quick Fix2016-09-21Anything, even heartbreak, can be framed as a do-it-yourself project. DIY gives a sense of agency over one’s needs, suggesting a barrel-chested confidence in one’s own ability to complete a task usually left for a paid expert. WikiHow provides endless, collaborative DIY guides for the task of remaining alive.
-
Grave Sight
2016-09-19Schadenfreude can and does go viral. But after consuming enough suffering in this mode, viewers may find that schadenfreude no longer affirms or soothes. If “we live in overstimulated times,” as Nicki Brand, a talk-radio psychiatrist in Videodrome, puts it, then it is no surprise that Max would be driven to seek more intense viewing experiences. After all, in the media world he has created for himself, where he re-broadcasts “everything from soft-core pornography to hard-core violence,” more extreme content can be hard to uncover. In its insidious intensity, Videodrome prefigures the digital social media machine we now live with, where elements of the dark web seep into the mainstream indexed web.
Grave Sight
Grave Sight2016-09-19Schadenfreude can and does go viral. But after consuming enough suffering in this mode, viewers may find that schadenfreude no longer affirms or soothes. If “we live in overstimulated times,” as Nicki Brand, a talk-radio psychiatrist in Videodrome, puts it, then it is no surprise that Max would be driven to seek more intense viewing experiences. After all, in the media world he has created for himself, where he re-broadcasts “everything from soft-core pornography to hard-core violence,” more extreme content can be hard to uncover. In its insidious intensity, Videodrome prefigures the digital social media machine we now live with, where elements of the dark web seep into the mainstream indexed web.
-
Re: Sean Pablo Murphy
2016-09-16It is easy to eat a celebrity. You can break them down to bite-sized morsels with a simple click, click, click, which is presumably why it’s called a “mouse.” Celebrities, on the other hand, that cannot be ethically consumed are either (1) not celebrities at all or (2) the best celebrities of all time. Consider the teenager currently eliding my fork: Sean Pablo Murphy, a skateboarder who was born in Los Angeles in 1997. Sean Pablo probably doesn’t know that’s the year Princess Diana died, let alone that her favorite food was bread pudding, and his only reference point for gratuitous public mourning may well be the makeshift altar for Bowie that lived across the street from Supreme. I worry about the teens.
Re: Sean Pablo Murphy
Re: Sean Pablo Murphy2016-09-16It is easy to eat a celebrity. You can break them down to bite-sized morsels with a simple click, click, click, which is presumably why it’s called a “mouse.” Celebrities, on the other hand, that cannot be ethically consumed are either (1) not celebrities at all or (2) the best celebrities of all time. Consider the teenager currently eliding my fork: Sean Pablo Murphy, a skateboarder who was born in Los Angeles in 1997. Sean Pablo probably doesn’t know that’s the year Princess Diana died, let alone that her favorite food was bread pudding, and his only reference point for gratuitous public mourning may well be the makeshift altar for Bowie that lived across the street from Supreme. I worry about the teens.
-
Taste Space
2016-09-15Not long ago I discovered that Mosfilm, the Russian film studio that did its best and strangest work during the last decades of the Soviet Union, had posted most of their films on a YouTube channel. I have no idea where Mosfilm’s commercial and political imperatives intersect, if at all, but it’s a bad idea to watch Soviet films without the background hum of paranoia. After all, that’s the spirit in which they were made. Some have subtitles, others don’t. Except for the Tarkovsky films, already long popular in the West, I’d never seen any of them before, but had an impulse to binge. I watched them more as objects than as stories, without knowing exactly why.
Taste Space
Taste Space2016-09-15Not long ago I discovered that Mosfilm, the Russian film studio that did its best and strangest work during the last decades of the Soviet Union, had posted most of their films on a YouTube channel. I have no idea where Mosfilm’s commercial and political imperatives intersect, if at all, but it’s a bad idea to watch Soviet films without the background hum of paranoia. After all, that’s the spirit in which they were made. Some have subtitles, others don’t. Except for the Tarkovsky films, already long popular in the West, I’d never seen any of them before, but had an impulse to binge. I watched them more as objects than as stories, without knowing exactly why.
-
Botline Bling
2016-09-14Roxxxy is not a social subject. She is not making decisions to express any particular ideas about sex. Roxxxy is programmed with sexual ideas which are then executed, acted out socially with the user. Roxxxy then adapts herself, incorporates the particular ideas of the user, and replicates them. Roxxxy is not an object; she is a dynamic propaganda system. When I speak to my hypnosis clients, I use language like “reprogram,” “brainwash,” even “ideological re-education.” The hypnotic reprogramming is a sleight-of-hand which, like Roxxxy’s praxis of “Humanoid Self Persistence,” disguises the client’s desires as his very soul; he feels like he is an automaton because he is doing exactly what he wants to do.
Botline Bling
Botline Bling2016-09-14Roxxxy is not a social subject. She is not making decisions to express any particular ideas about sex. Roxxxy is programmed with sexual ideas which are then executed, acted out socially with the user. Roxxxy then adapts herself, incorporates the particular ideas of the user, and replicates them. Roxxxy is not an object; she is a dynamic propaganda system. When I speak to my hypnosis clients, I use language like “reprogram,” “brainwash,” even “ideological re-education.” The hypnotic reprogramming is a sleight-of-hand which, like Roxxxy’s praxis of “Humanoid Self Persistence,” disguises the client’s desires as his very soul; he feels like he is an automaton because he is doing exactly what he wants to do.
-
Infinite Scroll
2016-09-13The internet Dictionary is not yet the Library, but it could be. As dictionaries grow larger, so too grows the question of whether they will some day get so big as to become unmanageable. Programmers must stay one step ahead of lexicographers in perpetuity, staving off that collapse with the ticka-ticka-tick of their fingers. I imagine an interminable breathy race of introverts, arcane languages, and heated keyboards. How limitless the language, how exhausting the work of racing to contain it.
Infinite Scroll
Infinite Scroll2016-09-13The internet Dictionary is not yet the Library, but it could be. As dictionaries grow larger, so too grows the question of whether they will some day get so big as to become unmanageable. Programmers must stay one step ahead of lexicographers in perpetuity, staving off that collapse with the ticka-ticka-tick of their fingers. I imagine an interminable breathy race of introverts, arcane languages, and heated keyboards. How limitless the language, how exhausting the work of racing to contain it.
-
Free Recall
2016-09-12Search engines lead us to believe they are neutral tools that simply offer access to objectively valid and reliable information, provided users develop the correct sorts of queries. But in fact, the means of unearthing the information changes its nature. Our experience of search engines makes us see the world in terms of what is Googleable. It makes us crave information we know will be readily accessible. The experience of an immediate answer becomes as important as the content of the information itself.
Free Recall
Free Recall2016-09-12Search engines lead us to believe they are neutral tools that simply offer access to objectively valid and reliable information, provided users develop the correct sorts of queries. But in fact, the means of unearthing the information changes its nature. Our experience of search engines makes us see the world in terms of what is Googleable. It makes us crave information we know will be readily accessible. The experience of an immediate answer becomes as important as the content of the information itself.
-
The New Boredom
2016-09-09A livestream of a nondescript intersection in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, became a focal point for a feeling of togetherness in space and time that could be seemingly abstracted from purposiveness or consequences. There is nothing to understand about the Jackson Hole feed. It’s just watchable.
The New Boredom
The New Boredom2016-09-09A livestream of a nondescript intersection in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, became a focal point for a feeling of togetherness in space and time that could be seemingly abstracted from purposiveness or consequences. There is nothing to understand about the Jackson Hole feed. It’s just watchable.
-
Sunset Blogevard
2016-09-08Once my days of internet fame were over, I began to feel as if there was nothing left of me at all. I floated around like a vaporous ghost, waiting to be noticed nonetheless. Being a marginally famous blogger was the only aspect of my life that I had assigned any value to whatsoever, and when it was all over I was completely alone. We keep trying to do the thing we were once good at getting attention for, but never quite manage to recapture the zeitgeist that crested us up, then dropped us off.
Sunset Blogevard
Sunset Blogevard2016-09-08Once my days of internet fame were over, I began to feel as if there was nothing left of me at all. I floated around like a vaporous ghost, waiting to be noticed nonetheless. Being a marginally famous blogger was the only aspect of my life that I had assigned any value to whatsoever, and when it was all over I was completely alone. We keep trying to do the thing we were once good at getting attention for, but never quite manage to recapture the zeitgeist that crested us up, then dropped us off.
-
Gif Horse
2016-09-07If the written word exists in space and the spoken word in time, then gifs synthesize these, fleeting yet durable and ever redeployable. Gifs are both text and speech, and neither. Though concretized as digital files, they are not quite “dead” the way the written word can seem to be. Gifs not only move before the eye, echoing the poet’s gesticulations, but they also retain the magical quality of orality to change a conversation in real time. They are oral but not aural.
Gif Horse
Gif Horse2016-09-07If the written word exists in space and the spoken word in time, then gifs synthesize these, fleeting yet durable and ever redeployable. Gifs are both text and speech, and neither. Though concretized as digital files, they are not quite “dead” the way the written word can seem to be. Gifs not only move before the eye, echoing the poet’s gesticulations, but they also retain the magical quality of orality to change a conversation in real time. They are oral but not aural.
-
Definition Not Found
2016-09-06There is no small irony in assigning a name to a form predicated upon resisting meaning, like penning a press release for a protest without demands. Yet it feels very right that asemic writing should emerge from that particular Y2K moment of hurtling globalization, techno-pessimistic paranoia and neon-lit fishtanks; a time of semiotic overstimulation where signs swarmed like white blood cells and where, in the immortal words of Horse_ebooks, everything happens so much.
Definition Not Found
Definition Not Found2016-09-06There is no small irony in assigning a name to a form predicated upon resisting meaning, like penning a press release for a protest without demands. Yet it feels very right that asemic writing should emerge from that particular Y2K moment of hurtling globalization, techno-pessimistic paranoia and neon-lit fishtanks; a time of semiotic overstimulation where signs swarmed like white blood cells and where, in the immortal words of Horse_ebooks, everything happens so much.
-
Perpetual Motion Machines
2016-08-31After ease of handling becomes an irrelevant design consideration for new vehicles steered by computers, designers will be free to stretch wheelbases, raise ceiling heights, and specify softer suspensions to make that movement more natural and comfortable. And since the people inside wouldn’t necessarily need to see where they were going, a growing range of possible wall fixtures — storage cabinets, LCD screens, perhaps a kitchen sink — could substitute passenger convenience over views of the world outside. The elimination of the driver will mean the end of the car as a car.
Perpetual Motion Machines
Perpetual Motion Machines2016-08-31After ease of handling becomes an irrelevant design consideration for new vehicles steered by computers, designers will be free to stretch wheelbases, raise ceiling heights, and specify softer suspensions to make that movement more natural and comfortable. And since the people inside wouldn’t necessarily need to see where they were going, a growing range of possible wall fixtures — storage cabinets, LCD screens, perhaps a kitchen sink — could substitute passenger convenience over views of the world outside. The elimination of the driver will mean the end of the car as a car.
-
Against the Clock
2016-08-30“Real time” is a popular narrative device in American portrayals of the War on Terror. The format is a particularly insidious form of propaganda: by normalizing the anticipation of an attack, it attempts to justify surveillance and preemptive strike; and by reenacting events in spectacular fashion it attempts to restore for white viewers the illusion of white control.
Against the Clock
Against the Clock2016-08-30“Real time” is a popular narrative device in American portrayals of the War on Terror. The format is a particularly insidious form of propaganda: by normalizing the anticipation of an attack, it attempts to justify surveillance and preemptive strike; and by reenacting events in spectacular fashion it attempts to restore for white viewers the illusion of white control.
-
Broken Windows, Broken Code
2016-08-29Predictive policing algorithms try to use past crime data to anticipate future occurrences and deploy resources accordingly. But in practice, they help produce the crimes and types of criminals a racist carceral state requires.
Broken Windows, Broken Code
Broken Windows, Broken Code2016-08-29Predictive policing algorithms try to use past crime data to anticipate future occurrences and deploy resources accordingly. But in practice, they help produce the crimes and types of criminals a racist carceral state requires.
-
Intercontinental Drift
2016-08-24Psychogeography accounts for the emotional effects of an urban environment on its walkers, claiming that a city was mapped in psychic zones. Why does one drift, instinctively, to the left hand side of the street when both pavements are clear? What codes these spaces with meaning? Dérive, then, is defined as unstructured drifting through urban environments to attune oneself to a city and its shifting ambiance. When public space — on the street or through a screen — is structured to keep us out, dérive moves beyond leisurely to become political.
Intercontinental Drift
Intercontinental Drift2016-08-24Psychogeography accounts for the emotional effects of an urban environment on its walkers, claiming that a city was mapped in psychic zones. Why does one drift, instinctively, to the left hand side of the street when both pavements are clear? What codes these spaces with meaning? Dérive, then, is defined as unstructured drifting through urban environments to attune oneself to a city and its shifting ambiance. When public space — on the street or through a screen — is structured to keep us out, dérive moves beyond leisurely to become political.
-
Pajama Rich
2016-08-22In the heyday of John Wayne jeans, the break between work and not-work was clear. In the era of athleisure, time is more ambiguous. When the workday starts or ends, and where work happens, have become less clear. At the same time, selfhood has become an entrepreneurial project, a question of optimizing different activities. The ideal worker in this new regime is female.
Pajama Rich
Pajama Rich2016-08-22In the heyday of John Wayne jeans, the break between work and not-work was clear. In the era of athleisure, time is more ambiguous. When the workday starts or ends, and where work happens, have become less clear. At the same time, selfhood has become an entrepreneurial project, a question of optimizing different activities. The ideal worker in this new regime is female.
-
Muse Feed
2016-08-18Cluelessness about where the scene came from, or being part of a scene at all, is integral to Weird Facebook’s culture. The fact that joining is as easy as sending friend requests to the people involved and just letting their content slowly take over your News Feed means that, for an art community, the barrier of entry is incredibly low. Some people take it very seriously; some people have been cultivating their audience for years. But randos don’t need to know any of this. Anyone can just wander in off the street, walk onto the stage, and start singing.
Muse Feed
Muse Feed2016-08-18Cluelessness about where the scene came from, or being part of a scene at all, is integral to Weird Facebook’s culture. The fact that joining is as easy as sending friend requests to the people involved and just letting their content slowly take over your News Feed means that, for an art community, the barrier of entry is incredibly low. Some people take it very seriously; some people have been cultivating their audience for years. But randos don’t need to know any of this. Anyone can just wander in off the street, walk onto the stage, and start singing.
-
Pet Sounds
2016-08-17If women are conventionally represented as patient listeners who accommodate the insensitivities of a person who speaks without purpose, pause, or perspective, offering unsolicited explanations that overwhelm bystanders, men are positioned as those compelled to inform, evaluate, and explain. Of this character type, the audiophile is the most intriguing iteration because he is the most ironic: a person who loves sound yet doesn’t listen.
Pet Sounds
Pet Sounds2016-08-17If women are conventionally represented as patient listeners who accommodate the insensitivities of a person who speaks without purpose, pause, or perspective, offering unsolicited explanations that overwhelm bystanders, men are positioned as those compelled to inform, evaluate, and explain. Of this character type, the audiophile is the most intriguing iteration because he is the most ironic: a person who loves sound yet doesn’t listen.
-
Torso Junkie
2016-08-16Say what you will about spambots, but they don’t discriminate. They will message anyone. From one remove, there’s something to appreciate here: If Grindr implicitly promises a kind of inclusive universe in which the sexual playing field is leveled, at least in fantasy, with respect to all the isms otherwise rife in our social landscape, then a bot may be that utopia’s oddly inarticulate emissary.
Torso Junkie
Torso Junkie2016-08-16Say what you will about spambots, but they don’t discriminate. They will message anyone. From one remove, there’s something to appreciate here: If Grindr implicitly promises a kind of inclusive universe in which the sexual playing field is leveled, at least in fantasy, with respect to all the isms otherwise rife in our social landscape, then a bot may be that utopia’s oddly inarticulate emissary.
-
Kik Starter
2016-08-15Before 21st-century parents got fussed over their kids getting electronic mail from sketchy men, 18th-century parents got in a lather over their daughters getting letters from “crimping fellows,” period slang for fuckboys. This anxiety finds its apex in Samuel Richardson’s epistolary novels, which, in the eroticized freedom of their young female protagonists, warned parents about the dangers of men wielding pens, but just as a parental warning is catnip to the rebellious young, the novels also gave young female readers the delectable taste of autonomy.
Kik Starter
Kik Starter2016-08-15Before 21st-century parents got fussed over their kids getting electronic mail from sketchy men, 18th-century parents got in a lather over their daughters getting letters from “crimping fellows,” period slang for fuckboys. This anxiety finds its apex in Samuel Richardson’s epistolary novels, which, in the eroticized freedom of their young female protagonists, warned parents about the dangers of men wielding pens, but just as a parental warning is catnip to the rebellious young, the novels also gave young female readers the delectable taste of autonomy.
-
Re: Old Friends
2016-08-12For me, being a new immigrant to America, the passive immersion of this election feels both absurd and ominous, as if I were some émigré hanging around Vienna in the spring of 1914, scrolling through memes about Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Many people would share this compulsion with their therapist. I just looked at dogs on the internet.
Re: Old Friends
Re: Old Friends2016-08-12For me, being a new immigrant to America, the passive immersion of this election feels both absurd and ominous, as if I were some émigré hanging around Vienna in the spring of 1914, scrolling through memes about Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Many people would share this compulsion with their therapist. I just looked at dogs on the internet.
-
Body Cam
2016-08-11Online platforms are indispensable tools for political organizing and education, but this yields a conundrum: organizing online means being constantly exposed to the violence, surveillance, and abuse one is organizing against.
-
Face to Interface
2016-08-10Human bodies are far from uniform. Sight, sound, and mobility vary widely across populations, and across the course of any individual’s life. For many, physiology makes face-to-face interaction inaccessible or less accessible than digitally mediated forms of communication. For a person who is physically impaired, communicating through text- and image-based platforms removes a significant barrier. The model that insists on face-to-face engagement thus erases the disabled body.
Face to Interface
Face to Interface2016-08-10Human bodies are far from uniform. Sight, sound, and mobility vary widely across populations, and across the course of any individual’s life. For many, physiology makes face-to-face interaction inaccessible or less accessible than digitally mediated forms of communication. For a person who is physically impaired, communicating through text- and image-based platforms removes a significant barrier. The model that insists on face-to-face engagement thus erases the disabled body.
-
The Scrying Game
2016-08-09Anxiety is a constant, quiet theme in beauty vlogs, usually appearing as its socially acceptable avatars: the perfectionist, the neat freak, the homebody. More than makeup techniques, these videos demonstrate the private ritual of making oneself up — not for an outside gaze, but as a means to ward against it by finding comfort in one’s own reflection.
The Scrying Game
The Scrying Game2016-08-09Anxiety is a constant, quiet theme in beauty vlogs, usually appearing as its socially acceptable avatars: the perfectionist, the neat freak, the homebody. More than makeup techniques, these videos demonstrate the private ritual of making oneself up — not for an outside gaze, but as a means to ward against it by finding comfort in one’s own reflection.
-
This Is What a Feminist Looks Like
2016-08-08The hardware named Alexa responds to each question with a prefigured quip. She is a sleek black cylinder, an infinite curve. A light ring wraps the pole snugly, as if holding it, and fields the commands Alexa receives by flickering exuberantly. She’s a nerd’s dream girl. She takes infinite shit.
This Is What a Feminist Looks Like
This Is What a Feminist Looks Like2016-08-08The hardware named Alexa responds to each question with a prefigured quip. She is a sleek black cylinder, an infinite curve. A light ring wraps the pole snugly, as if holding it, and fields the commands Alexa receives by flickering exuberantly. She’s a nerd’s dream girl. She takes infinite shit.
-
My mantra for negotiating committed open relationships is simple: “Convert anxiety into desire.” Both of you are anxious about something. You’re worried about his fidelity and desires. He’s nervous that you won’t respond well if he tells you honestly what he wants to do or fantasizes about. Both of you need to figure out how to shift the affective charge of the idea in question — those things you think he’s doing or wants to do — from nervousness to arousal.
Should I Tell My Partner I Was PigDick69 All Along?
Should I Tell My Partner I Was PigDick69 All Along?2016-08-05My mantra for negotiating committed open relationships is simple: “Convert anxiety into desire.” Both of you are anxious about something. You’re worried about his fidelity and desires. He’s nervous that you won’t respond well if he tells you honestly what he wants to do or fantasizes about. Both of you need to figure out how to shift the affective charge of the idea in question — those things you think he’s doing or wants to do — from nervousness to arousal.
-
Monster Tuck Rally
2016-08-04Plastic surgery “victims” are portrayed as modern monsters, reflecting viewers’ anxieties around beauty and its connection to wealth and status. That anyone could want to look “botched” delivers the uncomfortable message that technology defines and redefines beauty standards.
Monster Tuck Rally
Monster Tuck Rally2016-08-04Plastic surgery “victims” are portrayed as modern monsters, reflecting viewers’ anxieties around beauty and its connection to wealth and status. That anyone could want to look “botched” delivers the uncomfortable message that technology defines and redefines beauty standards.
-
The Mismanaged Heart
2016-08-03When a digital platform asks you “How are you feeling?” it specifically doesn’t want a number by way of response. The convivial approach is a means of getting around our defenses, to get at data that might be sold as more accurate and more revealing. To users interacting in real time, the question sounds like an opportunity for dialogue. But to the owner and controller of the platform, it generates data. When we express how we are, platforms hear this as a statement of what we are.
The Mismanaged Heart
The Mismanaged Heart2016-08-03When a digital platform asks you “How are you feeling?” it specifically doesn’t want a number by way of response. The convivial approach is a means of getting around our defenses, to get at data that might be sold as more accurate and more revealing. To users interacting in real time, the question sounds like an opportunity for dialogue. But to the owner and controller of the platform, it generates data. When we express how we are, platforms hear this as a statement of what we are.
-
Funny Feelings
2016-08-02The jokes we make on Twitter have an indexed quality that improv and stand-up do not. To tweet or post reactively in the moment is to create a public archive of linkable emotional content, in which past catharsis becomes future nostalgia. Emotional echoes once available mainly through coincidences — overhearing a triggering phrase, reactivating a lost muscle memory, meeting a stranger’s look that mirrors that of a former friend, hearing a joke on stage that makes you miss a family member’s presence — become seemingly available by choice, on demand.
Funny Feelings
Funny Feelings2016-08-02The jokes we make on Twitter have an indexed quality that improv and stand-up do not. To tweet or post reactively in the moment is to create a public archive of linkable emotional content, in which past catharsis becomes future nostalgia. Emotional echoes once available mainly through coincidences — overhearing a triggering phrase, reactivating a lost muscle memory, meeting a stranger’s look that mirrors that of a former friend, hearing a joke on stage that makes you miss a family member’s presence — become seemingly available by choice, on demand.
-
Vanity Project
2016-08-01In a popular Quora thread, the top answers to the question “Why do I look good in the mirror but bad in photos?” all revolve around the “mere exposure effect,” which states that we prefer things simply because we are more familiar with them. Photos often capture unfamiliar angles, but even taken head-on, like a mug shot, they show us our true face, not the reversed face we see in the mirror. It’s the reflection that’s inaccurate, but to us, the unreversed face looks wrong.
Vanity Project
Vanity Project2016-08-01In a popular Quora thread, the top answers to the question “Why do I look good in the mirror but bad in photos?” all revolve around the “mere exposure effect,” which states that we prefer things simply because we are more familiar with them. Photos often capture unfamiliar angles, but even taken head-on, like a mug shot, they show us our true face, not the reversed face we see in the mirror. It’s the reflection that’s inaccurate, but to us, the unreversed face looks wrong.
-
The Right to Have Remained Silent
2016-07-28In an era when we are all more public than we can know, journalists and editors need to balance reporting in the public interest against the consequences any exposure will have on their subjects. An exposed corrupt congressman gets what he deserves, but does the publicly incriminated rioter? Restraint is one of journalism’s cardinal virtues; the profession serves the public by not saying things too.
The Right to Have Remained Silent
The Right to Have Remained Silent2016-07-28In an era when we are all more public than we can know, journalists and editors need to balance reporting in the public interest against the consequences any exposure will have on their subjects. An exposed corrupt congressman gets what he deserves, but does the publicly incriminated rioter? Restraint is one of journalism’s cardinal virtues; the profession serves the public by not saying things too.
-
The Babysitters Club
2016-07-27What unites Yelp, Seamless and Venmo is, in part, their desire to monopolize particular spheres of adult life (“spaces,” in Valleyspeak). They also offer services that diminish the user’s autonomy in a way that might — held at certain angles to the light — read as patronizing, when we’re supposed to be the patrons. We cannot find food on our own, or choose a restaurant, or settle a tiny debt. Where that dependency feels unseemly in the context of independent adult life, it feels appropriate if the user’s position remains childlike, and the childlikeness makes sense when you consider that Yelp depends on us to write reviews, and therefore must, like a fun mom, make chores feel fun too.
The Babysitters Club
The Babysitters Club2016-07-27What unites Yelp, Seamless and Venmo is, in part, their desire to monopolize particular spheres of adult life (“spaces,” in Valleyspeak). They also offer services that diminish the user’s autonomy in a way that might — held at certain angles to the light — read as patronizing, when we’re supposed to be the patrons. We cannot find food on our own, or choose a restaurant, or settle a tiny debt. Where that dependency feels unseemly in the context of independent adult life, it feels appropriate if the user’s position remains childlike, and the childlikeness makes sense when you consider that Yelp depends on us to write reviews, and therefore must, like a fun mom, make chores feel fun too.
-
Ritual Views
2016-07-26It’s an article of faith for me that reality can be coaxed to dwell inside fresh language, that our new and singular lives demand contemporary forms of expression. Yet I found myself at a loss for words that could contain or acknowledge the transmundane nature of what had happened. Death seemed to need old words. I scrounged my cupboards and came up with a candle. Then I opened my computer and typed in the search term “prayers for the dead.”
Ritual Views
Ritual Views2016-07-26It’s an article of faith for me that reality can be coaxed to dwell inside fresh language, that our new and singular lives demand contemporary forms of expression. Yet I found myself at a loss for words that could contain or acknowledge the transmundane nature of what had happened. Death seemed to need old words. I scrounged my cupboards and came up with a candle. Then I opened my computer and typed in the search term “prayers for the dead.”
-
Poor Meme, Rich Meme
2016-07-25Memes and blackness are intertwined, and the meme’s tactical similarity to historical black cultural forms makes them — predictably — vulnerable to appropriation and capture. But if memes reiterate the inequities between black creators and white appropriators, can they also move us into a new collective blackness?
Poor Meme, Rich Meme
Poor Meme, Rich Meme2016-07-25Memes and blackness are intertwined, and the meme’s tactical similarity to historical black cultural forms makes them — predictably — vulnerable to appropriation and capture. But if memes reiterate the inequities between black creators and white appropriators, can they also move us into a new collective blackness?
-
Re: Wes Larson
2016-07-22Recently I’ve become attached to a stranger named Wes Larson, a bear researcher in the process of getting his Master’s degree in wildlife conservation. Based on his photos, his work seems to involve a lot of trapping bears, posing for photos with them, and then reassuring his followers that the bears are only temporarily incapacitated. He goes by @grizkid on Instagram and his captions from his different posts are a tone of voice I recognize, even if I’ll never hear it myself.
Re: Wes Larson
Re: Wes Larson2016-07-22Recently I’ve become attached to a stranger named Wes Larson, a bear researcher in the process of getting his Master’s degree in wildlife conservation. Based on his photos, his work seems to involve a lot of trapping bears, posing for photos with them, and then reassuring his followers that the bears are only temporarily incapacitated. He goes by @grizkid on Instagram and his captions from his different posts are a tone of voice I recognize, even if I’ll never hear it myself.
-
Indecent Exposure
2016-07-21Before sexual assault online was recognized as such, Lori Douglas was a family lawyer in Winnipeg, Canada, when her husband shared explicit pictures of her without her knowledge or consent. This began a long ordeal that saw her professionally reprimanded and publicly humiliated for his violation. Here, she talks about the experience.
Indecent Exposure
Indecent Exposure2016-07-21Before sexual assault online was recognized as such, Lori Douglas was a family lawyer in Winnipeg, Canada, when her husband shared explicit pictures of her without her knowledge or consent. This began a long ordeal that saw her professionally reprimanded and publicly humiliated for his violation. Here, she talks about the experience.
-
The Spy Is a Camera
2016-07-20In offering you the chance to decide which tagged photos of yourself you want to show, social media sites offer you a feeling of control, as well as a chance to enjoy the idea of other people looking at you. This serves as compensation for a surveillance that many of us can’t imagine being able to escape.
The Spy Is a Camera
The Spy Is a Camera2016-07-20In offering you the chance to decide which tagged photos of yourself you want to show, social media sites offer you a feeling of control, as well as a chance to enjoy the idea of other people looking at you. This serves as compensation for a surveillance that many of us can’t imagine being able to escape.
-
Nervous? We Should Be
2016-07-19When we regard nervousness as emotional glitching, it confirms that a clear signal is never a possibility: We cannot understand each other perfectly. We cannot feel together. We are living in muddles and tangles of our emotions as we strive to feel together. We live in the mess of misunderstanding. The unease that comes from being out of time with one another is necessary and not going away.
Nervous? We Should Be
Nervous? We Should Be2016-07-19When we regard nervousness as emotional glitching, it confirms that a clear signal is never a possibility: We cannot understand each other perfectly. We cannot feel together. We are living in muddles and tangles of our emotions as we strive to feel together. We live in the mess of misunderstanding. The unease that comes from being out of time with one another is necessary and not going away.
-
Masked and Anonymous
2016-07-18The ubiquity of identity play, like in face swapping, obscures the line between revelation, reveling, and revolution. Empathy, envy, identification, and appropriation all intermingle. We almost don’t notice the transgressions anymore. They become comedic glitches, fascinating failures. Some face-swap images become popular precisely because they fail: They showcase the limits of technology in understanding humanity, as when faces are unintentionally switched with toasters, or breasts, or artfully arranged fruit.
Masked and Anonymous
Masked and Anonymous2016-07-18The ubiquity of identity play, like in face swapping, obscures the line between revelation, reveling, and revolution. Empathy, envy, identification, and appropriation all intermingle. We almost don’t notice the transgressions anymore. They become comedic glitches, fascinating failures. Some face-swap images become popular precisely because they fail: They showcase the limits of technology in understanding humanity, as when faces are unintentionally switched with toasters, or breasts, or artfully arranged fruit.
-
Who Was She?
2016-07-15You’re one of those people who needs to commit daily acts of minor self-sabotage. Going deep into the ex-girlfriend’s social media is a prime example. So is the urge to bring up the Instagram with your boyfriend, and I’m sure if we spent the afternoon together, I could point out another dozen little ways you’ve found to inflict emotional self-harm. Naturally, you do all these things for a reason. They fill your need for chaos. They keep you fueled.
Who Was She?
Who Was She?2016-07-15You’re one of those people who needs to commit daily acts of minor self-sabotage. Going deep into the ex-girlfriend’s social media is a prime example. So is the urge to bring up the Instagram with your boyfriend, and I’m sure if we spent the afternoon together, I could point out another dozen little ways you’ve found to inflict emotional self-harm. Naturally, you do all these things for a reason. They fill your need for chaos. They keep you fueled.
-
The Internet Is a Tough Room
2016-07-14Online humor is riskier than stand-up or TV sketch comedy, and rewarded proportionally, because it has no scaffolding: no performance cues, laugh track, visual framing, or sympathetic buzz of the club to aid the gag. It’s naked, daring you not to laugh.
The Internet Is a Tough Room
The Internet Is a Tough Room2016-07-14Online humor is riskier than stand-up or TV sketch comedy, and rewarded proportionally, because it has no scaffolding: no performance cues, laugh track, visual framing, or sympathetic buzz of the club to aid the gag. It’s naked, daring you not to laugh.
-
The Things We Carried
2016-07-13Most thing-based Instagram accounts — for food, yoga, beaches — entice us to vicariously consume lifestyles and fantasies, but @TSA’s viral exhibitionism has the opposite function: to steel ourselves against making the same mistakes as those whose possessions are on view. @TSA instructs through these object lessons.
The Things We Carried
The Things We Carried2016-07-13Most thing-based Instagram accounts — for food, yoga, beaches — entice us to vicariously consume lifestyles and fantasies, but @TSA’s viral exhibitionism has the opposite function: to steel ourselves against making the same mistakes as those whose possessions are on view. @TSA instructs through these object lessons.
-
Seeing Stars
2016-07-12Andromeda bot offers a look at the physical universe, something that is, no matter what meaning we ascribe to it. The expansiveness that each tweet communicates makes me feel tiny. Even though the pain of losing Mark feels bigger than anything else. The stars shine for no one at all and the bot tweets endlessly to an unknown audience. We look to the stars for meaning, we make the bots that go on and on without us.
Seeing Stars
Seeing Stars2016-07-12Andromeda bot offers a look at the physical universe, something that is, no matter what meaning we ascribe to it. The expansiveness that each tweet communicates makes me feel tiny. Even though the pain of losing Mark feels bigger than anything else. The stars shine for no one at all and the bot tweets endlessly to an unknown audience. We look to the stars for meaning, we make the bots that go on and on without us.
-
Jocks Without Borders
2016-07-11There is a deep-rooted tendency to associate sports with moments of courageous overcoming, with displays of physical strength, grace, and beauty. E-sports contain literally none of these, which means they are well-positioned to reveal all the other things that actually make up sport: the reification of competition, patriarchal nationalism, and the formation of hierarchal social groups anchored in the protocols of spectatorship.
Jocks Without Borders
Jocks Without Borders2016-07-11There is a deep-rooted tendency to associate sports with moments of courageous overcoming, with displays of physical strength, grace, and beauty. E-sports contain literally none of these, which means they are well-positioned to reveal all the other things that actually make up sport: the reification of competition, patriarchal nationalism, and the formation of hierarchal social groups anchored in the protocols of spectatorship.
-
Re: Isabella Killoran
2016-07-08Killoran’s gestures are undeniably shaped by art — referring to Baroque and Renaissance paintings with equal parts wit and nonchalance. Hers are not the unheimlich magician hands of Ellen Sirot, but rather something unrehearsed and abstractly maternal.
Re: Isabella Killoran
Re: Isabella Killoran2016-07-08Killoran’s gestures are undeniably shaped by art — referring to Baroque and Renaissance paintings with equal parts wit and nonchalance. Hers are not the unheimlich magician hands of Ellen Sirot, but rather something unrehearsed and abstractly maternal.
-
Post, Memory
2016-07-07To spend time inside the “Memorias” group, where a long-scattered village had recently rebuilt itself online, was to submit to the lush melancholia of diasporic longing. Members had inadvertently created a place that existed independently of the village’s present and past. Their community was a village of its own, a separate collective entity its members fortified together.
Post, Memory
Post, Memory2016-07-07To spend time inside the “Memorias” group, where a long-scattered village had recently rebuilt itself online, was to submit to the lush melancholia of diasporic longing. Members had inadvertently created a place that existed independently of the village’s present and past. Their community was a village of its own, a separate collective entity its members fortified together.
-
True-ish Grit
2016-07-06Small cities are trying to present themselves as “authentic” and Instagram friendly, which has led to homogenization and gentrification. In the coming years, these places may be faced with uncanny replicas of themselves: too-perfect copies operating in closed circuits, economically separate from the aging cities whose past they have appropriated.
True-ish Grit
True-ish Grit2016-07-06Small cities are trying to present themselves as “authentic” and Instagram friendly, which has led to homogenization and gentrification. In the coming years, these places may be faced with uncanny replicas of themselves: too-perfect copies operating in closed circuits, economically separate from the aging cities whose past they have appropriated.
-
Bot Couture
2016-07-05Technologies that presume to innovate — or worse yet, “disrupt” — are often met with some hesitancy or weariness. They remove power from human hands, and ask us to trust machinery or algorithms. For couture, a trade founded on the belief that humans know best, this is an existential threat. But fashion thrives in the place between fear and boredom. “Manus x Machina” tries to show that wearable technology is not so scary after all; it’s all part of a familiar family tree.
Bot Couture
Bot Couture2016-07-05Technologies that presume to innovate — or worse yet, “disrupt” — are often met with some hesitancy or weariness. They remove power from human hands, and ask us to trust machinery or algorithms. For couture, a trade founded on the belief that humans know best, this is an existential threat. But fashion thrives in the place between fear and boredom. “Manus x Machina” tries to show that wearable technology is not so scary after all; it’s all part of a familiar family tree.
-
Am I Texting My Friends Way Too Much?
2016-07-01I text my friends all day long which is nice and keeps us bonded. But we are so embedded in each other’s lives that it’s hard to know when to keep a thought to myself, and for what reason. Where, and how, does one draw the line between the self and beyond?
Am I Texting My Friends Way Too Much?
Am I Texting My Friends Way Too Much?2016-07-01I text my friends all day long which is nice and keeps us bonded. But we are so embedded in each other’s lives that it’s hard to know when to keep a thought to myself, and for what reason. Where, and how, does one draw the line between the self and beyond?
-
Clash Rules Everything Around Me
2016-06-27Clan Prestige kicked me out immediately; Clan Friendship kicked me out for donating weak troops; Clan Love communicated mostly in Arabic. So I stayed awhile in the dead-silent Clan Maturity, left a week later for Clan Corgi Butts, and ended up where I always suspected I belonged: In the Trash Clan.
Clash Rules Everything Around Me
Clash Rules Everything Around Me2016-06-27Clan Prestige kicked me out immediately; Clan Friendship kicked me out for donating weak troops; Clan Love communicated mostly in Arabic. So I stayed awhile in the dead-silent Clan Maturity, left a week later for Clan Corgi Butts, and ended up where I always suspected I belonged: In the Trash Clan.
-
E•MO•JIS
2016-06-27As gifs and emojis become more streamlined in the applications we use to communicate, the more puppeteer-like these platforms appear, demanding we move in time with the emotional range of the options given.
-
Gemini Haptics
2016-06-27The uniform repetitions necessary for operating these machines — the subtle caresses of finger tip, the unthinking memory of the keystroke — made the superstructural feel intimate, almost loving, something you could touch and take as your own.
Gemini Haptics
Gemini Haptics2016-06-27The uniform repetitions necessary for operating these machines — the subtle caresses of finger tip, the unthinking memory of the keystroke — made the superstructural feel intimate, almost loving, something you could touch and take as your own.
-
In the Eye of the Coder
2016-06-27Most of us have wondered how objectively attractive we are, as if an answer could be obtained. Beauty scoring apps tempt us with a “correct” assessment. They work best when their results are absurd, offering a respite from human judgment that we can reject.
In the Eye of the Coder
In the Eye of the Coder2016-06-27Most of us have wondered how objectively attractive we are, as if an answer could be obtained. Beauty scoring apps tempt us with a “correct” assessment. They work best when their results are absurd, offering a respite from human judgment that we can reject.
-
About Real Life
2016-06-20I’ve argued that “online” and “offline,” like “body” and “mind,” aren’t like two positions on a light switch — a perspective I’ve called digital dualism. Instead, all social life is made of both information and material; it’s technological and human, virtual and real. Together with friends and colleagues, I’ve theorized an experience of the internet based less in cyberpunk and more in body horror — and not just horror but other things too, like joy. With Real Life, we will be building on that perspective.
About Real Life
About Real Life2016-06-20I’ve argued that “online” and “offline,” like “body” and “mind,” aren’t like two positions on a light switch — a perspective I’ve called digital dualism. Instead, all social life is made of both information and material; it’s technological and human, virtual and real. Together with friends and colleagues, I’ve theorized an experience of the internet based less in cyberpunk and more in body horror — and not just horror but other things too, like joy. With Real Life, we will be building on that perspective.