I get Henry’s point about Musk’s blundering incompetence possibly assuaging some concerns about techno-ceasarism; on the other hand, incompetence sometimes forces recourse to police/military action to compensate, assuming there’s a willingness to take that road.
Nice discussion. The stuff on systems made me chuckle because modern systems theory and second-order cybernetics are incredibly sceptical of the concept of instrumental action and control - and indeed, sees what it calls 'steering' as possible but difficult. Though I guess we know our tech titans are not deep readers.
This was really interesting. It strikes me that the “Trump cult” is not just a metaphor, but that social media enables the development of cult-like thinking (except the information isolation is self-created and reinforced by algorithms.
I've put Minds Make Society on my shortlist and ordered it!
Overall I found the discussion highly convincing in the abstract, so it seems worth saying the use of the Mike Cernovich example rang false for me concretely. I have found him quite helpful for understanding what's really going on out there in earlier years — what I heard from cabbies in New York in 2016–2017, for instance, matched Cernovich's then-contemporary stuff fairly well, and that helped me guess Trump would win in 2016. One has to correct for the usual Wilfred Bion puzzle of why many groups tend to elect their most seemingly hysteric or psychotic representatives as leaders, but with that done, even the Pizzagate thing seemed hardly out of line: there really has been a lot of concern about human trafficking in the working classes. (I remember it vividly among working class Black Chicagoans in 2014 well before Pizzagate itself; it was already in part about Haiti since many had family or friends who disappeared there). Cernovich seemed to model the genuine concern with a typical distorting charismatic extremism, in a way common to almost all effective popular myth-shapers.
Listened for a second time to catch cited authors and recall this fascinating discussion. This series is the best amalgam assessing the intellectual pre-history of our current capital (dis)order.
As someone who sees culture arising from material conditions, I believe--I hope, that the material reality of life as wage workers and our rapidly warming planet will generate a worldview we can coalesce around. We need the structure/system of democratic unionism for the former. The worst effects of climate change--flooded cities, raging wildfires, and hundreds of millions of cli ate refugees, might coalesce our thinking.
On the other hand, these could both lead to authoritarian responses and more hope in tecchnological magic bullets.
I swear I'm not plugging myself, just reporting deja vu. I listened to y'all mention Kornbluh's Immediacy, did some thinking and writing about it while waiting for the book to arrive, through the lens of mediating structures. Ended up citing Farrell in the final installment.
I get Henry’s point about Musk’s blundering incompetence possibly assuaging some concerns about techno-ceasarism; on the other hand, incompetence sometimes forces recourse to police/military action to compensate, assuming there’s a willingness to take that road.
Nice discussion. The stuff on systems made me chuckle because modern systems theory and second-order cybernetics are incredibly sceptical of the concept of instrumental action and control - and indeed, sees what it calls 'steering' as possible but difficult. Though I guess we know our tech titans are not deep readers.
This was really interesting. It strikes me that the “Trump cult” is not just a metaphor, but that social media enables the development of cult-like thinking (except the information isolation is self-created and reinforced by algorithms.
I guess these tech bros have never read Braudel and the annales school. Great men are over-rated.
I've put Minds Make Society on my shortlist and ordered it!
Overall I found the discussion highly convincing in the abstract, so it seems worth saying the use of the Mike Cernovich example rang false for me concretely. I have found him quite helpful for understanding what's really going on out there in earlier years — what I heard from cabbies in New York in 2016–2017, for instance, matched Cernovich's then-contemporary stuff fairly well, and that helped me guess Trump would win in 2016. One has to correct for the usual Wilfred Bion puzzle of why many groups tend to elect their most seemingly hysteric or psychotic representatives as leaders, but with that done, even the Pizzagate thing seemed hardly out of line: there really has been a lot of concern about human trafficking in the working classes. (I remember it vividly among working class Black Chicagoans in 2014 well before Pizzagate itself; it was already in part about Haiti since many had family or friends who disappeared there). Cernovich seemed to model the genuine concern with a typical distorting charismatic extremism, in a way common to almost all effective popular myth-shapers.
Listened for a second time to catch cited authors and recall this fascinating discussion. This series is the best amalgam assessing the intellectual pre-history of our current capital (dis)order.
Excellent discussion.
As someone who sees culture arising from material conditions, I believe--I hope, that the material reality of life as wage workers and our rapidly warming planet will generate a worldview we can coalesce around. We need the structure/system of democratic unionism for the former. The worst effects of climate change--flooded cities, raging wildfires, and hundreds of millions of cli ate refugees, might coalesce our thinking.
On the other hand, these could both lead to authoritarian responses and more hope in tecchnological magic bullets.
I swear I'm not plugging myself, just reporting deja vu. I listened to y'all mention Kornbluh's Immediacy, did some thinking and writing about it while waiting for the book to arrive, through the lens of mediating structures. Ended up citing Farrell in the final installment.
https://open.substack.com/pub/jamestalley/p/many-people-have-been-saying?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=281i0