Archive for the ‘ Technology ’ Category

Social Incompetence

We are so pleased with out technical competence – the cell phone, for example, that has taken the world by storm (especially the undeveloped world) – that we have overlooked a parallel development – our spectacular social incompetence.

This is surprising. After all, we expected our new networking technologies to improve our social lives – by making it easier for us to communicate. What happened?

Our focus changed – from us to them (the various embodiments of the Computer) and we have became more interested in them than in us. Almost anywhere you can see people staring at their computers – evidently thinking somehow that they have all the answers.

We have outsmarted ourselves – by making a technology that seems to be human – and not only that, but super-human.

2013
05/05
CATEGORY
Internet
Sociology
Software
Technology
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No Being, No Suffering

The purpose of Gautama Buddha, and his movement, was to eliminate suffering. And his techniques have been used recently in MBSR to do just that. Although most people prefer to suffer instead.

It is impossible for us now to understand his time (or any ancient time, for that matter) – which was Northern India in 400 BCE.

But in our time – in the Age of the Computer – we have a new cure for suffering. Not being at all.

This has to be seen in action to be appreciated. Its foremost practitioners when I was working in Silicon Valley in the Nineties, were the young women working in high-tech who were the living embodiment of it.

They had a very active social life, which included a very active sex life. And the music of the moment was their very body and soul. They had no other life – and didn’t want one.

What they would turn into later in life, I had no idea. But I suppose their lives became a mess – just like everyone else’s. They thought – like many other people did – that a new perfect era was dawning.

But they ended up in a world of illusion that was going nowhere. Or worse.

2013
05/04
CATEGORY
Business
Entertainment
Psychology
Sociology
Technology
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When the World Became a Surface

I know practically nothing about art – but was amazed recently, in my The Modern and the Postmodern course to discover that this process happened in Painting about the same time as it did in the Movies, Television and the Computer – where everything is shown on the magical screen. Which has the added advantage of sound.

No wonder we were so taken by it. It was a world better than the real world. We never noticed that it had no depth – who cared?

This transition from three-dimensional imagery, as in the Renaissance, to one-dimensional imagery was part of the transition from the Modern to the Post-modern world. We are determined now to make the world superficial – in every way that we can.

After all – it is much easier that way.

2013
05/01
CATEGORY
Art
Technology
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The Need to be Wonderful

This, it seems to me, is one of the strongest compulsions of the modern world. It is fueled by the belief that there is something wrong with us. Something very wrong. Which comes directly from Calvinism.

We like to think of ourselves as being preoccupied with getting better – because that sounds so much better. But, in fact, we are preoccupied with how bad we are – and are desperately trying to get away from that.

This concern used to be fully conscious, at least to the religious part of the population. But it has now become unconscious, while still fully operational.

We are now intent on destroying ourselves – for the best of reasons. Because we have become such awful creatures – the opposite of what we should be.

We are now flying on automatic pilot – and consider this a huge improvement. When, in fact, it is a disaster of the first magnitude. We have, in fact, become not what we are (networks and computers) – instead of what we are (people).

It seems to us we have become gods – that we have discovered what the gods really are. What else could they be?

And we do not realize any of this at all.

We have become that perfect.

2013
05/01
CATEGORY
Philosophy
Psychology
Religion
Sociology
Technology
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The Discovery of the Real World

This was the discovery that made the modern world possible.

By modern world I mean the developed (and affluent) world of Northern Europe and North America – as contrasted with the undeveloped (and impoverished) world of Southern Europe and Latin America.

Before this discovery was made, it was assumed that the world was whatever we believed it was. The real world was whatever the human world was (including our religious beliefs). Then it dawned on us (gradually) that there might be a difference – the real world might be something entirely different.

It might have its own rules. And if we played by those rules we could be much bigger – because we were part of a much bigger world. This was the assumption of Science and even the related worlds of Technology and Industrialization. Neither of which happened in the South – which burned any such heretics at the stake.

Then something interesting happened – we thought we could cheat Mother Nature. We could exploit her natural resources (use her oil, for example) – and she would never notice. I have used an anthropomorphic description here (speaking of Mother Nature) a but a strictly scientific description (such as that provided by Climate Science) came to the same conclusion – we were only fooling ourselves by thinking we were getting something for nothing. We were part of the real world – whether we liked it or not.

The same thing has happened in religion. Religion has never been part of the real world – only part of the human world. But we have overlooked this. And become more religious than ever – in all kinds of ways. Business (united with technology) has become the religion of progress – as well as money.

The real world has been left in the dust – we think.

2013
04/30
CATEGORY
Business
Philosophy
Technology
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Normal Human Development Does Not Produce a Standard Product

In fact this is true of any living organism. Every plant is different – while at the same time typical of its species.

Our emphasis on products makes us look at them as what the can be reduced to – for example, a tree can be reduced to lumber. This is completely foreign to the way uncivilized people looked at the world – or artists of any kind looked at it.

This attitude is now considered treasonous because everyone must be the same and see the same. We have developed a standard development that produces standard people. And we consider this a huge improvement – when it is just the opposite.

This problem is not the problem of the individual versus his society – but the problem of both as effected by the drive towards standardization.

I can see the huge advantages of this. Having a standardized automobile allows anyone to drive any car easily. Having a standardized computer user interface allows any computer-literate person to operate any computer.

But I can also see we have taken this too far. We have concentrated on our interfaces so much we have forgotten what is behind them – us.

And we have not only forgotten us – we have destroyed us.

2013
04/29
CATEGORY
Psychology
Sociology
Technology
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Serving a Greater Cause

This is one of the preconditions for a advanced culture – advanced, that is – in their own eyes.

As I have said elsewhere, the Industrial Revolution – the most profound of all revolutions – started with the Sailing Ship. Not the Steam Engine – as is commonly believed. And crucial to these Sailing Ships – which involved many new specializations – such as banking and finance – was the large number of sailors it provided employment for. Immediately (in the space of one or two generations) this new class of people – which had never existed before – sprang into being. They could only do two things – man their ships (by brute force) and procreate. No one noticed that this was a greatly simplified existence.

Eventually, with manufacturing, this new class of people – the workers (to use Marxist terminology) or the mass – with their new mass communications – came to dominate our global culture.

We can now say all these people were serving a greater cause - Industrialization. I refuse to use the term Capitalism – even though our conservatives love it. In reality, we are not sure what either one was. And now that we are in a post-industrial society – we are even less sure. But we ignore our ignorance.

Software is what we now need to understand – the computer complex, has become our greater cause. We need to understand how this affects us.

But everyone is ahead of me. They know they are not supposed to know anything at all.

2013
04/29
CATEGORY
History
Philosophy
Technology
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The Need to Oppress

I sometimes wonder what is wrong with me. I mean there must be lots of things wrong with me, but what is the main thing?

I have decided, as of this morning, that it is my lack of a very common need – the need to oppress others, or to be oppressed by them. I hardly need say that this need has not been recognized officially – so I am taking it on myself to make it official.

This need is the driver of all that we consider sacred in our world – the world of business. Without this, no one gets anywhere in it.

I hope your realized that I used the world sacred in connection with business. In case you didn’t, I want to make sure. This has been the big shift in Religion – in American religion, at least – and that is all that matters. Business has become its new religion – and to survive, any religion has to accommodate itself to this big shift.

The religion I grew up in realized this, somewhat vaguely. And just barely survived a remake of itself. It is trying to say two things at once – it has changed completely, and it has not changed at all. For most of my family members, this makes perfect sense. Since what they want most – to dominate and be dominated – has not changed at all.

This is closely related to the need to be or not to be. The oppressors always assert that the oppressed do not exist – they cannot be. And therefore can (and should be) oppressed. Why be boss if you cannot enjoy the benefits of your position? If you do exist (perhaps by accident) you immediately stop being – because you know you are going to be shot down in flames.

I can refer to other authorities who say the same thing – more or less. Mumford refers to it as the machine and Foucault refers to it as disciplinary technology - or disciplinary control. Its aim is to produce:

A docile body that may be subjected, used, transformed and improved.

This technology – basically a military technology – was necessary before the Industrial Revolution (and therefore Capitalism) could happen. The improvement part is important – because people now believe (especially after the Computer)  that they are super-people – and above ordinary morality. Just like the gods.

I am listening to A Visit From the Goon Squad – and it makes the same point (very cleverly). Time has messed us up. This makes the metaphysical argument that time is socially-dependent. We have the awesome ability to mess up the whole world – or at least our world – which, for us, amounts to the same thing. Since we have no way of knowing what the rest of the world is like.

Our little world will disappear – like many others before it. Can we, as people, change it so that we can survive? I think it unlikely. Because for society to change, the people in it must change.

But they no longer exist.

2013
04/28
CATEGORY
Philosophy
Technology
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How Android Really Works

I’m amazed it took me so long to figure this out – when the evidence was staring me right in the face – two Android 4.0 touch devices lying on my desk that I cannot make work – and never will be able to make work.

Android is not an operating system for mobile devices – as everyone assumes – it is a collection of software components that can be used by manufacturers – plus a few software components of their own – plus the right hardware – to make a mobile device. This is not easy, and it takes some first-rate engineering (which is not cheap) to produce a quality product.

It is up to the manufacturers to make something that will work. Often they don’t bother – they just buy some marginal hardware (from the first-rate manufacturers) – add a few Android software components so it almost works – and then sell it cheaply as an Android device.

The old adage “Let the buyer beware” no longer applies. These products are so complicated, and do so much, the average user is in no position to evaluate them. The expert user, who knows what is going on under the hood of these devices, will highlight the problems he is interested in. And overlook the rest.

In short, the high-tech world is breaking down – and like Humpty-Dumpty, cannot be put back together again.

2013
04/25
CATEGORY
Business
Morality
Software
Technology
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The Concept of Enlightenment

This is the title of the first chapter of the Dialectic of Enlightenment, by Horkheimer and Adorno. These guys were Marxist thinkers of the Frankfurt School, which I have mentioned previously in my posting The Frankfurt School.

Unfortunately their writing is dense – as German thinking tended to be before the collapse of their culture into Nazism. They desperately wanted to understand this – but they made their insights so heavy they sank out of sight. In this posting I will try to bring some of them back to light.

They start off with a bang:

Enlightenment, understood in the widest sense as the advance of thought, has always aimed at liberating human beings from fear and installing them as masters. Yet the wholly enlightened earth is radiant with triumphant calamity.

What happened? Their answer – which I love – is technology. What do we mean by that? Basically, it is an attitude (and these are my words, not theirs). Technology has become our new religion – we have become slaves to that. But let me return to the book – which returns to Bacon:

He despised the exponents of tradition, who substituted belief for knowledge and were as unwilling to doubt as they were reckless in supplying answers. All this, he said, stood in the way of “the happy match between the mind of man and the nature of things,” with the result that humanity was unable to use its knowledge for the betterment of its condition.

Knowledge obtained by the use of the scientific method (a myth, as it turned out) would not only be exempt from the influence of wealth and power – but would establish man as the master of Nature!

I hardly need tell you it didn’t quite work out that way. Our train of progress has jumped the tracks and ended up in the weeds somewhere – to use a railroad metaphor, because it is so easy to understand.

I return to the book again – and pick some of its ideas out of the verbiage they are buried in.

Technology aims to produce neither concepts, nor the joy of understanding – but method (in computer terms, an algorithm). What human beings seek to learn from Nature is how to use it to dominate wholly – both in it and in human beings.

Ruthless towards itself, the Enlightenment has eradicated the last remnant of its own self-awareness. On their way toward a world dominated by business, human beings have discarded meaning.

I grew up, and worked in this world. One that did not think people were important (they only got in the way). Marketing was more important than producing a good product.

I was lucky to get out more or less intact (although still suffering from PTSD).

2013
04/24
CATEGORY
History
Philosophy
Technology
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