I’m a fourth year visual arts student with the background of science. I’m originally from Iran but to achieve more freedom, I decided to come to Canada to explore more, so I can say that I’ll like this course due to it’s particular approach to our contemporary era. I hope that as you have mentioned, by the end of the course, we can at least a bit increase our ability to perceive our world and our relationship to technology in order to make sense of all happenings around us.
Hi everyone!
Last year I read a book named “A Short History of Progress” by Ronald Wright and I think it may be relevant to this course. Also, there is a documentary based on the book. If you are interested in watching it, you can find it on youtube but its quality is not so good. here is the link to the documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGyU6MEstjU
“a person’s own score will also be affected by what their online friends say and do, beyond their own contact with them. If someone they are connected to online posts a negative comment, their own score will also be dragged down.” From Big data meets Big Brother
this sounds so terrifying that I can’t even imagine that, but I guess we all will end up living in such society soon or later.
“Sesame Credit already offers tips to help individuals improve their ranking, including warning about the downsides of friending someone who has a low score. This might lead to the rise of score advisers, who will share tips on how to gain points, or reputation consultants willing to offer expert advice on how to strategically improve a ranking or get off the trust-breaking blacklist.” -From Big data meets Big Brother-
but what would happen to those who have a low or bad reputation???? are they going to be erased from “human realm” if even I can call it this way because it is so ironic to have such humanity that it is defined by scores. they will be in absolute isolation which makes everything even worse.
searching for the new meaning of freedom in the age of technology, I found this video on youtube which I guess is the main source for most of us today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScKd4bKmhSI
What follows are some passages of text from a piece about technology in the New York Review of Books:
Just as the market or the free play of competition provided in theory the optimum long-run solution for virtually every aspect of virtually every social and economic problem, so too does the free play of technology, according to its writers. Only if technology or innovation (or some other synonym) is allowed the freest possible reign, they believe, will the maximum social good be realized.
Technology, in their view, is a self-correcting system. Temporary oversight or “negative externalities” will and should be corrected by technological means. Attempts to restrict the free play of technological innovation are, in the nature of the case, self-defeating. Technological innovation exhibits a distinct tendency to work for the general welfare in the long run. Laissez innover!
The men and women who are elevated by technology into commanding positions within various decision-making bureaucracies exhibit no generalized drive for power such as characterized, say, the landed gentry of pre-industrial Europe or the capitalist entrepreneur of the last century. For their social and institutional position and its supporting culture as well are defined solely by the fact that these men are problem solvers. (Organized knowledge for practical purposes again.) That is, they gain advantage and reward only to the extent that they can bring specific technical knowledge to bear on the solution of specific technical problems. Any more general drive for power would undercut the bases of their usefulness and legitimacy.
Moreover their specific training and professional commitment to solving technical problems creates a bias against ideologies in general which inhibits any attempts to formulate a justifying ideology for the group. Consequently, they do not constitute a class and have no general interests antagonistic to those of their problem-beset clients.
What is important about technical language is that the words, being alien to ordinary speech, hide their meaning from ordinary speakers; terms like foreign aid or technical assistance have a good sound in ordinary speech; only the initiate recognizes them as synonyms for the old-fashioned, nasty word, imperialism. Such instances can be corrected but when almost all of the public’s business is carried on in specialized jargon correction makes little difference.
…technology in its very definition as the organization of knowledge for practical purposes assumes that the primary and really creative role in the social processes consequent on technological change is reserved for a scientific and technical elite, the elite which presumably discovers and organizes that knowledge. But if the scientific and technical elite and their indispensable managerial cronies are the really creative (and hardworking and altruistic) element in American society, what is this but to say that the common mass of men are essentially drags on the social weal?
The structures which formerly guaranteed the rule of wealth, age, and family will not be destroyed (or at least not totally so). They will be firmed up and rationalized by the perpetual addition of trained (and, of course, acculturated) talent. In technologically advanced societies, equality of opportunity functions as a hierarchical principle, in opposition to the egalitarian social goals it pretends to serve. To the extent that it has already become the kind of “equality” we seek to institute in our society, it is one of the main factors contributing to the widening gap between the cultures of upper and lower class America.
…technology is creating the basis for new and sharp class conflict in our society. That is, technology is creating its own working and managing classes just as earlier industrialization created its working and owning classes. Perhaps this suggests a return to the kind of class-based politics which characterized the US in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, rather than the somewhat more ambiguous politics which was a feature of the second quarter of this century. I am inclined to think that this is the case, though I confess the evidence for it is as yet inadequate.
This leads to a final hypothesis, namely that laissez innover should be frankly recognized as a conservative or right-wing ideology.
I was thinking of the meaning of freedom and comfort in the age of technology, but how can we define something that we don’t possess fully ever. what is the ontology of freedom or comfort? for example, if we exist in a hard situation such as famine then how would we define comfort and how about the inverse situation? what if we had everything that brings comfort to us and then how would us be able to say what comfort is?
I was watching an animation on one of the social network channels on Telegram app, posted by a sociologist, and I found it as a possible answer and approach to what we were discussing last week about freedom and comfort in our high technological advances era. I will bring it to the class to watch it tomorrow .
I’m a fourth year visual arts student with the background of science. I’m originally from Iran but to achieve more freedom, I decided to come to Canada to explore more, so I can say that I’ll like this course due to it’s particular approach to our contemporary era. I hope that as you have mentioned, by the end of the course, we can at least a bit increase our ability to perceive our world and our relationship to technology in order to make sense of all happenings around us.
Hi everyone!
Last year I read a book named “A Short History of Progress” by Ronald Wright and I think it may be relevant to this course. Also, there is a documentary based on the book. If you are interested in watching it, you can find it on youtube but its quality is not so good. here is the link to the documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGyU6MEstjU
My visual essay
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTHvhrog9oA
“a person’s own score will also be affected by what their online friends say and do, beyond their own contact with them. If someone they are connected to online posts a negative comment, their own score will also be dragged down.” From Big data meets Big Brother
this sounds so terrifying that I can’t even imagine that, but I guess we all will end up living in such society soon or later.
“Sesame Credit already offers tips to help individuals improve their ranking, including warning about the downsides of friending someone who has a low score. This might lead to the rise of score advisers, who will share tips on how to gain points, or reputation consultants willing to offer expert advice on how to strategically improve a ranking or get off the trust-breaking blacklist.” -From Big data meets Big Brother-
but what would happen to those who have a low or bad reputation???? are they going to be erased from “human realm” if even I can call it this way because it is so ironic to have such humanity that it is defined by scores. they will be in absolute isolation which makes everything even worse.
searching for the new meaning of freedom in the age of technology, I found this video on youtube which I guess is the main source for most of us today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScKd4bKmhSI
thechnohuman in progress
https://newhive.com/partovi/thechnohuman
https://newhive.com/partovi/thechnohuman
What follows are some passages of text from a piece about technology in the New York Review of Books:
Just as the market or the free play of competition provided in theory the optimum long-run solution for virtually every aspect of virtually every social and economic problem, so too does the free play of technology, according to its writers. Only if technology or innovation (or some other synonym) is allowed the freest possible reign, they believe, will the maximum social good be realized.
Technology, in their view, is a self-correcting system. Temporary oversight or “negative externalities” will and should be corrected by technological means. Attempts to restrict the free play of technological innovation are, in the nature of the case, self-defeating. Technological innovation exhibits a distinct tendency to work for the general welfare in the long run. Laissez innover!
The men and women who are elevated by technology into commanding positions within various decision-making bureaucracies exhibit no generalized drive for power such as characterized, say, the landed gentry of pre-industrial Europe or the capitalist entrepreneur of the last century. For their social and institutional position and its supporting culture as well are defined solely by the fact that these men are problem solvers. (Organized knowledge for practical purposes again.) That is, they gain advantage and reward only to the extent that they can bring specific technical knowledge to bear on the solution of specific technical problems. Any more general drive for power would undercut the bases of their usefulness and legitimacy.
Moreover their specific training and professional commitment to solving technical problems creates a bias against ideologies in general which inhibits any attempts to formulate a justifying ideology for the group. Consequently, they do not constitute a class and have no general interests antagonistic to those of their problem-beset clients.
What is important about technical language is that the words, being alien to ordinary speech, hide their meaning from ordinary speakers; terms like foreign aid or technical assistance have a good sound in ordinary speech; only the initiate recognizes them as synonyms for the old-fashioned, nasty word, imperialism. Such instances can be corrected but when almost all of the public’s business is carried on in specialized jargon correction makes little difference.
…technology in its very definition as the organization of knowledge for practical purposes assumes that the primary and really creative role in the social processes consequent on technological change is reserved for a scientific and technical elite, the elite which presumably discovers and organizes that knowledge. But if the scientific and technical elite and their indispensable managerial cronies are the really creative (and hardworking and altruistic) element in American society, what is this but to say that the common mass of men are essentially drags on the social weal?
The structures which formerly guaranteed the rule of wealth, age, and family will not be destroyed (or at least not totally so). They will be firmed up and rationalized by the perpetual addition of trained (and, of course, acculturated) talent. In technologically advanced societies, equality of opportunity functions as a hierarchical principle, in opposition to the egalitarian social goals it pretends to serve. To the extent that it has already become the kind of “equality” we seek to institute in our society, it is one of the main factors contributing to the widening gap between the cultures of upper and lower class America.
…technology is creating the basis for new and sharp class conflict in our society. That is, technology is creating its own working and managing classes just as earlier industrialization created its working and owning classes. Perhaps this suggests a return to the kind of class-based politics which characterized the US in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, rather than the somewhat more ambiguous politics which was a feature of the second quarter of this century. I am inclined to think that this is the case, though I confess the evidence for it is as yet inadequate.
This leads to a final hypothesis, namely that laissez innover should be frankly recognized as a conservative or right-wing ideology.
https://newhive.com/partovi/thechnohuman
I was thinking of the meaning of freedom and comfort in the age of technology, but how can we define something that we don’t possess fully ever. what is the ontology of freedom or comfort? for example, if we exist in a hard situation such as famine then how would we define comfort and how about the inverse situation? what if we had everything that brings comfort to us and then how would us be able to say what comfort is?
https://newhive.com/partovi/thechnohuman
TECHNOHUMAN IN PROGRESS
newhive.com/partovi/thechnohuman
I was watching an animation on one of the social network channels on Telegram app, posted by a sociologist, and I found it as a possible answer and approach to what we were discussing last week about freedom and comfort in our high technological advances era. I will bring it to the class to watch it tomorrow .