The New Transparency

[sufi]

in all important ways it is identical. except i dont have a smartphone but if i did it would be indistinguishable

haha i don't either, but if we did

 

[sufi]

if your understanding of, say, trump, is always mediated by your device and your device is trying to show you content that is personalised to be more enticing based on the identity you choose to project, then you're seeing a different trump from me, your own personal trumpism,

 

[luka]

what you think about trump doesnt matter

 

[sufi]

that is true, and in fact all that stuff we project doesnt matter either, nobody is listening - unless you are a viral celeb, noone cares what we think of trump or anything else.
there's a a huge amount of shouting into the void happening at the moment,

 

[sufi]

that is true, and in fact all that stuff we project doesnt matter either, nobody is listening - unless you are a viral celeb, noone cares what we think of trump or anything else.
there's a a huge amount of shouting into the void happening at the moment,

but somehow these devices have grabbed our identities and are coercing us into living out our public lives through them, that's connects with @version's mandatory transparency (and the whole cancellation machine)

 

[Clinamenic]

that is true, and in fact all that stuff we project doesnt matter either, nobody is listening - unless you are a viral celeb, noone cares what we think of trump or anything else.
there's a a huge amount of shouting into the void happening at the moment,

I would say there are entities that care about this, if only just politicians or maybe people who care about our opinion insofar as our opinion is monetizable, which I think is fine.

But here one matters as a "dividual" re: control society, as a dynamic aggregate of data, which I might argue is a proper 21st-century lens through which to see the human. Wanting to matter as an individual may end up seeming a bit medieval in hindsight - its already starting to for me, but I don't know how enduring that opinion will be.

Of course its all dismal if you fix your perspective in yesterday's landscape, which is under relentless siege. But if we accept certain agnostic trends, we'll be better able to impart our values onto tomorrow's landscape.

Perhaps the big reason I'm opposed to dystopian moaning about being subsumed by a larger system: it seems that the evolution of the universe largely consists of systems being subsumed by larger systems, a process we shouldn't expect ourselves to be exempt from.

 

[luka]

dystopian moaning is bad but so is being an uncritical cheerleader for silicon valley marketing. there's smarter ways to approach this stuff

 

[Clinamenic]

what does 'curate our own images' mean?

I mean before our social interactions were mediated by digital profiles, we had a less comprehensive control over the impressions we (our image) made on people.

You had to put more or less all your chips, in terms of social effort, into curating your personal presence, or perhaps your grapevine reputation.

Now, and I think I can speak for more people my age than just myself, we put less chips into personal presence (i.e. social anxiety), and more and more of them into these digitally mediated forms of interaction.

I personally find this form of socializing more conducive to my current state of mind, but this form is highly abstracted from the form of personal presence that we still default to socially.

 

[Clinamenic]

I certainly hope to not remain uncritical, but I'm sure I have plenty of blindspots. Seems to come with the territory of pivoting into new neighborhoods of mindspace: being impressed by this or that renewed perspective and overlooking potential dangers.

I'm currently in that phase re: capitalism, seeing as I was viscerally opposed to it for a while and now see it as an agnostic heat engine that is only as corrupt as the humans operating it.

Abstractly and in its own terms, admire capitalism for what it could be, but I sure hope I can remain critical about what it is.

 

[Clinamenic]

I do tend to get lost in the potential of things, which distorts my assessment of what they are, what they prove to be. No doubt a tendency that can be corrected.

 

[luka]

its a californian pathology, not your fault

 

[Clinamenic]

Abdicate my own pathology.

 

[Leo]

I do tend to get lost in the potential of things, which distorts my assessment of what they are, what they prove to be. No doubt a tendency that can be corrected.

does this apply to crypto too?

 

[Clinamenic]

Undoubtedly, I'd say most of crypto's value is speculative as of now, so yeah a matter of potential. But that is to say that whatever actual value it has now (instantaneous low-fee international payments, public auditability, etc) still only amounts to a sliver of what I think it will be.

 

[Clinamenic]

But that is a tricky one because the dialectic of speculative/actual is under added pressure seeing as the financial stakes are high. That is, speculative value alone is not sustainable.

 

[Clinamenic]

I am willing to be more of a cheerleader for corporate cybernetics largely because there is a vacuum of such cheerleading here. If I was active, instead, on a forum about startup culture, I would likely be drawing extra attention to capitalist realism, alienation, etc.

 

[Clinamenic]

Whereas here, there are a dozen established members who make sure we practice skepticism about corporate interests.

edit: that is to say, I feel my efforts would be redundant there, but in taking such liberties my naivete becomes more susceptible.

 

[version]

The willingness of the public to violate each other's privacy's been bolstered by this stuff. I get it when they're filming, say, a violent altercation or the police doing something, but people will film and take photos of other people sleeping on public transport and all sorts, plaster it all over the internet and not see anything wrong with it.

 

[luka]

me and woops are amazed by how many people will walk right up to you shove a camera right in your face take your picture then walk off without saying a word. its mental

 

[Leo]

me and woops are amazed by how many people will walk right up to you shove a camera right in your face take your picture then walk off without saying a word. its mental

that's nuts, any photos of you guys behind the typewriters should require some payment.