Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All
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Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All
"LOVE LOVE LOVE your futorological brickbats! Love them! You are in fine company with Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary with these." -- Paulina Borsook
"Devoted to highly rhetorical nitpicking, but it is fun to read." -- Chris Mooney
"Rather close but correct reading." -- Evgeny Morozov
"Mean, but true." -- Annalee Newitz
"Dale Carrico's skewering of the salvific pretensions of Silicon Valley's soi disant savior/founders never disappoints." -- Frank Pasquale
"Pretty breathless, but I guess it had to be said." -- Bruce Sterling
"An essential reality check for those who are too entranced by transhumanism to notice the sordid reality behind the curtain." -- Charlie Stross
11 comments:
Another libertechbrotarian dream destroyed by a blaspheming Luddite. Long but entertaining.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H901KdXgHs4
Are they libertechbrotarians? I quite agree that the hype has gotten well out ahead of any actual, er, deliverables here, but quite a lot of the debunking video seems to be mistaking snark for science as loosely as the Brusaws' amateur theatricals presently seem to be mistaking science for sales pitching. I can't say that the trying-too-hard John Oliver-mode Britishisms-are-always-witticisms-amiright narration made a friend of me, either. I find more amusing and more futurological the herdlike technofix consumer fandom of the gee-whiz pop-tech press in response to this as-yet more-vaporeware-than-not proposal, but the project itself feels rather more like loopy garage-inventor Americana to me. I'm not entirely sure I think the proposal as of now is fraudulent rather than simply facile, nor do I think the concept at any rate has nowhere at all to go -- certainly the sales pitch is rhetorically handwavy but hardly transhumanoid or superlative in its contours.
As a general rule, I take everything a specific person says with a whoppin' grain of salt if they have a video called Why feminism poisons everything on their channel.
Gross.
"Are they libertechbrotarians?"
The "inventors"? Not necessarily. Part starry-eyed futurologists, part well-meaning hippies, part good ol' scammers, perhaps?
But the hyped, salivating, gullible "investors"? Sure. Aren't those people being seduced by the same type of techno-fix peddling your typical transhumanoids have to offer?
You probably haven't watched the whole vid, because you are a busy man, but it goes on to point the utopianism and techno-fixation out in detail.
I hope you are not going easy on this """project""" just because the "artists" appear to be leftist on the surface (can women be libertechbrotarians too, I wonder?). Why do I have a feeling that if it was Dvorsky selling such an idea at io9 you would be posting (well-deserved) ridicule? Would I be wrong?
"As a general rule, I take everything a specific person says"
Personally I judge each argument on its own merits.
My last comment would probably better fit to your newer post, which I noticed all too late, unfortunately.
I'll copy your comment so that it is available at the newer post, and so people are more likely to benefit from it. I don't mean to go easy on the project at all -- as I say, I found it all rather wacky and I don't expect it to come to anything, and the momentary hype surrounding it in the pop-tech press patently ridiculous. That the presentation materials do not immediately come off as neoliberal/libertarian or superlative/posthumanist makes it a little less interesting to me theoretically, the world is too full of follies, reductionisms, scams, flukes to take them all on. The solar roadway looks to be more in the direction of garage inventor wooliness or even possibly (though not at all necessarily, at any rate yet) mild con artistry and hence as American as apple pie and genocide.
Let me add, although I didn't get a sense in my admittedly shallow dive into their world that the Brusaws were libertopians/ libertechbrotarians, neither can I say that I had the impression that they were leftist. Their environmentalism comes off as an opportunistic and mercenary matter, and not exactly deeply thought through, and anyway surely even some folks who call themselves Republicans recycle even if their elected representatives are not allowed to admit to such sanity in public places. The question whether women can be libertechbrotarian is interesting. Obviously there are women who espouse neoliberal and market libertarian follies and there are also privileged women who are shaped by their privilege in ways that make them insensitive and self-aggrandizing and clueless in ways that differ from the behavior of the techbro cohort to the thinness of a dime. As an informally ethnographic characterization of a subcultural phenomenon, though, I must say the techbros and their libertechbrotarian kin do seem to be, overwhelmingly, er, bros. I guess the question is akin to whether or not it is possible to accuse a woman of indulging in "mansplaining." My inclination would be to suppose that such women, if there are any, are to be found in megachurches and Philosophy departments.
And, oh yes, if I ridiculed George Dvorsky every time he was ridiculous that would be my life's work -- and I couldn't say much for such a life.
Personally I judge each argument on its own merits.
Hey, being a freethinker is a laudable thing, but as I don't tire to remind my liberal friends from time to time "Don't be so open-minded that your brains fall out."
Fellows with an agenda have the pernicious habit to routinely present deceptive statistics and data to reinforce their warped views (see ID types). Not that I'm saying I put any hope into this particular project, wannabe-/B/tard MRA neckbeards just raise red flags in me. Let's wait for the end of the story to give the final judgement.
Strictly speaking, nobody judges each argument on its merits -- to recognize an argument as such already depends on contextualization and comparison. This matters especially to the extent that "each argument on its merits" injunctions seek to police contextualization and comparisons that are deemed injurious to the argument prompting the declaration. As they so very often do.
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