Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

White Men Wearing Google Glass Tumblr

As I understand it, some of these people were not white men at all until they donned Google Glass and then this happened to them.

7 comments:

jimf said...

> they donned Google Glass and then this happened to them.

And in the bloodlit dark behind his eyes, silver phosphenes
boiling in from the edge of space, hypnagogic images jerking
past like film compiled from random frames. Symbols, figures,
faces, a blurred, fragmented mandala of visual information. . .

A gray disk, the color of Chiba sky. . .

Disk beginning to rotate, faster, becoming a sphere of
paler gray. Expanding --

And flowed, flowered for him, fluid neon origami trick, the
unfolding of his distanceless home, his country, transparent
3D chessboard expanding to infinity. Inner eye opening to
the stepped scarlet pyramid of the Eastern Seaboard Fission
Authority burning beyond the green cubes of Mitsubishi
Bank of America, and high and very far away he saw the
spiral arms of military systems, forever beyond his reach.

And somewhere he was laughing, in a white-painted loft,
distant fingers caressing the deck, tears of release
streaking his face.

Black guy from the future past said...

The "future" is still a white penis. I wonder what the future of places like Africa or Haiti will look like? The future is always so shiny, so bright, so white. The "future" irks me and sickens me.

Dale Carrico said...

"The Future" is still a white penis but open futurity is still a scrum, a classroom, a street party, a town hall.

Whatever they say or hope to the contrary "The Future" of Haiti and most of the overexploited (you know, what "The Futurists" would call "underdeveloped") places of the world, depending on just how catastrophic climate change plays out where they happen to be standing, will be refugee camps or slums with sweatshops, just like now. The stasis of "The Future's" accelerating change, what has always been the dread and debt and violence of precarization, but as these are experienced by the minute minority of winners and those marks who foolishly identify with/as the winners even though they are not.

Needless to say, this doesn't have to be the story. The open futurity of the present, in the presence of diversity peer to peer is as palpable and promising as ever. Steeply progressive income and property taxes funding a scene of legible consent to the terms of everyday intercourse and enabling the nonviolent adjudication of disputes and the sustainable administration of public and common goods in democracies equitably accountable to the diversity of their stakeholders are always available here and now if we want them.

"The Future" is indeed irksome and sickening, it is the foreclosure of open futurity through the projection of the parochial fears and fantasies of minute minorities, usually incumbent elites.

But do not despair, do not give in: futurity is here, it is open and opening, it can be embraced and enabled and enlarged through expression, education, agitation, organization, legislation in the democratizing spirit of equity-in-diversity.

jimf said...

> I wonder what the future of places like Africa or Haiti will look like?

http://www.plover.net/~bonds/cultofbayes.html
---------------------
[Robot God] cultists are so careful at disguising their bigotry
that it may not be obvious to casual readers. . .

Take as an example [Robot Guru]'s comments on the James Watson
controversy of 2007. Watson, one of the so-called fathers of DNA
research, had told reporters he was "gloomy about the prospect of
Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact
that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing
says not really". [Robot Guru] used this racist outburst as the occasion
for some characteristically slippery Bayesian propagandising. In
his essay, you'll note that he never objects to or even mentions
the content of Watson's remarks — for some reason, he approaches
the subject by sneering at the commentary of a Nigerian journalist —
and neither does he question the purpose or validity of intelligence
testing, or raise the possibility of inherent racism in such tests.
Instead, he insinuates that anti-racists are appropriating the issue
for their own nefarious ends. . .

[Robot Guru] appears to think that racism is an illusion or at best
a distraction. . .

[H]e tells the victims of racial discrimination to forget the fact
that their people have been systematically oppressed by a ruling elite
for centuries, and face up to the radical idea that their suffering is
their own individual problem. He then helpfully reassures them that none
of it is their fault; they were screwed over at birth by being simply
less intelligent than the creamy white guys at the top. . .

[Robot Guru] would reject the idea that these disadvantaged individuals
could improve their lot by grouping together and engaging in political
action: politics is the mind-killer, after all. The only thing that can
save them is [Robot Guru]'s improbable fantasy tech. In the future,
"intelligence deficits will be fixable given sufficiently advanced
technology, biotech or nanotech." And until that comes about, the
stupid oppressed masses should sit and bear their suffering, not rock
the boat, and let the genuinely competent white guys get on with
saving the world.

Black guy from the future past said...

@jimf

I really hate [Robot Guru]. Hopefully, [Robot Guru] can be convinced to turn (Dale's non-violent ways have grown on me) But if not, I'm gonna have to sympathize with Fanon, and do more than sympathize.

Question to Dale: When does it become justifiable to use violence? How much should one or a people endure before a call to arms is warranted?

Dale Carrico said...

Your question is answered dozens of times in the pieces on non-violence and democracy collected here. But, honestly, you sound bored. As RuPaul says maybe you should go outside now and walk children in nature.

Dale Carrico said...

By the way, I talk about Fanon in some of those pieces I mention above. I strongly doubt Fanon would advocate violence against dumb Robot Cultists or embarrassing white guys with ungainly Google Glasses on any more than I would. I teach "Concerning Violence" to undergraduates every year. But I don't exactly want to see the Moot derailed by this topic, you know?