Pinboard (robertogreco) https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/public/ recent bookmarks from robertogreco The End of Reading Is Here - The Atlantic 2026-07-09T05:52:51+00:00 https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/08/reading-crisis-postliterate-age/687618/ robertogreco rosehorowitz reading howweread literacy attention highered highereducation books internet culture online web 2026 yafiction amandakordeliski brianbannon education colleges universities reddit email messaging instagram maryannewolf bejaminpowers roberttownsend margaretrennix anthonyburgess gutenberg writing howwewrite walterong orality alexanderluria illiteracy neilpostman history benjaminfranklin thomasjefferson johnadams johnmcwhorter lingusitics samuallougheed marshallmcluhan media tv television johncheever annemariecortez schools schooling children childhood socialmedia tiktok youtube jeantwenge psychology martinpuchner society postliteracy gutenbergparenthesis danwillingham cognition thinking howwethink knowledge comprehension readingcomprehension johnhutton gloriamark video information text benjaminpowers jonathanfine elizabethdworak plato socrates oraltradition donaldtrump roderickhart joshuameyrowitz ronaldreagan reihansalam manhattaninstitute nuance politics rigor complexity algorithms liberalism bara https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:628e87c4afc9/ The life-changing magic of touching stuff | The Vergecast - YouTube 2026-07-08T02:03:07+00:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WEgL5xCTak robertogreco objects senses tactile ianbogost davidpierce 2026 happiness tickets dematerialization material materials friction frictionmaxxing slow digital analog disconnection algorithms asmr ai artificialintelligence process life living gratification communing sensory sensors automation ownership connection smartphones addiction compulsion attention strangeness texture small frictionlessness experience convenience smoothness efficiency optimization socialmedia commodification commercialization amazon physical bodies https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:142816d0c76e/ A Glorian Is a Moment of Grace – Terry Tempest Williams 2026-07-04T12:42:48+00:00 https://emergencemagazine.org/conversation/a-glorian-is-a-moment-of-grace/ robertogreco terrytempestwilliams wonder loss joy attention consciousness 2026 krishnamurti carljung marie-louisevonfranz josephcampbell sriaurobindo spirituality esalen nature environment alanwatts carloscastaneda élanvital dreams religion glorians awe kevino'leary climatechange earth nscottmomaday donaldtrump robertredford charleswilkinson ecology richardpowers thoreau ralphwaldoemerson robinwallkimmerer creativity christinakoch death dying grief mourning unknowing notknowing hiddenness elinixon shinran kenryokanamatsu https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:29394342f87a/ Walking and the Art of Public Space: Alisa Oleva on Cities, Belonging & Nuart Aberdeen - YouTube 2026-06-29T03:15:35+00:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljqTo7GC7HM robertogreco alisaoleva walking 2026 london cities experience art walkingart urban wandering psychogeography situationist home belonging slow desirelines place attention movement noticing observation aberdeen scotland publicsace performance immersion familiarization learning howwelearn place-basedlearning everyday hangingout parkour notknowing strangers gettinglost time unknowing discovery exposure disoberdience walkingscores georgesperec geography resistance senses sensory walkshops https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:76ea0542a914/ Alisa Oleva the Walking Artist Inviting Us to View the City Differently • Inspiring City 2026-06-29T02:53:49+00:00 https://inspiringcity.com/2026/06/22/alisa-oleva-the-walking-artist-inviting-us-to-view-the-city-differently/ robertogreco walking alisaoleva london cities experience art walkingart urban wandering psychogeography situationist home belonging slow desirelines place attention movement noticing observation 2026 aberdeen scotland publicsace performance immersion familiarization learning howwelearn place-basedlearning everyday hangingout parkour notknowing strangers gettinglost time unknowing discovery exposure disoberdience walkingscores georgesperec geography resistance senses sensory walkshops https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:b412bfd4d989/ AI Can’t Fix the Student-Motivation Problem - The Atlantic 2026-06-27T06:26:04+00:00 https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/06/ai-tutor-education-human-investment/687678/ robertogreco ai artificialintelligence jennyanderson mikegoldstein teaching howwteach edtech technology chatbots llms schools schooling motivation salkhan salmankhan khanmigo openai samaltman learning howwelearn children students khanacademy kristendicerbo laurenceholt tutoring inequality ronferguson achievementgap criticalthinking rolandfryerjr maryburns social justinreich coopeartion care caring community condusion attention https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:061d6da24c04/ Noticing by Richard Louv | Hachette Book Group 2026-06-27T05:38:59+00:00 https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/richard-louv/noticing/9781643753034/ robertogreco richardlouv nature senses sensing multispecies morethanhuman 2026 spirituality wildlife wilderness neuroscience photography indigeneity indigenous bioenchantment enchantment animism mindfulness human humanism humans science art noticing seeing sensory attention ecology ecoanxiety environment https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:606f3bcfdb23/ Ping Practice 2026-06-25T09:57:24+00:00 https://pingpractice.org/ robertogreco pingpractice pings peterpelberg notes notetaking thinking howwethink journaling applications ios memory senses sensing meaning meaningmaking sensemaking makingsense noticing attention carolynli-madeo elliottetzkorn jeffreynoh laurelschwulst nicolasayoub https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:41f62ddb59ac/ idea injection – The Homebound Symphony 2026-06-25T08:47:23+00:00 https://blog.ayjay.org/idea-injection/ robertogrecoblogging has allowed me to inject ideas into the discourse with unparalleled speed, breadth, and access. A researcher goes deep into a few topics; a blogger can quickly hit the main points of many topics. This enables speed; academics might take months to write something useful about a breaking event like the Iran War or Trump’s tariffs, while I can have something out in hours. Then he continues,
Injecting ideas into the discourse is incredibly powerful. John Maynard Keynes famously described the power of idea injection: “Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.”
But Keynes’s point contradicts what Smith has just claimed. In fact, Keynes’s point is the polar opposite of Smith’s. Keynes says that it’s not the “practical men” (in which category we might include not just politicians but also journalists and bloggers) whose ideas rule but rather the “academic scribblers”: now-defunct economists who indeed took months, or even years, to write something useful on their topic. And what they wrote might have had no impact at the moment, but made their way into “the discourse” years or decades or even centuries later. It’s noteworthy how Smith describes why he does what he does: “actually having an impact on the world” is his goal. “Being an opinion writer has probably allowed me to change the world much more than being an academic or an engineer or a financier or a consultant would have.” He never says anything about what changes he wants to make in the world, only about his desire to be the one who makes the change. He’s what we call an influencer, which is to say, he is one of the “practical men” that Keynes says don’t make a difference in the long run. The passage Smith quotes comes from the final paragraph of Keynes’s General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_General_Theory_of_Employment,_Interest_and_Money ], and the sentences Smith quotes need to be seen in context. Here’s how the conclusion of that book goes:
Is the fulfilment of these ideas a visionary hope? Have they insufficient roots in the motives which govern the evolution of political society? Are the interests which they will thwart stronger and more obvious than those which they will serve? I do not attempt an answer in this place. It would need a volume of a different character from this one to indicate even in outline the practical measures in which they might be gradually clothed. But if the ideas are correct — an hypothesis on which the author himself must necessarily base what he writes — it would be a mistake, I predict, to dispute their potency over a period of time. At the present moment people are unusually expectant of a more fundamental diagnosis; more particularly ready to receive it; eager to try it out, if it should be even plausible. But apart from this contemporary mood, the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. Not, indeed, immediately, but after a certain interval; for in the field of economic and political philosophy there are not many who are influenced by new theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest. But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.
The “potency” of Keynes’s ideas, he says, is to be determined “over a period of time.” He does believe that the circumstances of his moment — he is primarily thinking of the Great Depression — incline people to listen to new ideas, especially if those ideas promise “a more fundamental diagnosis” of their economic condition. But even so, he doesn’t think his argument will have influence “immediately, but after a certain interval.” He’s playing the long game. If Keynes is right, then the ideas that Smith “injects into the discourse” won’t be his, but rather those of thinkers from decades past — the people who weren’t worried about having “something out within hours,” but rather cared about making arguments strong enough to last. Instead of seeking to be quoted by Substackers and podcasters, they rely on “the gradual encroachment of ideas.” It may not be possible to have both immediate currency — quotability — and long-term significance. You might have to choose between Smith’s model and Keynes’s. "]]> alanjacobs howwewrite noahsmith johnmaynardkeynes slow influencers discourse politics politicians blogging bloggers attention change influence https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:7622932eb891/ Umyazu - A Working Library 2026-06-25T07:06:53+00:00 https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/umyazu robertogreco[O]n Aka, reward, whether spiritual or fiscal, was immediate. By his performance of a maz’s duties, Siez was not building up a bank account of virtue or sanctity; in return for his story-telling he would receive praise, shelter, dinner, supplies for their journey, and the knowledge that he had done his job. Exercises were performed not to attain an ideal of health or longevity but to achieve immediate well-being and for the pleasure of doing them. Meditation aimed toward a present and impermanent transcendence, not an ultimate nirvana. Aka was a cash, not a credit, economy. Therefore their hatred of usury. A fair bargain and payment on the spot. Le Guin, The Telling, page 171 By contrast, the attention economy is all credit: the user pays twice. There’s a prevailing narrative that says we’ve lost our ability to pay attention, that we need drugs or discipline or sternly-worded warnings about the dangers of social media to deal with this growing public health threat. This narrative completely obscures the fact that annihilating attention is a political project with clear benefits for the billionaire class: if we cannot attend the world, neither can we intercede in it. We become passive recipients of their worldbuilding, disenfranchised from our own responsibility to make sense of—and therefore to remake—the world around us. The abrupt emergence of the Akan capitalist state turns out to be the Terran’s doing: a religious-fundamentalist sect from Earth visited Aka and shared technological knowledge that triggered rapid industrialization, and the equally rapid rejection of all the old ways. The technology included the book banning, the patriarchal order, the authoritarian surveillance. To receive the technology was to receive the worldview it reproduced. (This is of course how all technology works.) That worldview depended on a people too busy working and shopping to be curious about how things are and how they came to be. Because once you are curious about capitalism you must reject the bargain: if the price of the comfort of the few is the immiseration of the many than the price is too damn high. It is the skill of reading that hones that curiosity, sharpens our ability to notice what is before us, what is real and what is not, which bargains are fair and which are usurious. Reading is how we attend the world, which is also how we change it. I want to posit that the reading economy, like the umyazu—places where the Telling took place—still exists, hidden amidst the ruins of capitalism. It isn’t captured in GDP, of course, but then neither is housework, and yet everyday millions of people do the dishes, make the bed, dust the shelves. It overlaps with capitalism, in the form of large, commercial publishers who often care more for profit than words, but who still manage to publish a good many good books; and it escapes capitalism with worker-owned publishers, anarchist collectives, infoshops, personal blogs, radical literary magazines, neighborhood bookstores, used books given and sold and given again, libraries big and small and free, and with every pen put to paper or keyboard to verse, and every reader who reads and creates the text anew. Every contribution to the reading economy—every dollar snatched from anesthetizing streaming services, from platforms that siphon money away from artists in order to fuel machines of war; every dollar given in exchange for a book or zine or illustration made with hand and heart and eye; every gaze diverted from the slop and turned instead to the gifts of the artist and the writer and the painter and so on—is not only a contribution taken from the attention economy but a repudiation of it, whole and entire. Every contribution to the reading economy is two less for its nemesis: once in cash, a second time in the resurrection of attention, in the art of reading, in the gift paid in return for the gift. A fair bargain, and payment on the spot. ————— 1. Le Guin, The Telling, page 109 ↩︎"]]> 2026 reading howweread attention ursulakleguin ursulaleguin virginiawoolf peterkropotkin laotzu shaekespeare attentioneconomy capitalism mandybrown https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:2d33283637b2/ How I Learned to Read Way, Way More - John Paul Brammer 2026-06-15T00:04:06+00:00 https://johnpaulbrammer.substack.com/p/how-i-learned-to-read-way-way-more robertogreco johnpaulbrammer attention reading howweread 2026 books culture curiosity mentalhealth literature simonweil obedience discipline discernment davidfosterwallace nonfiction claricelispector donaldbarthelme dostoevsky https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:84bf675ed4f3/ Forget the World Cup. Culture is becoming more fragmented 2026-06-14T09:36:30+00:00 https://www.economist.com/briefing/2026/06/11/forget-the-world-cup-culture-is-becoming-more-fragmented robertogreco culture decentralization 2026 diversity denmark monoculture music language languages tv television film streaming latinamerica nigeria southafrica france germany italy poland willpage chrisdallariva worldcup attention videogames games gaming brazil brasil philippines indonesia thailand norway portugal ireland australia india czechrepublic dubai greece mexico middleeast africaeurope netflix asia larrytanz turkey türkiye southkorea korea christopherhamilton canada alexandregoncalves yeemanmargaretng youtube hindi matthewball xbox microsoft china japan manurosier newzoo garena singapore apple google roblox sensortower fortnite joostvandreunen entertainment https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:8610b98e71c6/ The Morning: Change in the weather 2026-06-12T01:19:45+00:00 https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/dynamic/render?isViewInBrowser=true&paid_regi=1&productCode=NN&sendId=220357&uri=nyt%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter%2F5b094ad3-a522-516e-91e8-3e35d216ad4f robertogreco time seasons melissakirsch 2026 72seasons 72microseasons microseasons change nature attention summer spring https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:8d6c7f2d568f/ Opinion | My Students Can’t Read 2026-06-09T07:17:42+00:00 https://www.chronicle.com/article/my-students-cant-read robertogreco tylerjagt reading education highered highereducation colleges universities ai artificialintelligence academia attention teens literacy smartphones research society 2026 chatbots llms chatgpt thinking howwethink howweread https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:5539612f7925/ At What Cost? 2026-06-05T09:42:43+00:00 https://2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/at-what-cost/ robertogreco 2026 audreywatters education edtech schools schooling lms ai artificialintelligence popeleoxiv randiweingarten screentime teaching howweteach persistence friction cognition children openai microsoft technology criticalthinking andrewcantarutti productivity efficiency optimization labor work learning howwelearn googleclassroom timothyburke addiction socialmedia attention attentioneconomy meta resistance offline edzitron lizkrieger meghano'gieblyn universities colleges highered highereducation noralacour csu californiastateuniversity writing howwewrite toddfeathers benwilliamson scientism neuroscience translation policy tedchiang kieranhealy lmsacasas care caring grading lessonplanning communication https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:b2995e194099/ The Slow Work of Becoming - by Jeppe Klitgaard Stricker 2026-06-05T09:35:25+00:00 https://jeppestricker.substack.com/p/the-slow-work-of-becoming robertogreco jeppeklitgaardstricker 2026 slow generativeai genai ai artificialintelligence jstor pedagogy teaching howweteach education learning howwelearn attention attentioneconomy becoming responsibility knowledge optimization highered highereducation colleges universities criticalthinking https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:cb4c0ab18e79/ The Right Tool for the Right Hands - by Andrew Cantarutti 2026-06-05T09:33:09+00:00 https://walledgardenedu.substack.com/p/the-right-tool-for-the-right-hands robertogreco andrewcantarutti education learning howwlearn teaching howweteach tools 20206 google clasroom edtech lms efficiency productivity administration gradebooks software communication lessonplanning ai artificialintelligence assessment grammarly quillbot writing howwewreite research audiobooks attention coding design production https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:82ebda45e0d2/ ‘Teachers Are Going to Hate It’: How Social Media Apps Hooked Teens at School - The New York Times 2026-06-05T05:37:40+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/04/us/social-media-schools.html robertogreco socialmedia addiction children youth teens siliconvalley bigtech attention schools schooling education howweteach teaching distraction jennifervalentino-devries snapchat meta facebook instagram tiktok google chromebooks ethics psychology adolescence bytedance edtech manipulation youtube screentime https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:ecd893a3d377/ Should the Lion Lie Down With the Electric Lamb? | THR Web Features | Web Features | The Hedgehog Review 2026-06-04T08:09:29+00:00 https://hedgehogreview.com/web-features/thr/posts/should-the-lion-lie-down-with-the-electric-lamb robertogrecoAI is not “inherently evil” in the sense that it can be used exclusively to bomb and oppress. But not even nuclear weapons or machine guns work that way. We are never caused to do anything by a tool (or a narcotic). There is therefore no trade-off between using Claude and “reading stories to a child” or “offering company to an elderly person” or the other activities that the encyclical commends to our attention as human. But that is just the problem, that even as the trade-off does not happen at the level of content, it cannot but take place at the level of formal tendencies. Almost no one idolizes AI, but the technocratic paradigm is a matter of form rather than content: a matter of habitual incentives that, once internalized, become practically imperative. And the Church has not yet recognized heresies of form. I wish I understood what Barba-Kay means here by “formal tendencies,” “heresies of form,” etc. But I think he might be thinking along the same lines I followed in this post [https://blog.ayjay.org/some-thought-on-habitus/ ] on habitus, focal practices, and the virtues required for healthy praxis. I should perhaps revisit these thoughts, alongside a further inquiry into “diseases of the intellect.” [https://blog.ayjay.org/diseases-of-the-intellect/ ] The time seems ripe."]]]> antónbarbakay 2026 popeleoxiv encyclicals magnificahumanitas ai artificialintelligence claude form catholicchurch catholicism habitus technocracy technology haroldinnis humanity cognition cognitivedeskilling automation rerumnovarum industrialization labor work workers capitalism human humans humanism dignity attention reverance care insight thinking howwethink finitude transhumanism posthumanism llms intelligence media https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:0fddbf4d7539/ Françoise Vergès: The world is made through struggle - YouTube 2026-05-31T00:36:05+00:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mc4s1qu8IP8 robertogreco françoisevergès 2026 larasheehi jaredball bananas collegefootball atlanta palestine mississippi louisiana lsu alabama economics society slavery enslavement bananarepublics newguinea imperialism empire colonialism colonization agribusiness pesticides insecticides chlordecone cloredecone antilles plantations sexualviolence repression environment monoctultures water land sexuality josephinebaker braning gap thegap race racism science consumption consumerism art politics swest socialscience socialsciences mentalhealth universityofgeorgia georgia corporatism capital bomanijones stevengodfrey culture decentering algeria réuniuon elsalvador feminism antiracism gaza anticapitalism activism decolonization decolonialism france museums decolonialfeminism segmentation anticolonialism anticolonialstruggle state police policing power domination stuggle coercion resistance settlers frantzfanon spatiality temporality globalsouth militarism patriarchy liberalism bodies gender flesh masculinity femininity consent poll https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:3857278d02e2/ “The most important point about rising AI use in the arts is simply this: Millions of people desperately want affirmation.” | Alan Jacobs 2026-05-28T22:39:01+00:00 https://social.ayjay.org/2026/05/28/the-most-important-point-about.html robertogreco ai artificialintelligence alanjacobs attention recognition writing genai generativeai 2026 affirmation painting howwewrite capitalism specialness basicness https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:20fa296172c6/ Opinion | How to Be Old - The New York Times 2026-05-28T05:21:16+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/25/opinion/aging-advice.html robertogreco rules aging oldage rogerrosenblatt 2026 elderly wisdom relationships life living virginiawoolf despair compromise benitomussolini mussolino fascism mccarthyism loyaltyoaths italy italia us mistakes failure wonder shorrow gratefulness attention well-being wellbeing immortality philiplarkin ephemerality love beauty creativity awe stuggle confidence self-realization satisfaction https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:0a4418782f4e/ The Useful Narcissist - Journal #163 2026-05-27T08:28:06+00:00 https://www.e-flux.com/journal/163/6776887/the-useful-narcissist robertogrecomattseybold 2026 publicintellectuals usefulidiots clebrity russelljacoby googlengram jeffreyepstein sambankman-fried elonmusk donaldtrump coldwar broadcast televison dickcavett alanburke pbs npr williamfbuckley media williamsafire chuchcommittee kurtanderson susanlindauer elites elitism richardposner overtonwindow consensus anncoulter thomasfriedman ralphnader gorevidal jamesbaldwin oligarchy tedgioia attention attentioneconomy online internet intellectualism neoliberalism latecapitalism capitalism huntersthompson politics washingtonconsensus https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:d97707c1ee57/ The Surveillance Classroom - by Andrew Cantarutti 2026-05-27T07:45:20+00:00 https://walledgardenedu.substack.com/p/the-surveillance-classroom robertogreco andrewcantarutti 2026 surveillance pedagogy teaching howweteach schools schooling ralphwaldoemerson ai artificialintelligence data emotionalsurveillance focuspocus morphcast engagement attention lisafeldmanbarrett neuroscience integrity learning howwelearn cthinguyen onorao'neill trust control honesty relationships care exchange observation compliance democracy governance government civics https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:7c6af47609f8/ Digital culture and entertainment insights daily: Katherine Williams on How to See Like a Machine 2026-05-26T23:06:26+00:00 https://dirt.fyi/article/2026/05/panic-at-the-post-reality robertogreco katherinewilliams 2026 democracy aesthetics latefascistaesthetics fascistaesthetics fascism stephencolbert trevorpaglen georgewbush jonrafman hitosteryerl hegemony fakenews media generativeai ai genai artificialintelligence mediatheory annakornbluh joannawalsh rightwing farrright attention attentioneconomy davidfosterwallace visual visualculture colsonwhitehead succession amaliaulman johnperrybarlow siliconvalley gork elonmusk susansontag politicaleconomy reality markets politics nostalgia propaganda karloveknausgård karloveknausgaard speculation https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:ba8388ab6b76/ Nuestra Locura - YouTube 2026-05-21T05:22:35+00:00 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdQsPIV5nH-xUuF8y3LlyxNH5Degou-jn robertogreco child mentalhealth psychology society insomnia anxiety attention boredom melancholy anger repair freedom constanzamichelson rage violence philosophy culture psychoanalysys https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:8d6766a41751/ Why Read? | Commonweal Magazine 2026-05-12T04:18:46+00:00 https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/montas-roosevelt-why-read-literacy-liberal-democracy-ai-douglass robertogreco reading howweread deepreading print printculture liberaldemocracy democracy rooseveltmontás politics books frederickdouglass humanity selfhood autonomy attention discipline self-discipline neilpostman frederickbailey freedom https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:cefd598deafb/ Into the gap | A Working Library 2026-05-07T20:16:55+00:00 https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/into-the-gap robertogrecomandybrown resistance refusal work genocide ethniccleansing palestine iran war us adolfhitler benitomussolini fascism nazism spanishcivilwar virginiawoolf 1937 aislop slop propaganda ads advertising racism misogyny transphobia eugenics violence tonimorrison dehumanization dei diversity equity inclusion inclusivity capitalism liberty freedom class oligarchy billionaires military militaryindustrialcomplex donaldtrump scarcity education highered highereducation gender universities colleges ice police policing surveillance poicebrutality oppression supression elonmusk blacklisting women armedforces libraries jamellebouie wealth inequality rulingclass elites governance government democracy power control opposition abuse ellakeidargreenberg israel gaza iof idf detention ai artificialintelligence erasure jobs labor workers workingclass bodies censorship google salesforce amazon thomasreuters montereypark deportation luannejames tennessee health healthcare organizing employment distraction attention profiteering warp https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:84bbaaceba7f/ Classroom Cope - by Anastasia Berg - The Point’s Substack 2026-05-06T05:46:39+00:00 https://thepointmag.substack.com/p/classroom-cope robertogreco anastasiaberg howweread howwewrite ai artificialintelligence technology attention pedagogy learning howwelearn classrooms writing teaching howweteach education https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:38f307e22b2f/ Faro Cafe 2026-05-05T15:48:33+00:00 https://thefarocafe.com/ robertogreco cambridge cafes coffeeshops slow leisure artleisure leisurearts productivity resistance connection attention presence consumerism repair community art deliberateness conversation local neighborhoods laptop-freecafes thoreau https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:68bbabae0edd/ Sara Hendren: Who Is the Built World Actually Built For? - Art of Inquiry | Podcast on Spotify 2026-05-05T14:11:09+00:00 https://open.spotify.com/episode/11zlpahmklfgr8YOUrtLnY robertogreco sarahendren 2026 architecture design disabilities disability accessibility art bodies prosthetics sofiaodeh mayaeinhorn engineering making socialpracticeart science inquiry history conflictkitchen edibleestates socialpractice online internet covid-19 pandemic coronavirus offline social slow small audiencesofone socialjustice ai artificialintelligence technology time perception politics genai generativeai activism poetry human humanism humans howwewrite writing teaching pedagogy highered highereducation culturemaking culture life living howwelive socialmedia being waysofbeing modernity method patternrecognition krzysztofwodiczko downsyndrome interrogativedesign careers purpose meaning meaningmaking children parenting arts humanities friendship relationships leisure artleisure leisurearts identity passion expression objects affect emotions embodiment awe wonder buildings senses spirituality sacredness codeswitching artifacts translation language communication howwemake fabrication ramps risd olincollege builtwo https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:0a421ccc8594/ Literary Hub » From Birdsong to Sheep’s Eyes: How Nature Helps Us Tell Time 2026-04-26T06:37:36+00:00 https://lithub.com/from-birdsong-to-sheeps-eyes-how-nature-helps-us-tell-time/ robertogreco time nature attention multispecies birdsong 2026 cathyhayes wildlife morethanhuman birds animals clocks https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:fcc9defbe26e/ Defending Our Consciousness Against the Algorithms 2026-04-19T05:06:48+00:00 https://nautil.us/defending-our-consciousness-against-the-algorithms-1279260 robertogreco michaelpollan boredom internet socialmedia online web instagram attention 2026 algorithms consciousness novelty chatbots ai artificialintelligence aipsychosis kalinachristofhadjiilieva thinking howwethink reading howweread christofhadjiilieva resistancemeditation slow chatgpt sycophancy technology politics policy uncertainty freedom interiority https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:28d164b24a70/ Great art is a moral accomplishment. It mirrors the struggle to see clearly in everyday life. 2026-04-17T07:00:09+00:00 https://mcrawford.substack.com/p/great-art-is-a-moral-accomplishment robertogrecoto kill off the subject formerly known as ‘philosophy’ and to replace it with a new set of logical, analytic and scientific methods known as logical positivism. Speculative metaphysical enquiry—the pursuit of knowledge of human nature, morality, God, reality, truth and beauty—was to give way to clarification and linguistic analysis in the service of science. The only questions permitted were those that could be answered by empirical methods. From the vantage of the present, it is fair to say that they were successful in this, insofar as philosophy was replaced with... whatever we should call that enterprise that takes place in philosophy departments today, in cognitive science, and in all those allied disciplines that name themselves with a “neuro-” prefix. Viewed from the outside, the aspirations of the analytical school look like nothing so much as an elaborate system for evading big questions. We are aided in identifying them as such by a counter-movement of thought that began after World War II, led by Iris Murdoch, Elizabeth Anscombe, and Philippa Foot. They inaugurated what would become a dissident strand within academic philosophy. Unlike the existentialists, who likewise rejected the positivist edifice, the Oxford dissidents were more frontally engaged with the analytical turn and sought to identify what had gone wrong in it. That they were women is probably significant. That they were writing after the most shattering events of the twentieth century is also surely significant, as Cumhaill and Wiseman note. When the first of the two great wars ended, the logicians and linguistic analysts picked up right where they had left off, as though nothing significant had occurred that might bear on their undertaking. Iris Murdoch and her circle, by contrast, saw the necessity of returning to the biggest questions. Their moment resembles ours, in that respect, and Murdoch’s essays are a treasure to be recovered. Murdoch’s Moral Phenomenology In one of those essays, “The Idea of Perfection,” what is at stake is the question of how we ought to picture the human being. This is consequential because, as she says in another essay, man is the creature who makes a picture of himself and then comes to resemble that picture. Bad philosophy may fail as a realistic description of the how things are, but such descriptions can be fertile. They are disseminated and taken up, receding as objects of scrutiny but inflecting our patterns of thinking and feeling. Analytical philosophy of mind has a hard time dealing with the fact that we are moral beings. That is, we have an “evaluative outlook” (I use the phrase of philosopher Talbot Brewer). The things we perceive “show up” for us in a neutral palette sometimes, but often they do so in vivid colors such as lame, charming, inane, subtle, funny, pathetic,winsome, desperate, inspiring, vulgar, overwrought, sly, generous, elegant and so on. These are not neutral descriptive words; they carry a judgment. Also, they are not obtusely binary, such as “good” and “bad,” but more directly tied-on to human situations, more affectively pungent, the kind of words you would need if (like a novelist) you were to undertake something like “moral phenomenology.” Which, come to think of it, is perhaps a good description of Murdoch’s philosophical oeuvre. Our evaluative outlook—our sense of where value lies, what it looks like, our ability to detect new flavors of it—can change, and typically this change has a direction to it, such that we can call it progress. When a life goes well, our judgments become deeper and more discerning. It would sting to learn that that someone you respect regards you as complacent and self-satisfied, incapable of being arrested by the new in a way that induces an evaluative shift. The idea of progress in moral perception, indeed the very concept of moral perception, is unintelligible if we dogmatically insist that “value judgments” are merely subjective. That is, if we suppose that when we call something good, this means nothing more than “I prefer this.” Yet such an ethically denuded ontology—there really isn’t anything value-laden out there to perceive—must be insisted upon if philosophy of mind is to claim jurisdiction over the question of how the mind perceives, and insist that it can do so with the logical and conceptual rigor it prides itself on. Such rigor, it is thought, requires abstaining from the fuzzy domain of value judgments. Features of the moral life that are clearly entangled with our “cognitive” capacities (such as perception) must be quarantined, in order to maintain a notion of cognition that is narrow enough to be amenable to analytical methods. What philosophy of mind needs, then, is an ally in the sphere of ethics that will agree to a clear demarcation between their respective turfs. This demarcation is accomplished if “the good,” understood as the generic of evaluative terms, has no ontological status of its own. Such a tacit agreement established the intellectual cartel that has set the terms of modern life. Mind the gap and you will be in good standing, metaphysically. Of course, this gap between Is and Ought long predates the rise of today’s narrow academic disciplines. David Hume pointed the way in the eighteenth century. A couple of centuries down that road, the result is a crippling lack of self-awareness in those human sciences that aspire to analytical rigor, driven by a kind of physics-envy. Murdoch writes that philosophy of mind has “been imposing upon us particular value judgments in the guise of a theory of human nature” without knowing that it does so. For its part, “modern ethics tends to constitute a sort of Newspeak which makes certain values non-expressible.” The Central Place of Love Among the facts that have been forgotten or theorized away is the fact that “love is a central concept of morals.” Contemporary philosophers “constantly talk of freedom” but “they rarely talk of love” (299-300). This inarticulacy about love matters. If we don’t have an adequate vocabulary and conceptual repertoire for some phenomenon, we are unable to use language to elaborate our experience. The experience itself becomes harder to fix in the mind, less available to us. Murdoch’s positive project is arrestingly unconventional. She argues for the central place of love, not just in interpersonal ethics where one might expect to find a discussion of love, but as an epistemic principle. Loving is at the root of our capacity to apprehend the world in its true colors. And this, in turn, is due to an ontological fact concerning the status of “the good.” Murdoch declares herself a Platonist. The good is real, not a projection of our subjective consciousness onto things we happen to value. The good makes a demand on us, and to respond to this demand adequately is to see things clearly. True perception is thus a moral accomplishment. As we shall see, some of her most compelling arguments demonstrate this in the context of distinguishing great art from ordinary, bad art. Before spelling these things out, Murdoch needs to clear away a lot of underbrush. (Numbers in parentheses are page numbers in the collection Existentialists and Mystics. I will be referring to three of the essays: “The Idea of Perfection,” “On ‘God’ and ‘Good’,” and “On the Sovereignty of Good Over Other Concepts.”) At issue in the Oxford scene was, again, the question of whether “goodness” is a real constituent of the world, something out there. To suppose that it is, was declared to be an instance of “the naturalist fallacy.” The sophisticated position was that “Good is indefinable because judgments of value depend on the will and choice of the individual.” “Goodness is not an object of insight or knowledge, it is a function of the will.” “Good must be thought of, not as part of the world, but as a movable label affixed to the world; for only so can the agent be pictured as responsible and free” (301). Tacitly, according to this position, if there were a substantial Good independent of our will, it would threaten the “freedom” that, as Murdoch noted, is the constant preoccupation of modern thought. That is because such a Good would compel us in certain directions rather than others. It would be perverse to choose something bad, after all. It would be irrational. So both our freedom and the sovereignty of our reason were taken to depend on there not being a Good that transcends us and is independent of us. Evidently, thereis a sense of threat to the self that underlies the appeal of moral subjectivism. This anxiety rests on the modern understanding of what reason is—and of what freedom is. Both notions are narrow, when viewed against the larger sweep of the human tradition. Here, reason always means something public, in the sense that, if something is available to reason, it should be available to all. If it isn’t, it is probably some private, irrational delusion. Meanwhile, freedom is understood as a characteristic of the individual will, revealed in a moment of choice. For this choice to be truly free, it must be entirely my own, a pure eruption of the will that is unconditioned by anything outside the will. True choices are necessarily ungrounded. If you are compelled toward some choice by your reasoning about the situation, it isn’t really an act of your own will. Any person similarly situated, thinking clearly, would choose the same. So the human being is a combined thing: an impersonal rational thinker, whose reasoning cannot escape a publicly observable machinery of logical necessity and shared facts, plus a personal will that leaps around according to no logic at all, until in the moment of choice and action a man inserts himself into the machinery of public reason. It is a picture that combines total freedom and determinism. Murdoch thinks it is mistaken on both sides. Reason, in this system, must be neutral and objective, carefully abstaining from value judgments. This is what allows us to think of reason and will as separable faculties of the person, corresponding to the distinction between facts and values. “If the will is to be totally free, the world it moves in must be devoid of normative characteristics, so that morality can reside entirely in the pointer of pure choice” (333). Murdoch names this set of mutually supporting doctrines “behaviorist-existentialist.” Behaviorist because the operation of reason can be detected only by publicly observable actions, and this standard of detection gets imported back into the thing itself: Reason is the sort of thing that issues in actions, as opposed to private revery. To existentialists, on the other side of this intellectual arrangement, freedom means freedom to choose in a pure act of will. There is a hint of mischief in Murdoch’s pointing out that these positions are allied, if we consider them personified. Behaviorists and existentialists wear different costumes (on one side, sensible shoes; on the other, berets) and are sure to detest one another. Yet the determinists and the freedomists need one another, locked as they are in common mistake. In a subsequent essay titled “On ‘God’ and ‘Good’,” Murdoch makes a related point. In current moral philosophy, the moral agent is “pictured as an isolated principle of will” beside “a lump of being which has been handed over to other disciplines, such as psychology or sociology. On the one hand a Luciferian philosophy of adventures of the will, and on the other natural science. Moral philosophy, and indeed morals, are thus undefended against an irresponsible and undirected self-assertion which goes easily hand in hand with some brand of pseudo-scientific determinism” (338). Given this easy rapport between pseudo-scientific determinism and Luciferian freedomism, it becomes easier to understand why, for example, the 2023 book Determined, by the Stanford neuro-sage Robert Sapolsky, would reach the bestseller list in a society where “liberation” provides the standard of progress. The Formative Role of Attention As a corrective to the prevailing view, Murdoch emphasizes the role of attention in shaping the world that is actually present to our consciousness. This is happening all the time. By the time a moment of choice arrives, we are already inhabiting a world shaped (for us) by our habits of attention, in the course of which specific currents of its value-laden nature stand forth. Our established habits of seeing will largely set our response. This is a retrospective view of how we became the kind of person who is likely to respond in such-and-such a way. Looking forward, we are for the most part free to allocate our attention. The question of what to attend to is the question of what to value. The morally relevant “choosing” in some episode happens, then, not in a clap of the will at a dramatic moment of decision but in a piecemeal and cumulative way that is continuous, and has already happened by the time the choice must be made. This does not mean we are not free. But Murdoch’s account does highlight a fact that is weirdly absent from the prevailing view: the existence of moral effort. In large part, such effort consists of the struggle to control one’s attention. And this is indeed effortful. “Of course psychic energy flows, and more easily flows, into building up convincingly coherent but false pictures of the world... Attention is the effort to counteract such states of illusion” (329). Basically, you have to get out of your own head to see things clearly. She calls such effort “unselfing”. In “On ‘God’ and ‘Good’,” Murdoch says she is not a Freudian, but she shares Freud’s view that our psychic energies are not simply available to us to direct in a deliberate way; there is a roiling layer of the unconscious and the semi-conscious urging us along at every turn. And the consistent tendency of these psychic energies is selfish. It is a tendency shaped and hardened into particular channels by our own biography. Murdoch writes, “Moral change and moral achievement are slow; we are not free in the sense of being able suddenly to alter what we can see and ergo what we desire and are compelled by...” (331). Unselfing may be accomplished through self-criticism, but such a negative effort of ego-asceticism has its limits. But to love is to be drawn out of our self-centered patterns toward some positive object that is other than oneself. Love thus has the same outward-pulling tendency as attention. And reciprocally, to attend to something fully is, in a sense, to love it. Murdoch’s suggestion here is a bit obscure. May not my accomplishment of clear vision, through a patient and just attention, reveal something that is rightly to be hated? How then are we to suppose there is a natural kinship between love and attention? I believe her position becomes tenable if we provide a premise that is a bit elusive, appearing only fleetingly, in her own account: The good, which is lovable, is somehow fundamental, ontologically. If that is the case, attention that penetrates to this fundamental layer will reveal something lovable, even in the hateful. I will return to this question at the end. Relieving the Burden of Choice Through Obedience to Reality Murdoch provides philosophical ground for making sense of “the paradox of choice” (a term coined by Barry Schwartz and taken up in recent psychology). Psychologists find that a proliferation of choices makes people less satisfied with whatever choice they end up making. This is not surprising, if the crazy proliferation of choices under consumer capitalism is the public correlate of the bad philosophy Murdoch has identified: our identification of freedom with the ungrounded leaping about of the will. A false picture of the human situation can make people unhappy, in ways detectable by empirical psychology. Murdoch writes, “If I attend properly I will have no choices and this is the ultimate condition to be aimed at.” This is the reverse of the behaviorist-existentialist prescription, which is that we should seek to increase our freedom by “conceptualizing as many different possibilities of action as possible.”
The ideal situation, on the contrary, is rather to be represented as a kind of ‘necessity’. This is something of which saints speak and which any artist will readily understand. The idea of a patient, loving regard, directed upon a person, a thing, a situation, presents the will not not as unimpeded movement but as something very much more like ‘obedience’. (331) Will and reason then are not entirely separate faculties in the moral agent....As moral agents we have to try to see justly, to overcome prejudice, to avoid temptation, to control and curb imagination, to direct reflection. (332)
Great Art Is a Moral-Cognitive Accomplishment “One of the great merits of the moral psychology which I am proposing is that it does not contrast art and morals, but shows them to be two aspects of a single struggle.” The existentialist-behaviorist view is tacit in what she calls “the familiar Kantian-Bloomsbury slogan” of “art for arts sake.” Murdoch finds such a view of art “intolerable.”
Goodness and beauty are not to be contrasted, but are largely part of the same structure. Plato, who tells us that beauty is the only spiritual thing which we love immediately by nature, treats the beautiful as the introductory section of the good. So that aesthetic situations are not so much analogies of morals as cases of morals. (332)
For the most part, contemporary theorists of art have banished the term “beauty” even from the domain of art. Perhaps that is because beauty points toward goodness in just the way Plato suggested, and intimations of such a connection must be suppressed if one is to remain metaphysically respectable. But what if respectability is here purchased at the cost of metaphysical cowardice? The existentialist picture of choice is connected to a crypto-democratic view of art that can’t distinguish great art from the ordinary productions of ordinary artists, which exhibit the same distortions as our everyday consciousness.
Art presents the most comprehensible examples of the almost irresistible human tendency to seek consolation in fantasy and also of the effort to resist this and the vision of reality which comes with success. Success in fact is rare. Almost all art is a form of fantasy-consolation and few artists achieve the vision of the real. The talent of the artist can be readily, and is naturally, employed to produce a picture whose purpose is the consolation and aggrandisement of its author and the projection of his personal obsessions and wishes. To silence and expel self, to contemplate and delineate nature with a clear eye, is not easy and demands a moral discipline. A great artist is, in respect of his work, a good man, and, in the true sense, a free man. The consumer of art has an analogous task to its producer: to be disciplined enough to see as much reality in the work as the artist has succeeded in putting into it, and not to ‘use it as magic.’ The appreciation of beauty in art or nature is not only (for all its difficulties) the easiest available spiritual exercise; it is also a completely adequate entry into (and not just analogy of) the good life, since it is the checking of selfishness in the interest of seeing the real. Of course great artists are ‘personalities’ and have special styles; even Shakespeare occasionally, though very occasionally, reveals a personal obsession. But the greatest art is ‘impersonal’ because it shows us the world, our world and not another one, with a clarity which startles and delights us simply because we are not used to looking at the real world at all. (352) ... It is important too that great art teaches us how real things can be looked at and loved without being seized and used, without being appropriated into the greedy organism of the self. (353) ... If, still led by the clue of art, we ask further questions about the faculty which is supposed to relate us to what is real and thus bring us to what is good, the idea of compassion or love will be naturally suggested. It is not simply that suppression of self is required before accurate vision can be obtained. The great artist sees his objects (and this is true whether they are sad, absurd, repulsive or even evil) in a light of justice and mercy. The direction of attention is, contrary to nature, outward, away from self which reduces all to a false unity, towards the great surprising variety of the world, and the ability so to direct attention is love. (354) ... Good art “affords us a pure delight in the independent existence of what is excellent.” (370) ... “An understanding of any art involves a recognition of hierarchy and authority.... We surrender ourselves to [good art’s] authority with a love which is unpossessive and unselfish. (372)
I have reproduced these passages at length to show just how fertile is Murdoch’s use of art as a window onto the everyday challenges and aspirations that come with being the sort of creature who is attracted to what is excellent. This attraction is at the heart of our capacity for clarity (such as it is). In Platonic terms, the Good is that in light of which reality reveals itself, like the sun that illuminates the Earth. Murdoch endorses this Platonic point while rejecting the existence of the Idea of the Good, if we mean that as “people used to think that God existed” (361). This statement occurs near the outset of the essay “On the Sovereignty of ‘Good’ Over Other Concepts.” Without fanfare, she takes it as a beginning point for her inquiry that human life has “no external point or telos” (364) and “there is no God” (365). The Good/God Question Here Murdoch becomes elusive and frustrating. I say that not as a believer who wishes to have a formidable secular thinker on side, but on grounds internal to her own thinking. Her entire argument through these three essays is teleological and makes frequent recourse to the idea of the transcendent as the necessary anchor for our aspiration to clarity. That aspiration is inseparable from our aspiration to excellence. The good, she says, is the “magnetic center of attraction” that provides direction and authority to our efforts. As a simple statement of psychological fact, this is recognizable and straightforward. Going deeper into any field of human endeavor reveals standards and degrees of excellence that were previously invisible to one as a novice. One’s standards get higher: there is little that is very good, and perhaps nothing that is perfect. Yet “the idea of perfection” produces “an increasing sense of direction” to any endeavor. “The idea of perfection moves, and possibly changes, us (as artist, worker, agent) because it inspires love in the part of us that is most worthy” (emphasis added). “The idea of perfection is also a natural producer of order. In its light we see that A, which superficially resembles B, is really better than B” (emphasis in original). And this occurs without us needing to have “the perfect” or “the good” pinned down. Indeed it can’t be pinned down. But this is not because the good is a mere projection of our preferences. It can’t be pinned down because the good “always lies beyond, and it is from this beyond that it exercises its authority” (emphasis in original). All of this from page 350. Yet human life “has no external point or telos,” she says, bafflingly (364). It sometimes seems as though Murdoch is trying to re-invent the wheel while scrupulously abstaining from the use of a circle, and the result is flat contradiction. It will be said that her position has no contradiction it we take the good, and the idea of perfection, only as heuristics that carry some psychological utility. It is on such grounds that she entertains the efficaciousness of prayer and even sacraments. She is compelled to think about these practices by the rest of her argument. Let me briefly rehearse the steps by which she gets to a consideration of prayer. Murdoch’s picture of the self is that of “an obscure system of energy out of which choices and visible acts will emerge at intervals in ways which are often unclear and often dependent on the state of the system in between moments of choice” (344). Hence the importance of training our attention, by way of forming “the system” and giving it a set, if you will. Given the naturally selfish tendencies of the system, and the limited efficacy of self-criticism and negative efforts of the will, it needs objects of love to pull it out of itself, the better to glimpse reality. The believer, she says, has an advantage in this. “The religious believer, especially if his God is conceived as a person, is in the fortunate position of being able to focus his thought upon something which is a source of energy” (345).
Prayer is properly not petition, but simply an attention to God which is a form of love. With it goes the idea of grace, of a supernatural assistance to human endeavor which overcomes empirical limitations of personality. What is this attention like, and can those who are not religious believers conceive of profiting by such an activity? (344)
Likewise, Murdoch sees the value of sacraments. “A sacrament provides an external visible place for an internal invisible act of the spirit” (356). She quotes Wittgenstein with approval: “Not how the world is, but that it is, is the mystical.” This would seem to state an intuition that is perilously close to the idea that existence itself is a miracle. Yet Murdoch labors valiantly to keep the God hypothesis at bay. The effort is worthwhile. Taking no shortcuts and availing herself not at all of the theological tradition, by her model she challenges the complacency of believers for whom received dogma may short-circuit the work of reflection by which religious experience (like experience altogether) is deepened. But at some point, her persistence in rejecting God, while invoking religious practices and relying on religious concepts, itself begins to look dogmatic. Or like a case of someone taking the principle of parsimony to the point of vacating her own logic. As Einstein said, “Everything should be made as simple as possible. And no simpler.” Or perhaps hers is a case of intellectual scruples overdeveloped to the point of spiritual blockage, a prudish fear of flying. One wants to say to her, “My dear Iris. Live a little. Take a gamble.” One of the stock opinions of atheists is that belief in God is a consolation for the weak, who lack the courage to face a universe that does not care for human beings. But an inflection can occur in one’s perception (and it certainly feels like a case of seeing further, more clearly, in my own case) after which this looks not courageous but anxious and self-protective, in the way of a man whose dignity rests on making sure he is not duped. Or who wishes not to be in anyone’s debt and therefore refuses a gift for fear it will compromise him. This is ill-mannered. As it happens, the occasion for my re-reading of these essays (I previously encountered them twenty years ago, as an atheist) was that my wife Marilyn and I hosted a Lent reading group devoted to them, for members of our parish. Toward the end of our sessions, Marilyn wondered if Murdoch’s theological inhibition may stem from a fear of being loved, because it entails being fully known. Murdoch recognizes the psychological utility of an imagined “God” as an object of love. But what if this God really is other to the self, and loves us back? On Murdoch’s own account, it is in and through love that one perceives most fully. To be on the receiving end of this, to be fully known—even the number of hairs on one’s head—by a God that is the real source of Good is to take an existential risk that few modern thinkers can abide. Yet such a hypothesis would make compelling a key intuition of Murdoch’s which, in her own treatment of it, remains mysterious. Namely, that a full and just attention – to anything at all – will reveal something to be loved. Even (as for St. Francis) the pus-filled wounds of the leper. This begins to make sense if the world and everything in it was made by an intelligence who acted out of love. Suppose all is atoms, as the materialist says. That there should be such a thing as an atom is surely miracle enough: a nucleus, around which dance electrons that are particles and yet also waves, an ensemble of actuality that remains open to possibility. If substance itself is properly an object of wonder, gratitude and love, Murdoch‘s argument is completed."]]> irismurdoch art attention good goodness 2026 matthewcrawford love living davidhume philosophy elizabethanscombe philippafoot claremaccumhaill rachaelwiseman ethics loving kinship psychology plato success alberteinstein effort phenomenology reality morality beauty theory https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:18c635195b00/ Patience and Attention | Cosmos Malick 2026-04-16T05:19:31+00:00 https://cosmosmalick.net/2026/04/14/patience-and-attention.html robertogreco alanjacobs film filmmaking patience attention howweread reading 2026 terrencemalick listening noticing observation slow https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:49d0c508ec8b/ AI broke the one thing we can't fix - YouTube 2026-04-12T21:16:45+00:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_2YN1MungI robertogreco 2026 mobitar ai artificialintelligence openclaw internet web online aislop nikitabier xai twitter chatbots jensenhuang scams scamming spam spamming china censorship ccp replyspam bitcoin crypto cryptocurrencies llms rlhf attention economics algorithms ads advertising monetization youtube slop language https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:734799ad6668/ How to : Not be a D!ck - by Cmte for Reciprocity & Care 2026-04-10T04:23:24+00:00 https://possibilityhours.substack.com/p/how-to-not-be-a-dck robertogreco reciprocity care socialimpact listening patriciamou socialimpactdesign design 2026 urbanurbanism lizogbu socialjustice comparison slow attention https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:403af715fbe5/ Limiting Not Just Screen Time, But Screen Space - NOEMA 2026-04-06T02:54:40+00:00 https://www.noemamag.com/limiting-not-just-screen-time-but-screen-space/ robertogreco“What would it mean to limit not only screen time, but screen space?” Those dreaming of a nascent cognitive revolution are imagining that Borges’ one-to-one map will be finally useful — that if we just feed enough text, enough human knowledge, into the machine, it will comprehend the world in a way we never can. Even if we had the time, labor and energy to attempt this, why would we? Why not put that effort into talking to each other? The alternative is an increasingly familiar solipsism. A solipsistic person believes the self is the only reality. Other minds, other bodies, may as well be an illusion. Today’s internet bends us toward solipsism. We no longer imagine ourselves to be placing our images and our voices into the internet. We imagine ourselves — our physical beings — to be living within it. We imagine the internet to be our environment. In “Trick Mirror,” journalist Jia Tolentino warned that the internet, once imagined as a space of freedom, had become a mechanism for surveillance, performance and commodification. Online life encourages self-optimization and branding at the expense of connection. “In physical spaces, there’s a limited audience and time span for every performance,” Tolentino writes. “Online, your audience can hypothetically keep expanding forever, and the performance never has to end.” Tolentino focused on time, but this internet is an endless stage, too, one with no wings, no exit, no place to step off and be alone again. “brb” once acknowledged departure and faith in return. It reminded us of the body behind the screen. Now, we are infinitely available, and AI is sold to us as the tireless and needless assistant. But our bodies continue to live in the world with stubborn persistence, despite Silicon Valley’s dream of the immortal avatar, the ability to upload our essence into a durable machine, which is a dream of escaping death and environment alike. Most of the questions worth asking are not about how to transcend the environment, but how to inhabit it. How to live together in shared space. Many social, historical and economic forces led me to check my work email in the bathroom. Among them is the way we have come to imagine the internet not as a place we go, but as a space we inhabit. We make sense of abstract experience through bodily metaphors grounded in orientation and sensation: Up is good, down is bad, warmth is affection, weight is importance. These metaphors shape how we act and what we value. Window, weather: Change the metaphor and you change the possibilities for thought and action. If the internet once taught us to say “brb,” perhaps the work ahead is to recover that ethic of interruption, to remember the body in a room, waiting to return."]]> 2026 lauramartin interner web online ai artificialintelligence intelligence bodies embodiment physical environment senses wireless wifi mobile attention privacy space sharedspace smartphones place chatgpt samaltman openai connectivity gps jiatolentino spikejonze her llms joecruz socialspaces emotions cognition cognitivescience borges connection audience time performance freedom boredom surveillance commodification solipsism data representation sensory decisionmaking isolation https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:afe49fb94827/ Hollow Body - Longreads 2026-04-05T06:27:09+00:00 https://longreads.com/2026/03/26/craft-in-defiance-of-ai-peter-wayne-moe/ robertogreco peterwaynemo ai artificialintelligence attention craft 2026 teaching howwteach learning howwelearn slow https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:6b6b985970f8/ Miseducative Experiences 2026-04-05T05:38:11+00:00 https://2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/miseducative-experiences/ robertogreco audreywatters 2026 maryoliver life living online internet taylorlorenz screentime socialmedia ai artificialintelligence jonathanhaidt christopherferguson videogames games gaming regulation siliconvalley power media moralpanic moralpanics influence newmedia addiction johndewey children teens youth education experience attention teaching learning howweteach howwelearn policy edtech chromebooks computers computing https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:de9495051bd0/ The Shadow Incentive - Peter Joseph: Substack 2026-04-02T07:37:48+00:00 https://peterjoseph.substack.com/p/the-shadow-incentive robertogreco activism charitableindustrialcomplex philanthropicindustrialcomplex charity philanthropy peterjoseph outrage change economics activistindustrialcomplex institutions healthcare media politics capitalism markets civilrightsmovement mlk martinlutherkingjr gandhi neoliberalism persuasion propaganda edwardbernays policy transformation communication messaging problemsolving marshallmcluhan engagement invisibility attention masspersuasion patreon substack brands branding susankomen peta commentary intent resolution incentives culture exaggeration tribalism loyalty georgefloyd 2020 systems individualism distortion behavior 2026 georgefloydprotests georgefloyduprising https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:4d76784093d7/ Why Swedish Schools Are Bringing Back Books 2026-04-02T05:38:06+00:00 https://undark.org/2026/04/01/sweden-schools-books/ robertogreco sweden schools schooling education 2026 joshuacohen howweread howwewrite reading writing books analog digital paper technology textbooks screens digitallearning learning howeelearn us policy openai microsoft google ai artificialintelligence digitalfluency chatbots memory readingcomprehension pandemic covid-19 coronavirus computers computing tablets ipad jaredcooneyhorvath jonathanhaidt pamkastner literacy lindafälth teaching howweteach pedagogy naominbaron linguistics edtech distraction attention https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:fe20b5013955/ The Ozempicization of Everything - by kyla scanlon 2026-03-30T05:02:52+00:00 https://kyla.substack.com/p/the-ozempicization-of-the-economy robertogreco kylascanlon 2026 economics politics biohacking looksmaxxing manosphere optimization efficiency finance financialnihilism socialmedia millennials genz generationz zoomers geny generationy ivanillich google meta nihilism raymondwilliam medicine health infrastructure donaldtrump trumpism peptides ozempic ozempification control bryanjohnson longevity institutions government governance governing immortality chads wwe maha healthcare siliconvalley taste agency branding marcandreessen samkriss cluely generativeai genai aislop aihype aibubble crypto cryptocurrencies gambling markets predictionmarkets monetization capitalism latecapitalism novig kalshi coinbase narrative loneliness spectacle louistheroux clavicular mlm onlyfans polymarket stuartthompson davidyaffe-bellany mikeisaac conspiracytheories benjaminfogel andrewtate predation exploitation clout cloutchasing hustlecultire hustling scams celebrity attention privateequity confusion uncertainty belief joblessness pain alienation desperation amandamull consumption https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:7e81b60da6e0/ AI got the blame for the Iran school bombing. The truth is far more worrying | Iran | The Guardian 2026-03-29T02:52:49+00:00 https://www.theguardian.com/news/2026/mar/26/ai-got-the-blame-for-the-iran-school-bombing-the-truth-is-far-more-worrying robertogreco kevinbaker ai artificialintelligence fascism iran warcrimes us donaldtrump anthropic maven petehegseth palantir pentagon military claude morganames charismamachine technology attention llms blame chuckhagel robertwork jackshanahan michaelerikkurilla cameronstanley history targeting war vietnam michaelsherry civilians bombs bombing missiles carlvonclausewitz marcgarlasco humanrightswatch iraq iraqwar kosovo jonlindsay wesleyclark johnfyfe uk raf doublebind theodoreporter davidnoble alexkarp bureaucracy lucysuchman responsibility https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:2474373ac7da/ What’s the Point of Education in an Age of AI?  - Christianity Today 2026-03-29T02:44:16+00:00 https://www.christianitytoday.com/2026/03/whats-the-point-of-education-in-an-age-of-ai/ robertogreco carriemckean education ai artificialintelligence 2026 christianity learning howwelearn chromebooks gemini google schools schooling claude anthropic memorization reading howweread nihilism children youth teens caitlinflanagan writing howwewrite music training cheating thinking howwethink criticalthinking culture jeffreybilbro wendellberry attention humility patience formation human humans soul https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:af1bdb3e4c1d/ Low-Tech Parenting Must Be a Big Tent - Christianity Today 2026-03-29T02:37:42+00:00 https://www.christianitytoday.com/2026/03/low-tech-parenting-big-tent-judgmentalism-tech-grace/ robertogreco bradeast technology 2026 children neoluddites neoluddism luddites luddism claremorell grace digital screens screentime smartphone media attention distraction ipad andycrouch condemnation balance internet online web reading howweread slow judgement judgmentalism literacy self-righteousness christianity matthewwalther charity warmth mercy https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:cb6a6c6087ac/ ‘I study at an exclusive US college. We can’t drink, use wi-fi or leave during term’ 2026-03-28T22:46:07+00:00 https://www.thetimes.com/us/news-today/article/deep-springs-college-california-hzhx5bfc0 robertogreco deepspringscollege 2026 rubylarocca education colleges universities highereducation highered meaning meaningmaking howweread internet web online offline attention books reading constraints socialmedia distraction ai artificialintelligence microcolleges https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:e7bdaa4e4764/ Sara Hendren - no amount of debunking multi-tasking will diminish the behavior 2026-03-27T03:39:04+00:00 https://ablerism.micro.blog/2026/03/23/no-amount-of-debunking-multitasking.html robertogreco sarahendren multitasking 2026 attention laptops schools education civics meetings presentations https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:26959404cd08/ As technologies mine our attention, we must look to artists | Aeon Videos 2026-03-26T03:08:34+00:00 https://aeon.co/videos/as-technologies-mine-our-attention-we-must-look-to-artists robertogreco taoruspoli 2026 film documentary heidegger technology attention being time thinking waysofbeing risk human humans humanism jazz flamenco music hubertdreyfus 2010 experience interaction art education skills risktaking mastery https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:99fd6f044eec/ The Internet Has Not Killed Reading—or Attention Spans 2026-03-25T05:46:19+00:00 https://nautil.us/the-internet-has-not-killed-reading-or-attention-spans-1279171 robertogreco kevinashton attention internet web online howweread reading kristenfrench 2026 smarthphones internetofthings technology print printing human humans stories marshallmcluhan democratization novels fictions writing howwewrite essays ai artificialintelligence thinking howwethink class longform socialmedia youtube tiktok memory vocabulary cognition twitter communication persuasion narrative narrativeconstruction amyorben andrewprzbylski well-being wellbeing bedtime lannguyen video children criticalliteracy cognitivebiases community transrevolution photography radio television tv computing personalcomputers paulofreire bankingmodelofeducation https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:6d3eced0f0f9/ The Poet's Vision - by Steve Knepper 2026-03-22T02:23:56+00:00 https://newversereview.substack.com/p/the-poets-vision robertogreco steveknepper ryanwilson poetry 2026 gratitute hospitality creation cynicism civilization attention beauty giftgiving gifts language wrirting howwewrite https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:3e3cbd5ad47c/ Is AI Making Us Stupid? Cal Newport Is Worried. 2026-03-22T02:19:08+00:00 https://www.chronicle.com/article/is-ai-making-us-stupid-cal-newport-is-worried robertogreco calnewport ai artificialintelligence 2026 colleges universities academia highered highereducation education productivity howwelearn learning writing howwewrite concentration attention experience humanexperience humans human humanism thinking howwethink https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:ecb20d7618e8/ Daring Fireball: ‘Your Frustration Is the Product’ 2026-03-19T04:21:20+00:00 https://daringfireball.net/2026/03/your_frustration_is_the_product robertogrecoI went to the New York Times to glimpse at four headlines and was greeted with 422 network requests and 49 megabytes of data. It took two minutes before the page settled. And then you wonder why every sane tech person has an adblocker installed on systems of all their loved ones. It is the same story across top publishers today. This is an absolutely devastating deconstruction of the current web landscape. I implore you to pause here, and read Bose’s entire amply illustrated essay. I’ll wait. Even websites from publishers who care about quality are doing things on the web that they would never do with their print editions. Bose starts with The New York Times, but also mentions The Guardian, whose web pages are so laden with ads and modals that their default layout, on a mobile device, sometimes leaves just 11 percent of the screen for article content. That’s four lines of article text. Bose writes:
Viewability and time-on-page are very important metrics these days. Every hostile UX decision originates from this single fact. The longer you’re trapped on the page, the higher the CPM the publisher can charge. Your frustration is the product. No wonder engineers and designers make every UX decision that optimizes for that. And you, the reader, are forced to interact, wait, click, scroll multiple times because of this optimization. Not only is it a step in the wrong direction, it is adversarial by design. The reader is not respected enough by the software. The publisher is held hostage by incentives from an auction system that not only encourages but also rewards dark patterns.
I disagree only insofar as the reader isn’t respected at all. Part of my ongoing testing of the MacBook Neo is that I’ve been using it in as default a state as possible, only changing default settings, and only adding third-party software, as necessary. So I’ve been browsing the web without content-blocking extensions on the Neo. It’s been a while since I’ve done that for an extended period of time. Most of the advertising-bearing websites I read have gotten so bad that it’s almost beyond parody. And even with content blockers installed (of late, I’ve been using and enjoying uBlock Origin Lite in Safari), many of these news websites intersperse bullshit like requests to subscribe to their newsletters, or links to other articles on their site — often totally unrelated to the one you’re trying to read — every few paragraphs. And the fucking autoplay videos, jesus. You read two paragraphs and there’s a box that interrupts you. You read another two paragraphs and there’s another interruption. All the way until the end of the article. We’re visiting their website to read a fucking article. If we wanted to watch videos, we’d be on YouTube. It’s like going to a restaurant, ordering a cheeseburger, and they send a marching band to your table to play trumpets right in your ear and squirt you with a water pistol while trying to sell you towels. No print publication on the planet does this. The print editions of the very same publications — The New York Times, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The New Yorker — don’t do anything like this. The print edition of The New Yorker could not possibly be more respectful of both the reader’s attention and the sanctity of the prose they publish. But read an article on their website and you get autoplaying videos interspersed between random paragraphs. And the videos have nothing to do with the article you’re reading. I mean, we should be so lucky if every website were as respectfully designed as The New Yorker’s, but even their website — comparatively speaking, one of the “good ones” — shows only a fraction of the respect for the reader that their print edition does. Without an ad-blocking content blocker running, one of the most crazy-making design patterns today is repeating the exact same ad within the same article, every few paragraphs. It’s hard to find a single article on Apple News — a sort of ersatz pidgin version of the web — that does not do this. The exact same ad — 6, 7, 8 times within the same article. How many 30-something blonde white women need hearing aids? It’s insane. People are spending less and less time on the web because websites are becoming worse and worse experiences, but the publishers of websites are almost literally trying to dig their way out of that hole by adding more and more of the reader-hostile shit that is driving people away. The Guardian screenshot Bose captured, where only 11 percent of the entire screen shows text from the article, is the equivalent of a broadcast TV channel that only showed 7 minutes of actual TV content per hour, devoting the other 53 minutes to paid commercials and promotions for other shows on the same channel. Almost no one would watch such a channel. But somehow this strategy is deemed sustainable for websites. The web is the only medium the world has ever seen where its highest-profile decision makers are people who despise the medium and are trying to drive people away from it. As Bose notes, “A lot of websites actively interfere the reader from accessing them by pestering them with their ‘apps’ these days. I don’t know where this fascination with getting everyone to download your app comes from.” It comes from people who literally do not understand, and do not enjoy, the web, but yet find themselves running large websites. The people making these decisions for these websites are like ocean liner captains who are trying to hit icebergs."]]> internet web online reading bloat 2026 ads advertising ux johngruber shubhambose enshittification nytimes theguardian applenews autoplay theatlantic rsj thenewyorker ublockorigin adblockers attention webdesign https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:0b17df6cba14/ The Last Quiet Thing | Terry Godier 2026-03-17T14:17:31+00:00 https://www.terrygodier.com/the-last-quiet-thing robertogreco terrygodier 2026 casio f-91w technology mentalhealth maintenance attention smarthomes https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:2562871aa2b9/ A toddler’s death shook him. Now he’s walking 50 miles around SF for safer streets 2026-03-16T00:17:37+00:00 https://sfstandard.com/2026/03/14/toddler-s-death-shook-now-s-walking-50-miles-sf-safer-streets/ robertogreco walking sanfrancisco cars safety pedestrians 2026 harrisonanderson streets daniellurie policy publictransit transportation transit attention parenting presence https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:ca5415884588/ Fatiguing fascism 2026-03-13T23:19:15+00:00 https://sf.gazetteer.co/fatiguing-fascism robertogreco latefascistaesthetics attention clothing online internet web algorithms 2026 carlosdengler fascism fascistaesthetics ice borderpatrol police policing performance socialmedia gregbovino elonmusk nazis dickhebdige fashion susansontag guydebord spectacle cameras photography clickbait subculture subcultures mods music punk society societyofthespectacle politics theater sadomasochism provocation keithmoon siouxiesioux resistance https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:c89dfe358a0b/ The Left Doesn’t Hate Technology with Gita Jackson - YouTube 2026-03-13T05:21:19+00:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcf5syA1MlE robertogreco gitjackson parismarx technology left 2026 luddism neoluddism luddites neoluddites ai artificialintelligence llms technooptimism technocynicism exploitation generativeai openai anthropic claude chatgpt consolidation samaltman society hsr highsspeedrail publicgood mrna vaccines vaccinations medicine siliconvalley aibubble aihype capitalism corporations corporatism qanon ereaders eink boox chrisperson automation speculation infrastructure datacenters chatbots labor work seamusblackley business games gaming videogames xbox microsoft google uber lyft nfts crypto cryptocurrencies evil policy power bigtech oracle gemini gmail linux music spotify streaming china netflix piracy airbnb taxis jeffbezos billionaires gigeconomy billgates edwardsnowden peterthiel scale scaling slow small benshapiro cryptofascism donaldtrump slavery humans human humanity humanism government liberals liberalism grantmorrison agi butlerianjihad smarthphones walledgardens howweread reading books resistance search attention algorithms libraries https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:8932ac767f53/ Welcoming the Shadow Brother - Front Porch Republic 2026-03-10T07:24:27+00:00 https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2026/03/welcoming-the-shadow-brother/ robertogreco mellivatino introversion introverts extroversion extroverts small slow 2026 travel relationships living life howwelive timothyferris humanity beauty listening looking seeing observation local waltwhitman emilydickinson josefkoudelka renémagritte art photography jamiewyeth georgiao'keefe writing howwewrite attention conversation bertrandrussell josephconrad https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:f0f299548bf8/ The Springing Time – Melanie Challenger 2026-03-01T21:09:34+00:00 https://emergencemagazine.org/essay/the-springing-time/ robertogreco 2026 melaniechallenger seasons time bodies ecology slow small morethanhuman multispecies ulfbüntgen nature outside outdoors indoors inside dst knowledge patwillmer life living spring purpose howwelive organisms biology science human humans survival sensitivity flexibility change attention adjustment pollution libertarianism neolibertarianism ideology phenology children wilderness disinformation arctic inuit indigeneity indigenous biorhythms puberty hormones patterns cycles plants pollinators climate climatechange springtime insects environment sun ethics utility function metabolism flourishing cuklture cultures anthropocene economics economicgrowth growth nihilism optimism mortality interdependence parenting joy grief reality daylightsavingtime https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:3034ccd91b17/ Will AI scribes fix medicine’s attention problem? - The American Journal of Medicine 2026-03-01T07:15:43+00:00 https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(26)00096-3/fulltext robertogreco willlyon medicine attention 2026 ai artificialintelligence technology https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:966320f5f029/ Habitats of Attention | Isaac Greene 2026-03-01T07:02:08+00:00 https://www.isaacgreene.com/2026/02/26/habitats-of-attention.html robertogreco isaacgreene 2026 attention information carloiacono digital interface ui ux rssreaders slow thinking howwethink marshallmcluhan neilpostman lmsacasas distraction https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:feb1e83f21fe/ Secret Agent Man 2026-02-27T22:32:51+00:00 https://2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/secret-agent-man/ robertogrecoaudreywatters 2026 edtech education technology roblox openai ai artificialintelligence radicalization chatgpt jessevanrootselaar digitalliteracy literacy gambing markets predictionmarkets moocs google schools schooling benriley iste ascd us policy justinreich ailiteracy grift anthropic microsoft learning howwlearn training technofascism technoauthoritarianism authoritarianism matthewgault highered highereducation academia colleges universities lms canvas ice police policing lawenforcement deportation yikyak socialmedia surveillance llms rustyfoster samaltman humans human intelligence misanthropy gideonlewis-kraus deeplearning aislop slop lausd albertocarvalho billgates jeffreyepstein twitter politics missippi jenniferberkshire abiawomosu technophobia automation attention care organization emotionallabor mooc https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:486a3a4b0386/ Ring Is Just Getting Started - YouTube 2026-02-26T04:40:01+00:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEq8dlnLP8o robertogreco ring surveillance police policing grok xai looksmaxxing cameras amazon sneako andrewtate clavicular nickfuentes manosphere socialmedia misogyny internet online web farright altright aesthetics fascistaesthetics extremism latefascistaesthetics media bradenpeters incels pickupartists nihilism whitneyphillips attention 4chan trolling https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:64e97a04b464/ A Media Literacy Guide to "Looksmaxxing" - by Jamie Cohen 2026-02-23T22:51:43+00:00 https://newmediahomework.substack.com/p/a-media-literacy-guide-to-looksmaxxing robertogreco jamiecohen looksmaxxing 2026 media clavicular bradenpeters josephbernstein contentmaxxing miloyainnopolous emanuelmaiberg kierenpress-reynolds stephanierosenbloom hasanpiker streaming socialmedia online web internet attention joerogan incels adameleksic fascism fascistaesthetics latefascistaesthetics aesthetics aidanwalker sarahlaurent surveillance authoritarianism altright stevebannon https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:f8e6f601bec3/ The Ideology of Contentmaxxing - YouTube 2026-02-23T04:54:51+00:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jtBSC-ZgCI robertogreco aidanwalker metrics looksmaxxing content contentmaxxing quantification latefascistaesthetics aesthetics reality hyperrealism hyperreality socialmedia measurement 2026 algorithms microfractures machines economics fascism web online internet rationalism transhumanism ideology ritual louisalthusser althusser engagement institutions popularity platforms instagram tiktok grades grading taste socialcapital pierrebourdieu performance surveillance attention competition access success interestingness society fascistaesthetics bodies maximization optimization hyperoptimization credibility individualism dehumanization mutilation taboos fame andrewtate nickfuentes clipfarming sneako myrongaines tristantate malcontents jamiecohen jestermaxxing farright rightwing radicalization nihilism politics audience desperation extraction sadomasochism attentioneconomy self-harm men whitesupremacy normality radicalism subjugation https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:23dcb76ab2b3/ The only taboo left is copyright infringement 2026-02-22T01:31:20+00:00 https://www.garbageday.email/p/the-only-taboo-left-is-copyright-infringement robertogrecoplatforms media copyright tiktok ryanbroderick 2026 openai gregbrockman taste culture clavicular nickfuentes hasanpiker discord streaming stephencolbert cbs censorship jamestalarico youtube tv television veradrew 2022 markfischbach mattjohnson attention andrewtate genz truth socialmedia life living bradenpeters https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:3f825303afaf/ Enthralling Little Minds With Nature - by Hadden Turner 2026-02-21T07:27:15+00:00 https://overthefield.substack.com/p/enthralling-little-minds-with-nature robertogreco 2026 children nature observation birds gifts attention education curiosity haddenturner naturalhistory parenting teaching howweteach modeling https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:3deb9f430a2f/ What we think is a decline in literacy is a design problem | Aeon Essays 2026-02-20T05:14:04+00:00 https://aeon.co/essays/what-we-think-is-a-decline-in-literacy-is-a-design-problem robertogreco reading howweread attention screetime books novels carloiacono narrative literacy children tiktok advertising jamesmarriott society information form cognition gloriamark design notifications platforms socialmedia psychology schooling anxiety jwgoethe johannpeterfrank arthurschopenhauer thomasmore socrates memory comprehension marypreston walterong plato writing howwewrite text amyorben radio thinking howwethink morality technology change charlesdickens johnstuartmill charlesdarwin documentaries video davidrose disabilities disability instruction adaptation libraries oraltradition knowledge dialogue concentration immanuelkant kant behavior culture sensemaking darwin 2026 makingsense https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:fa8c508ac0ba/ Michael Pollan Says Humanity Is About to Undergo a Revolutionary Change - The New York Times 2026-02-16T06:51:25+00:00 https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/07/magazine/michael-pollan-interview.html robertogrecomichaelpollan consciousness 2026 buddhism ai internet artificialintelligence humanity change turingtest ego reality philosophy marksolms antoniodamasio feelings senses friction nature human humans humanism humanness siliconvalley animals multispecies morethanhuman awareness electromagnetism panpsychism evolution roshijoanhalifax body bodies davidchalmers thomasnagel bats attention intelligence davidmarchese religion spirituality expeience self identity erikagagnon psychadelics risk soul souls illusion matthieuricard presence psyche https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:f4f031eea09c/ Stop Meeting Students Where They Are - The Atlantic 2026-02-16T03:39:00+00:00 https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/02/youth-reading-books-professors/685825/ robertogreco walthunter 2026 pedagogy education highereducation highered colleges universities howweread reading attention howwteach teaching academia tonimorrison songofsolomon ai art chatgpt virginiawoolf writing howwewrite ulkrajanand harrietjacobs williamfaulkner willacather jonathanedwards literature experience wegsebald emilydickinson johnkeats tolstoy victorhugo michaelcrichton charlesswann georgesaunders books thoreau distraction confusion endurance stamina understanding waltwhitman humanities wallacestevens adriennerich adamkirsch vice vices mobydick moby-dick hermanmelville https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:bcede8e5666a/