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recent bookmarks from robertogrecoDesire, Dopamine, and the Internet - by L. M. Sacasas2024-03-24T02:39:43+00:00
https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/desire-dopamine-and-the-internet
robertogrecolmsacasas 2024 desire dopamine addiction socialmedia tedgioia technology internet web online distraction history responsibility culture society resistance solitude attention discipline self-discipline engagement restraint vulnerability risk risktaking silence smartphones digital media environment digitalmedia personhood humans compulsion annalembke hannarharendt loneliness blaisepascal alanjacobs dualism dualities duality relationships abundance modernity hartmutrosa superabundance well-being conviviality philiprieff anti-culture deepculture reality scarcity informationhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:cacb781c0ef0/The Art of Living - by L. M. Sacasas2024-03-01T20:55:02+00:00
https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/the-art-of-living
robertogrecolmsacasas 2024 wendellberry hartmutrosa slow small artleisure leisurearts everyday life living bodies attention embodiment society modernism consumerism consumption commodification capitalism practice limits self-improvement lifehacks self-optimization quantifiedself technique happiness limitations creativity art economics experience information control uncontrollability hereandnow presence place timehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:3d31f8bfe200/Director's Class: Ivan Illich, Week One2024-02-26T02:02:31+00:00
https://christianstudycenter.substack.com/p/directors-class-ivan-illich-week
robertogreco2021 ivanillich lmsacasas conviviality perception technology medicine christianity modernity limitstomedicine health healthcare deschooling deschoolingsociety societyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:32063022a246/To See the World Whole - by Christian Study Center2024-02-26T02:00:27+00:00
https://christianstudycenter.substack.com/p/to-see-the-world-whole
robertogreco2024 lmsacasas wholeness objectivity abstraction academia highered highereducation quantification science scientism technology beholding silence agesegregation work life howwelive departmentalization separation philosophy compartmentalization behaviorism technosolutionism ai artificialintelligence machinelearning cyborgs power control hartmutrosa wendellberry cslewis romanoguardini love knowledge progress canon modernity isaacnewton physics specialization faith reason enlightenment mind body humanism facts value values disintegration society culture nature alienation scale humanscale slow small presence distraction attention depression isolation suicide peace wonder maxpicard jrrtolkein livinghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:5bfaad48bb3a/Secularization Comes for the Religion of Technology: Or, how to make sense of techno-optimist manifestos, the Open Ai/Altman affair, EA/e-acc movements, and the general sense of cultural stagnation2024-02-24T01:24:21+00:00
https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/secularization-comes-for-the-religion
robertogrecolmsacasas 2024 technooptimism secularism religion culture ideology secularization manifestos charlestaylor technology technosolutionism christianity progress davidnoble scientificrevolution science davidnye goldengatebridge atomicbomb hooverdam cities perrymiller railroads history utopia leomarx historyoftechnology cyrusmccormick charlesgoodyear samuelcolt eliashowe christianschussele samuelmorse johngast manifestdestiny us crystalpalace west uk frederickcook henryadams williammckinley robertrydell worldsfairs innovation providence corporations civilreligion marcandreessen counterreformation openai samaltman ai artificialintelligence francisbacon effectiveaccelerationism e-acc accelerationism effectivealtruism 2023 siliconvalley californianideology technodeterminism railways trains railhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:d00cdd41366b/Vision Con - by L. M. Sacasas - The Convivial Society2024-02-10T20:31:16+00:00
https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/vision-con
robertogrecolmsacasas jameshunter wendellberry cslewis janebennett isanbogost visionpro apple ar vr augmentedreality virtualreality senses sensory allthesenses slow presence bodies friendship community virtualm irismurdoch fantasy freedom liberation technology love gaze reality sharedexperience perception deprivation isolation alienation enchantment wonder humanism everyday attention computers computing 2024 machines comportment noticing seeing sensing receptivity waysofbeing patience care caring timehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:de05c283dc64/"The Pathologies of the Attention Economy" (Audio), Links, Miscellany2023-10-26T23:55:38+00:00
https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/the-pathologies-of-the-attention-194#details
robertogrecolmsacasas philippemesly jackiebrown 2022 attention attentioneconomy ivanillichhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:fc5310037025/Assuming Responsibility for Time - by L. M. Sacasas2023-10-25T20:58:33+00:00
https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/assuming-responsibility-for-time
robertogreco“Let them leave language to their lonely betters
Who count some days and long for certain letters;
We, too, make noises when we laugh or weep:
Words are for those with promises to keep.”
The implication of the last line is that the making of promises is at least one way in which we might assume responsibility for time.
For her part, Arendt understood that the capacity to promise and to forgive arise, as she wrote,
“directly out of the will to live together with others in5 the mode of acting and speaking. If without action and speech, without the articulation of natality, we would be doomed to swing forever in the ever-recurring cycle of becoming, then without the faculty to undo what we have done and to control at least partially the processes they have let loose, we would be the victims of an automatic necessity bearing all the marks of the inexorable laws which … were supposed to constitute the outstanding characteristic of the natural process.”
In short, she understood that if we were to accept in the present the challenge of acting and speaking what is new into the world, then we must also find a way to relate constructively to the past and to the future, thus her insistence on the necessity of forgiveness and promise.
“The possible redemption from the predicament of irreversibility—of being unable to undo what one has done—” Arendt wrote, “is the faculty of forgiving.”
“The remedy for unpredictability,” she continued, “for the chaotic uncertainty of the future, is contained in the faculty to make and keep promises.”
Notably, she does not indicate that the remedy for the unpredictability of the future is to achieve the capacity to predict it. Unlike prediction, a promise is a way of assuming responsibility. It does so chiefly by drawing the agent directly into the fray. The one who predicts invariably speaks in the language of abstraction—such and such will happen—and evades responsibility for their role in the unfolding of time. The one who promises cannot help but do so by bringing herself to the center of the action. It is always an “I” that promises, and in this way assumes responsibility for what is to come.
As the contemporary German philosopher Vanessa Lemm has put it, “For Arendt, the faculty of promise is essentially a faculty of memory that has the power to bring a body of people back to their beginning, that is, back to the moment when they agreed on an aim and a purpose. In this sense, the promise is a reminder that keeps on bonding the group together and linking the individual back to a past from which it began and from which it can begin again.”
“The promise,” Lemm continued, “exercises control over the future by means of drawing the future ever further into the past. In so doing, the promise reverses the flow of time. Thus, instead of being born into an uncertain future, one is born into a secured past.”
[I go on to talk about how promise relates to hope, but I’ll cut this off here. I hope this at least helps stimulate our thinking about how we relate to the future, especially now that so much may hinge on how we face what is to come.]"]]>ivanillich time conviviality lmsacasas 2020 vanessalemm wendellberry hannaharendt whauden epcotcenter crystalpalace worldsfairs history space spacecolonization progress michaelgillespie modernity johngast prediction future promise mortality natality hope unpredicitiblity forgiving responsibility memoryhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:92601b8b605c/Render Unto the Machine - by L. M. Sacasas2023-07-09T06:54:13+00:00
https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/render-unto-the-machine
robertogrecolmsacasas 2023 ivanillich ai artificialintelligence care caring ethanmollick work labor humanity humanism technology productivity efficiency speed scale slow small life living values purpose involvement obsolescence economics policy politics bureaucracy automation schooling unschooling deschooling medicine transportation institutions consumerismhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:04810201e7c6/Children and Technology - by L. M. Sacasas2023-06-15T21:57:22+00:00
https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/children-and-technology
robertogrecolmsacasas education children 2020 childhood technology wonder neilpostman consumption consumerism conviviality ivanillich albertborgmann storytelling stories poetry teaching howweteach parenting resistance mediation experimentation limits limitations constraintshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:83607cbbf7c0/Care, Not Control - by L. M. Sacasas2023-06-15T21:54:14+00:00
https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/care-not-control
robertogrecolmsacasas parents parenting children surveillance care control alanjacobs technology audreywatters presence responsibility anxiety safety attention jacquesellul alisongopnick precarity panopticon involvement obligation obligations canon measurement monitoring recording distance closeness proximity knowing slow small scale neglect intentionality accountability families panopticism state morality values gaze schools schooling schooliness colleges universities edtech training compassion self-discipline software analytics quantification seeinglikeastate mutualaid markets capitalism neoliberalism wisdom stress pressure goals expectations isolation standardization onebestway intelligence race gender gendering racism racialization command individuals bigdata seeing proctoring learning howwelearn teaching howweteach learninganalytics trust trusting independence autonomy risks predictability chrisgilliard davidgolumbia lenoreskenazy robhorning kith kin kinship attending attendancehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:a3ae0da67da6/Eye to Eye - by L. M. Sacasas - The Convivial Society2023-06-08T01:37:01+00:00
https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/eye-to-eye
robertogrecolmsacasas 2023 technology apple joelbernstein ivanillich carlmitcham jerrybrown visionpro vr ar hayaomiyazaki conviviality gaze attention friendship toolsforconviviality human humanism screenshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:1e206bb931d4/The One Best Way Is a Trap - by L. M. Sacasas2023-05-27T22:19:25+00:00
https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/the-one-best-way
robertogreco2023 jacquesellul lmsacasas social technology human humanism standardization humanity efficiency optimization productivity homogeneity homogenizingeffects mentalhealth capitalism neoliberalism unschooling deschooling philchristman faith luddism fate gamification psychology freedom schooling schooliness progress bestpractices anxiety fear health pressure frustration self-loathing failure achievement technique quantification medicalization pharmaceuticals humans onebestwayhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:34f23f8978d9/Waste Your Time, Your Life May Depend On It2023-05-16T23:45:26+00:00
https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/waste-your-time-your-life-may-depend
robertogrecolmsacasas time productivity slow small resistance 2023 albertborgmann timwu technology happiness attention care maintenance work labor systems social enjoyment senses allthesenses conviviality convenience efficiency effort commodities hearth kinship context bodies cyborgs principles friction relativity risk trouble humans human humanism availability engagement socialengagement ubiquity augmentation joy lewismumford hartmutrosa profit capitalism fidelity evanselinger ivanillich drudgery creativity ideleness optimization tasks life living sustainabilityhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:9fd1268dace6/Apocalyptic AI - by L. M. Sacasas - The Convivial Society2023-04-08T03:22:40+00:00
https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/apocalyptic-ai
robertogrecolmsacasas modernism modernity 2023 luddism ai artificialintelligence humans humanism markets capitalism leevinsel technology katecrawford criticism ezraklein robertoppenheimer davidnoble technosolutionism faith religion progress efficiency enlightenment science scientism utopia progressivism christianity danielcrevier stefanhelmreich melvynhill hannaharendt wendellberry ecosystems environment copmuters copmuting gkchesterson rationalism rationality economics power energy humancondition humanity hansjonas howwewrite howwethink form marvinminsky dannyhillis pamelamccorduck hansmoravec rudyrucker secularism politics labor culture capitalhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:f7cf289f7be9/Whose Time? Which Temporality? - by L. M. Sacasas2023-03-17T02:16:03+00:00
https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/whose-time-which-temporality
robertogreco2023 lmsacasas time temporality lewismumford jacquesellul light dark circadianrhythms sleep anxiety capitalism clocks measurement sarahsharma techne technology conviviality human humans multispecies morethanhuman erazimkohák alejandrosánchez stochastic predictability consistency regularity rhythms industrialization culture seasons patterns language ethics imagination economics raybradbury fahrenheit451 transitions abruptness therapy pharmacology entertainmenthttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:2e519b93afe6/From Common Sense to Bespoke Realities - by L. M. Sacasas2022-07-14T16:04:16+00:00
https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/from-common-sense-to-bespoke-realities
robertogrecolmsacasas hannaharendt 2022 polarization modernity socialmedia online internet marshallmcluhan reneediresta reality existence society canon participation democracy local place bodies embodiment digital splintering massmedia tv television radio time knowledge information experts institutions senses allthesenses perception whauden commonality publicsphere media perspective difference privatelives relationships commonsense community experience yi-futuan past present future news communication immediacy everyday intentionalityhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:af42aa4e87f7/The Face Stares Back - by L. M. Sacasas2022-04-05T06:50:15+00:00
https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/the-face-stares-back?s=r
robertogrecolmsacasas attention automation machines machinelearning technology assessment evaluation deference 2022 objectification personhood integrity judgement surveillancehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:255d64cfd11e/Understanding McLuhan: A Conversation with Andrew McLuhan2022-01-07T20:46:39+00:00
https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/understanding-mcluhan-a-conversation
robertogrecolmsacasas 2022 ericmcluhan andrewmcluhan walterong neilpostman howweread howwethink howwewrite media medialiteracy mediastudies screentime children parenting literacy education academia scholarship highered highereducation language deschooling unschooling technology communication religion belief translation humans humanism theory senses allthesenses perception shannonweaver libraries archives catholicism bible dialog discovery conversation rhetoric tools internet web online collaboration footnotes annotation posttheory madiaecology jamesjoyce intertextual intertextuality references enddnotes marginalia normanmailer punk punkrock identity curiosity legacy companionship writing relationsips reading edwincarpenter buckminsterfuller whauden stephaniemcluhan davidstaines poetry form wterrencegordon douglascoupland grayareafoundation synthesis assignments pedagogy marshallmcluhan specialists generalists haroldinni thomasaquinas bodylanguage inevitability techdeterminism techvoluntarism francisbacon responsibility jhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:0619679f2507/Living In Expectation of the Unexpected Gift2022-01-03T21:11:32+00:00
https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/living-in-expectation-of-the-unexpected
robertogrecoFor some people at least, the idea seems to be that when we are freed from these mundane and tedious activities, we will be free to finally tap the real potential of our humanity. It’s as if there were some abstract plane of human existence that no one had yet achieved because we were fettered by our need to be directly engaged with the material world. I suppose that makes this a kind of gnostic fantasy. When we no longer have to tend to the world, we can focus on … what exactly?
It seems rarely to occur to us, or rather we are encouraged to forget that much of the joy and satisfaction we might find in this world may stem from our purposeful involvement in the sorts of tasks we are told to see as mundane, trivial, and inconvenient.
I’ve been noting of late that much of the “smart” infrastructure that is increasingly colonizing the home under the guise of convenience and automation tends to aim at something altogether banal: automated, which is to say thoughtless, rote consumption. This is evident, for example, in the app that inspired Gilliard’s comments.
From one perspective we might say that modern society in its consumerist mode offered the proliferation of choices and options as its summum bonum, its ultimate good. That is until the proliferation of choices and options became counterproductive, overwhelming would-be consumers with choices, inducing decision paralysis, and yielding diminishing returns. Now freedom as choice gives way to freedom from choice, but with no clearer sense of what freedom is for.
I know it is passé or worse in certain circles to cite the late David Foster Wallace, perhaps especially his Kenyon College address, but indulge me in recalling these lines:
And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving…. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.
Make what you will of Wallace and his art, this seems to me right and wise.
In the Prologue to The Human Condition, with the promise that automation would empty the factories, Hannah Arendt worried that “it is a society of laborers which is about to be liberated from the fetters of labor, and this society does no longer know of those other higher and more meaninfgul activities for the sake of which this freedom would deserve to be won.” “What we are confronted with,” she added, “is the prospect of a society of laborers without labor, that is, without the only activity left to them. Surely, nothing could be worse.”
I’m tempted to say of the promise of a future world of automated consumption that we are confronted with the prospect of a society of consumers without consumption. Surely, nothing could be worse.
While Arendt’s mid-twentieth century fears about automation have not yet played out as she, and many others at the time, feared, her claim that modern society no longer knows of the higher activities for the sake of which freedom deserved to be won is still worth pondering.
If we grant that Arendt is on to something, I’d suggest that it is precisely in the absence of such activities or goods that technique takes on its compulsive, colonizing nature. Optimization becomes an end in itself. I may not know where I am going or why, but I can take some comfort in knowing that I can travel faster and more efficiently. Frenetic activity or compulsive distraction substitute for a clear sense of purpose and commitment. Substantive goals may elude me, but I can take refuge in tracking and optimizing an increasing range of activities and bodily functions.
I’m writing this installment with the themes of the last—exhaustion, burnout, tiredness, rest—still in mind. There are so many reasons why any of us might feel exhausted and depleted, but just now I find myself wondering how much of it is the result of aimless labors that serve only the operations of a techno-economic system designed to offer us everything but satisfaction, schooling us only in various forms of envy, addiction, and dependence.
I recently revisited Lewis Mumford’s 1951 lectures collected in Art and Technics, and I happened upon the following paragraph:
My basic assumption is that our life has increasingly split up into unrelated compartments, whose only form of order and interrelationship comes through fitting into the automatic organizations and mechanisms that in fact govern our daily existence. We have lost the essential capacity of self-governing persons—the freedom to make decisions, to say Yes or No in terms of our own purposes—so that, though we have vastly augmented our powers, through the high development of technics, we have not developed the capacity to control those powers in any proportionate degree. As a result, our very remedies are only further symptoms of the disease itself.
The freedom to say Yes or No in terms of our own purposes—it would seem that the first step in the direction is to clarify for ourselves what exactly our own purpose are or should be. To do this, it seems to me that we need to play the role of Socrates to ourselves, questioning our motives and desires, asking ourselves why we do what we do, seeking to radically, that is to the roots, weed out the various ways we’ve accepted uncritically the default settings of our techno-economic order.
I’m not inclined to give advice, particularly since so much of it takes the shape of technique, glibly packaged. I’ve been reading Tolkien again, and recently read that “elves seldom give unguarded advice, for advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise, and all courses may run ill.” This seems right. But if I may venture the risk, let me at least allow you to overhear some of what I am saying to myself.
Do not mistake planning for purpose, or activity for action.
Attend to the ordinary and the mundane with care and with gratitude.
Consider that rest is not a time set aside, but a spirit brought to every time.
Refuse the ever-present temptation to control and manage the thing we call life for their is no surer way to miss it.
Finally, it will surprise no one if I bring this installment, and thus the year of writing, to a close by recalling Ivan Illich, or at least a striking summary of Illich’s thought written by his friend and biographer David Cayley. In Cayley’s words, Illich believed that one of the great temptations we must resist was the temptation “to bring what must begin and end as surprise under administration.”
So, I will do my best to enter the new year in a spirit of expectation, refusing the burden of administering and controlling what, if it is to be experienced at all, can only be experienced in its fullness as a surprise, an unexpected gift.
May the new year find you all healthy and well."]]>lmsacasas 2021 ivanillich notion sophiehaigney tools technology jacquesellul canon robinberjon chrisgilliard convenience efficiency automation humanity humanism life living mundane everyday slow small howweread howwewrite thinking howwethink reading writing davidfosterwallace hannaharendt society unschooling deschooling labor work freedom liberation purpose consumerism capitalism consumption optimization activity distraction schooling lewismumford jrrtolkein temptation control time administration technocracy refusal resistance luddism luddites davidcayley management lists economics behavior socrates materialism thewhy why culturehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:501c5a8231de/You Can't Optimize For Rest - by L. M. Sacasas2021-12-02T00:24:51+00:00
https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/you-cant-optimize-for-rest
robertogrecolmsacasas 2021 slow small rest annehelenpetersen taylorism well-being jacquesellul patrickleighfermor sleep technology society unschooling symptoms efficiency productivity robots jonathanmalesic exhaustion precarity work labor mentalhealth mindfulness religion belief systemsthinking tiredness capitalism jonathancrary ivanillich process technique lists gtd optimization certainties purpose meaning valueshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:5009286de1ae/The Human-Built World Is Not Built For Humans - by L. M. Sacasas - The Convivial Society2021-11-12T08:23:09+00:00
https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/the-human-built-world-is-not-built
robertogrecoI know a Mexican village through which not more than a dozen cars drive each day. A Mexican was playing dominoes on the new hard-surface road in front of his house — where he had probably played and sat since his youth. A car sped through and killed him. The tourist who reported the event to me was deeply upset, and yet he said: “The man had it coming to him.”
The assumption in the tourist’s statement is clear and brutal: it is the responsibility of humans to adapt to their technical milieu. For the sake of a development he likely neither needed or desired, this man’s environment was transformed so as to render it hostile to him, but it is somehow his fault for failing to promptly adapt himself to the new reality. As Illich notes, there’s not even an air of the tragic in the tourist’s claim. One can imagine some not-too-distant future when a cyclist is struck and killed by an autonomous vehicle and an observer declares, “Well, she wasn’t even wearing her beacon, so she had it coming to her.”
As I thought about Illich’s anecdote, my own parental anxiety to convey to my children the importance of minding the cars around them at all times appeared in a new light. When one remembers that it has not always been necessary to carefully train a child, with ritualistic precision, just so that they can walk about without fear of mortal injury, then the whole thing takes on a rather absurd and malicious character.
Once you see this dynamic in one set of circumstances, you start to see it again and again. In innumerable ways we bend ourselves to fit the pattern of a techno-economic order that exists for its own sake and not for ours. As another example, consider Illich’s observations in 2000 about what is required of those who would pursue a successful career:
Modern citizens who want to pursue a successful career face a situation that is without clear boundaries or limits, and this prevents them from recognizing an alternative to their self-directed ‘lifelong learning and decision-making.’ Their comings and goings, their progress and well-being, their flourishing and ruination depend on their adaptation to diverse systems. In particular, they have to learn to function and compete in symbiosis with current economic conditions. A tolerant acceptance of these conditions is no longer enough. One has to learn to identify with them. In the mills of the new economy, where positioning is all, the grit is supposed to grind itself so fine that it becomes grease for the gears.
Or consider Shannon Mattern’s observation that “our phones seem to be contrived for circadian contradiction.” A reminder that our own technologically induced patterns of restlessness can be profoundly unhealthy. Our phones, after all, function as an interface between us and a vast network of communication and commerce: in practice, do they principally serve our interests or those of the network?
As the ways that we are schooled for life in a system that in significant ways runs counter to our own interests and well-being become more apparent, then Illich’s more radical claims begin to sound plausible if not altogether sensible.
In Tools for Conviviality, for example, we encounter this stark summation of Illich’s view of industrial society:
Increasing manipulation of man becomes necessary to overcome the resistance of his vital equilibrium to the dynamic of growing industries; it takes the form of educational, medical, and administrative therapies. Education turns out competitive consumers; medicine keeps them alive in the engineered environment they have come to require; bureaucracy reflects the necessity of exercising social control over people to do meaningless work. The parallel increase in the cost of the defense of new levels of privilege through military, police, and insurance measures reflects the fact that in a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy.
Maybe this comes off as rather extreme. After all, Illich is arguing that the modern world, circa 1974 at least, is fundamentally hostile to human well-being and that some of its most vaunted institutions were basically coping and conditioning mechanisms.
Jacques Ellul, with passing reference to learning how to navigate street traffic, argues similarly:
“At the same time, one should not forget the fact that human beings are themselves already modified by the technical phenomenon […] Their whole education is oriented toward adaptation to the conditions of technique (learning how to cross streets at traffic lights) and their instruction is destined to prepare them for entrance into some technical employment. Human beings are psychologically modified by consumption, by technical work, by news, by television, by leisure activities (currently, the proliferation of computer games), etc., all of which are techniques. In other words, it must not be forgotten that it is this very humanity which has been pre-adapted to and modified by technique that is supposed to master and reorient technique. It is obvious that this will not be able to be done with any independence.”
But this is why I read writers like Illich and Ellul, and why I encourage others to do the same: for the sake of a thoroughgoing critique that will make me think more deeply, and uncomfortably, about our situation and my own acquiescence and complicity. I find that my vision tends to be too narrowly focused on surface-level symptoms. And it is too easy to take refuge in the thought that a few tweaks here and a little regulation there will make all things well, or at least significantly better. Meanwhile, nothing quite changes. Then along comes someone like Illich or Ellul claiming that maybe the whole modern techno-social order, whatever its relative merits, is broken and malignant. That the roots of our problems run much deeper than we had assumed. That we are, in truth, doing it all wrong and should revisit some of our most fundamental assumptions. You may not, in the end, agree with their conclusions, but seriously considering their perspectives should at least help us to ask better, more fundamental questions about the human-built world, or, perhaps more importantly, about the beliefs, values, and interests that shape it.
What Illich and Ellul would have us consider is that the human-built world is not, in fact, built for humans. And, of course, this is to say nothing of what the human-built world has meant for the non-human world. What’s more, it may be paradoxically the case that the human-built world will prove finally inhospitable to human beings precisely to the degree that it was built for humans without regard for humanity’s continuity with the other animals and the world we inhabit together.”]]>lmsacasas ivalillich shannonmattern jacquesellul consumerism consumption capitalism regulation technology human humans humanism posthumanism morethanhuman multispecies 2021 deschooling unschooling technosolutionism nature conviviality education slow small modernism industrialization cars autonomousvehicles smartphones sleep well-being work labor bullshitjobs life living qualityoflife society restlessness health leisurehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:8a9cfc0b664a/Notes From the Metaverse - by L. M. Sacasas - The Convivial Society2021-09-05T21:16:59+00:00
https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/notes-from-the-metaverse
robertogrecoivanillich place commerce commons boundaries 2021 internet metaverse facebook abrahamheschel sabbath attention markzuckerberg drewaustin marcandreessen reality senses multisensory children labor work detachment experience technology modernism privilege media mediation advertising billboards wendellberry small slow bodies allthesenses digital matthewcrawford annehelenpeteresen hannaharendt marshallmcluhan praxis friendship secondaryorality walterong johnbunyan robhorning wendyliu parents parenting workfromhome homes howwelive howwewrite howweread oraltradition physical tracking web online silence quiet lmsacasashttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:9091df3ef053/What Do Human Beings Need?: Rethinking Technology and the Good Society - by L. M. Sacasas - The Convivial Society2021-07-18T19:36:33+00:00
https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/what-do-human-beings-need-rethinking
robertogreco“The conditions for survival are necessary but not sufficient to ensure justice; people can survive in prison. The conditions for the just distribution of industrial outputs are necessary, but not sufficient to promote convivial production. People can be equally enslaved by their tools … A postindustrial society must and can be so constructed that no one person’s ability to express him- or herself in work will require as a condition the enforced labor or the enforced learning or the enforced consumption of another.”
There’s a three-tiered framework here that will have a Janus function at this juncture in the essay. Illich argues that what he calls a convivial society—which we can think of simply as a distinctly Illichian way of speaking about a good society—involves not only equal access to commodities, however broadly we conceive of them, but something more. This “something more,” as we see in the paragraph just quoted, Illich ties very close to work, work that is free, creative, and meaningful. In this regard, Illich recalls Simone Weil, who, though approaching the matter from her own deeply religious perspective, believed that “all the problems of technology and economy should be formulated functionally by conceiving of the best possible condition for the worker.”
It would be worth exploring how Weil and Illich each conceive of work as a condition of human flourishing (that work may already have been done, if so I’m presently unaware of it), but it enough for my purposes here to note that they both understand that a good society would furnish its citizens with more than just a steady stream of endless diversions.”
…
“Perhaps another more contemporary example can help clarify Borgmann’s distinctions as I understand them. We can imagine a society, without a great deal of effort, in which the elderly routinely find themselves isolated, lonely, and lacking a sense of purpose—in a word, uprooted in Weil’s sense. This society has developed robots and digital devices to care for the elderly and to keep them company. In a formally just society, all elderly citizens have the right to procure these consumer goods. In a substantively just society, all elderly citizens can afford to procure these goods or else they are supplied by the state.”
…
“I’ve assembled the work of these three writers because it seems to me that they are all circling around a similar set of concerns about human needs, work, technology, justice, and the good life. Their reflections make clear that these are interlocking realities, which must be considered together. They direct our attention to a more fundamental level of analysis, which we do well to take up. And they all saw the dangers of ordering society around technologically automated production and consumption and of uprooting human beings to enhance both.
I’ve argued before in this newsletter and elsewhere that one of the salient features of digital culture is the rapid collapse of the ideals of neutrality and disinterested objectivity that have been central to the legitimacy of modern liberal institutions. While this collapse will continue to be attended by varying degrees of turmoil and conflict, it may also provide us with an opportunity to examine more carefully some of the assumptions that have informed the way we think about the nature of a good life. And I would suggest that we do well to start, as Simone Weil did, with a consideration of the full range of human needs, clarified by Ivan Illich’s searching critique of the needs engendered in us by industrial (and now digital) institutions, and oriented toward a more robust vision of a good society as Albert Borgmann urged us to imagine.”
]]>ivanillich simoneweil lmsacasas 2020 conviviality needs humanism life living commoditization health healthcare institutions schools schooling unschooling deschooling humans hannaharendt loneliness alienation superfluousness rootedness uprootedness roots neediness economics society amazon amazonring safety technology production consumerism consumption capitalism anarchism convivialsociety albertborgmann slow small interdependence mutualaid specialization professionalization democracy liberalism modernity inequality work justice neutrality objectivity scottremer davidguaspari zacharyloeb matttierney ryancalo daniellcitron automation robhorning learning teaching howwelearn howweteach schoolinesshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:fe259a9b4af9/Ill With Want - by L. M. Sacasas - The Convivial Society2021-07-18T01:26:26+00:00
https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/ill-with-want
robertogrecolmsacasas ivanillich slow small conviviality conservatism professionalization specialization consumption contentment economics society health education schools schooling shopping annehelenpetersen austerity consumerism capitalism transportation deskilling interdependence professionals vernacular environment wellbeing culture certainty need values institutionalization institutions climatechange degradation automation ai commodities materiality anxiety desperation loneliness 1970s bureaucracy realworld utopia thomasaquinas friendship kinship play playfulness grace joy joyfulness history past unschooling deschooling learning teaching howwelearn howweteach schoolinesshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:a04965850393/The Analog City and the Digital City — The New Atlantis2020-11-08T23:13:43+00:00
https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-analog-city-and-the-digital-city
robertogrecoThe machine-like behavior of people chained to electronics constitutes a degradation of their well-being and of their dignity which, for most people in the long run, becomes intolerable. Observations of the sickening effect of programmed environments show that people in them become indolent, impotent, narcissistic and apolitical. The political process breaks down, because people cease to be able to govern themselves; they demand to be managed.
We have focused on how digital media transforms the subjective experience of individuals. The political corollary is that it enables and empowers regimes of algorithmic governance, predictive analytics, and social credit. The profound erosion of trust in the Digital City leaves a vacuum, and we look to our tools to fill it. We seem set upon interlocking trajectories: of ever greater swaths of the human experience being computationally managed, and of intractable human subjects increasingly breaking down or revolting against these conditions.
From another vantage point, however, we might see this as a hopeful moment, full of promise and opportunity. Another path also seems possible. Freed from certain unsustainable illusions about the nature of the self and the world, we may now be called back to reckon with reality in a new, more chastened and more responsible manner. It is possible that the Promethean aspirations that characterized the modern self and modern society may now yield to a more sober assessment of the limits within which genuine human flourishing might occur. It is possible, too, that we may learn once again the necessity of virtues, public and private — that we will no longer, as T. S. Eliot put it, be “dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.”"]]>lmsacasas digital newmedia writing howwewrite reading 2020 howweread secondaryorality walterong politics discourse audience abundance scarcity news print text communication neilpostman digitalcity analogcity truth speech digitalmedia socialmedia saintaugustine change liminality factchecking publishing jaydavidbolter reformation scientificrevolution history internet web online smartphones publiclife cities urban urbanism community howwethink thinking nicholascarr 2008 web2.0 facebook twitter algorithms moderation commenting tv television video dialogue criticalthinking affordances technology citizenship censorship values char charlestaylor bufferedself disenchantment meaning meaningmaking magic power objects heresy security purity bots data bigdata automation knowledge systems systemsthinking vulnerability time place now identity sharedtime sharedspace simultaneity realtime telegraph radio presence social belonging ivanillich memory memories language literacy orality oraltradition fables institutions bureaucrahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:9c6b35065c0c/The Convivial Society, No. 5: Action2018-06-23T17:36:37+00:00
https://tinyletter.com/lmsacasas/letters/the-convivial-society-no-5-action
robertogrecoconviviality lmsacasas 2018 tools toolsforconvivilaity zoominginandout morality purpose reality understanding violence digital socialmedia kierkegaard apathy hubertdreyfus hannharendt action intgrity self-consciousness michaelsacasashttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:9c5d098aeee3/Social Media and Loneliness | L.M. Sacasas2018-05-07T05:38:27+00:00
https://thefrailestthing.com/2018/05/03/social-media-and-loneliness/
robertogrecoFreedom so often means that one isn’t needed anywhere. Here you are an individual, you have a background of your own, you would be missed. But off there in the cities there are thousands of rolling stones like me. We are all alike; we have no ties, we know nobody, we own nothing. When one of us dies, they scarcely know where to bury him. Our landlady and the delicatessen man are our mourners, and we leave nothing behind us but a frock-coat and a fiddle, or an easel, or a typewriter, or whatever tool we got our living by. All we have ever managed to do is to pay our rent, the exorbitant rent that one has to pay for a few square feet of space near the heart of things. We have no house, no place, no people of our own. We live in the streets, in the parks, in the theaters. We sit in restaurants and concert halls and look about at the hundreds of our own kind and shudder.
I could go on, but you get the point."
…
"I’ve never understood why we should be relieved when we read about a study which concludes that a majority of people do not experience some negative consequence of technology. What about the often sizable minority that does? Do they not matter?"
…
"Technological fixes rarely alleviate and often exasperate social disorders, especially those that involve the most deeply engrained desires of the human heart. We’re better off refusing to treat social media as a remedy for loneliness or even as a form of community. Chastened expectations may be the best way to use a tool without being used by the tool in turn."]]>lmsacasas michaelsacasas 2018 socialmedia loneliness hannaharendt technology technosolutionism willacather social cities isolation urban urbanism online internet webhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:3439ac060e65/The Convivial Society, No. 4: Community2018-05-01T04:39:50+00:00
https://tinyletter.com/lmsacasas/letters/the-convivial-society-no-4-community
robertogrecocommunities community lmsacasas 2018 facebook socialmedia online web internet conviviality ivanillich self happiness unhappiness boundedness belonging experience self-forgetfulness purpose autonomy michaelsacasas amishhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:153eeb29951d/Eight Theses Regarding Social Media | L.M. Sacasas2017-05-29T20:01:40+00:00
https://thefrailestthing.com/2017/05/23/eight-theses-regarding-social-media/
robertogrecolmsacasas socialmedia virtue forgetting attention attentioneconomy economics power silence self-denial walterong figeting addiction emotions digitalrelativity relativity space time perception experience online internet affectoverload apathy exhaustion infooverload secondaryorality oralcultures images text commodification identity performance 2017 michaelsacasashttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:9d1dbedba181/Do Artifacts Have Ethics? | The Frailest Thing2014-11-30T05:15:52+00:00
http://thefrailestthing.com/2014/11/29/do-artifacts-have-ethics/
robertogrecoartifacts objects ethics technology 2014 morality via:tealtan limits knowledge responsibility time place experience habits behavior assumptions michaelsacasas culture lmsacasashttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:066df6978631/Louis C.K. Was Almost Right About Smartphones, Loneliness, Sadness, the Meaning of Life, and Everything | The Frailest Thing2013-11-24T00:17:40+00:00
http://thefrailestthing.com/2013/09/27/louis-c-k-was-almost-right-about-smartphones-loneliness-sadness-the-meaning-of-life-and-everything/
robertogrecolouisck michaelsacasas via:tealtan 2013 culture digital internet behavior empathy commenting alanjacobs anonymity blaisepascal grahamgreene cyberbullying loneliness sadness humancondition humans human happiness web online meanness rudeness cruelty smartphones tolstoy lmsacasashttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:09bdb7280815/