Are we human beings utterly daft? Consider our history:
· With consciousness came self-awareness;
· With self-awareness came the awareness of our mortality;
· With our sense of mortality came fear;
· With fear came the impulse to self-preservation;
· With the impulse to self-preservation came the desire for control;
· With the desire for control came language;
· With language came the elaboration and reification of our abstractions at the expense of our understanding of the objects abstracted;
· With the reification of our abstractions came ideology;
· With ideology came bias;
· With bias came our sense of superiority and entitlement;
· With our sense of superiority and entitlement came exclusion, competition, and violence;
· With exclusion, competition, and violence came error and failure;
· With failure came the return to chaos and fear;
· And the beginning of another cycle.
Around and around we go! With the same assumptions! We always revert to trying to save ourselves by exerting control, developing new and better ideologies, using violence to impose the ideologies on one another, and failing yet again. It’s said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Could it be that good old Homo sapiens is batshit crazy and about to pull the plug on itself?
Do you suppose a species of aliens has come here and looked at us and asked, “What’s wrong with these dear little critters? With all their fun games and music and art? Why do they persist in their assumption that life is imperfect and that their job is to fix it? Such grandiosity! Why can’t they simply accept the outrageous gift of life, celebrate, and make the most of it?
What an opportunity for lucidity, sort of like seeing your life flash before your eyes at the end. How does the wisdom engendered inform the next iteration? Not inventing Utopias but working with the clay of humanity to paint an at least respectful, humble, loving, framework for small communities. Consider the idea of yugas. Or the work of Sir John glubb. After the fall new beginnings.
Hi again, I was part of Evolver London and remember those optimistic days where we felt we could make changes.
In the UK our democracy has been wrested with bloody hands from vested interests and landed gentry. We had several civil wars since the Norman conquest with the land divided and shared into ever smaller cabals, who still hold the land today.
Those cabals had the sense to grant concessions and a social contract (following much turmoil and pushback from the proles), understanding the tenuous position they occupied balancing uneasily on the backs of every worker that made their position possible. Simple self interest on their part but it allowed the system to maintain.
Veneer thin, for whatever reason (resource depletion, digital capabilities, arrogance), our rights and freedoms are again being dispensed with and a return to feudalism is on the cards.
I don't know what's going to happen but I know they won't succeed in what they want.
Part of the reason for the clampdown is that they have lost control of the conversation for many people and are panicking. And it's true, for many there is no going back.
Gaza, is the watershed in all of this. The veil is lifted.
There is a tremendous opportunity right now but we need to unite in the way (as you describe) the Right does. We should forget the minutiae of identitarianism and other blocking mechanisms and sketch a narrative that young people can believe in. I disagree with your appeal to the managerial class, inasmuch as they're too far gone to ever be of use whilst it still matters.
I enjoy reading your posts because they're the product of a keen intelligence and I align with some of the bright shards of truth offered from time to time amid the surfeit of self-promotion. However, I think your last post about the Network State concept that you seem to think will solve our political morass reveals a deep flaw in your thinking.
The idea of using a ”network state” to promote democracy is a contradiction in terms. The idea of a network state is inherently anti-democratic given its exclusionary nature. The most mind boggling aspect is the blind spot wherein you align yourself very closely with the same individual that you’ve been railing against for the last month, Peter Thiel and his cadre of tech-bro supporters with their penchant for libertarian separatism.
I noticed that you haven’t bothered to comment on this rather serious error which I brought up and supported with research and links in my last series of posts. This is troubling. I would urge you to at least try to resolve this contradiction to maintain credibility about the notion of using technology tools alone to address the current political crisis in the US. You also need to address how your idea feeds into strengthening the self-same technocratic system of governance being promoted by Elon Musk, DOGE, and all of the other transhumanist-oriented Big Tech oligarchs. Finally, you claimed in the last post that mass protests were not in the cards and yet we saw them take place across the nation very recently, an amazing turnout. And in this post, you fail to even mention this very important development. Why?
My sense is that we need a way to harness the 21st century tools — so brilliantly presented by Tang, in the book and everywhere — as a whole new arsenal of arrows in the gigantic quiver needed to reinvigorate our participatory democracy.
Right now, for example, our communications infrastructure for civic engagement is woefully inadequate. We call our senators and reps, and only receive (and expect to receive) a much-delayed formulaic email. Understandable, but insufficient. We have town halls, etc, and they can be energizing (or not), but they are also insufficient. Obviously, voting — which we all know is majorly under attack (I'm on the board of the Voter Protection Board, and there's a quick plug for a gathering on 4/15 I will share in a separate comment).
As one example (perhaps one degree more elevated than literally throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks), I'm working on our AG's campaign for governor, and am proposing we take a stab at using Pol.is as part of a MUCH LARGER emphasis on reclaiming communities of responsibility, engagement, and care.
As I said in my email "pitch":
this "could be truly a phenomenal online representation of his entire being/message/ethos, which is to really engage Coloradans in the conversations that matter and to LISTEN to their responses. We all know he really walks that walk, for which efforts like Deep Canvassing are highly representative.
I'll be honest—I'm still trying to figure out how it all works. But I think that his campaign, if he's interested, could really be on the cutting edge (how very Colorado) if it even begins to think about implementing tools like this. Not for nothing, I also think he could get some pretty widespread attention for doing so well beyond Colorado's borders.
For lack of time (or capacity) to really explain what Pol.is does, I turned to good ol' ChatGPT:
"Pol.is is a lightweight, AI-assisted public conversation tool that helps you listen at scale—without turning your site into a comment war zone. Unlike traditional forums or social media, Pol.is isn’t about back-and-forth debates. Participants respond to statements, not each other, by agreeing, disagreeing, or adding their own. The system groups people by shared perspectives and surfaces areas of consensus—often revealing surprising common ground. It’s low-maintenance, hard for bots to game, and designed for clarity over chaos. Used well, it shows voters you’re listening—and gives you a map of what unites them."
I guess I'm sharing in case anyone wants to try and get this going in their own localities, and needs a nudge.
To your point, it's not "network state or bust," IMO but really, again, using the new tools at hand to create something new to bolster the nearly-timeless principles of our representive democracy.
Thanks for your comment Allison. Sure experiment with new tools. Push the envelope. Look for new forms of engagement and leverage. But so far each new layer of tech communications has been like cell division separating us more and more from each other and putting in place layers and layers of digital mediation and compartmentalization. I’ve been writing about technocracy for many decades and was the first journalist to report on the advent of the public Internet. So (now) as a futurist, I think I might have some valid views of the dangers of where we’re headed.
I would also observe that many dedicated and intelligent folks have failed to see the very real and substantive connection between authoritarianism and an over-dependence on an ever-enveloping technology infrastructure. That's understandable to a large extent b/c that infrastructure is in a sense invisible. But it appears that we’re headed in the direction of China in that regard. Very concerning. I’m simply pointing out an error in DP’s thought patterns as he himself presents what he describes as an overarching solution to contribute our efforts towards. I’m not smart enough to say that I have an answer here myself just yet. Just that it’s important to call out erroneous statements and approaches for the sake of common understanding.
A recent article related to all this in Counterpunch here:
I have someone coming over shortly, but I will read your article before responding and am really grateful for the substantive dialogue! I will be thinking about your question above (about e-communications) as well—all great food for thought. I really welcome the opportunity to have my thoughts and ideas clarified thorugh pushback and challenge. The only way to know if they're sound or foolish (probably why my husband and I added "challenge" to "love and honor" in our vows. Definitely a through line in our 21 year (so far) conversation haha). :)
I read your (outstanding) article. Twice. I am in complete and total agreement, particularly with the underlying thesis that the people in charge of flying the plane are essentially apply the skills they developed while driving a Model T.
They, and we, are being played. Hard.
Have you seen this, from the American Sunlight Project? Sorry for the long link: It's called "A Pro-Russia Content Network Foreshadows the Automated Future of Info Ops."
I love your suggestion of non-partisan oversight. I have no idea how we might begin to actualize such an idea, but it's just the kind of actionable thinking we need to at least sound the alarm and shine a light on what people "don't know that they don't know."
It is more than ironic that I am coming across as (in any way) a technophile, since, as my kids will attest, I have spent two decades railing against what has been SO FUCKING OBVIOUS to me since jump: that even as we extol the virtues of the good (ie Arab Spring), the poisons are not being reckoned with properly. I mean, my first child was born in 2006. My entire parenting life has been spent, like chicken little, trying to communicate (without shaming others) that THE FACT THAT YOUR KID KNOWS HOW TO USE AN IPAD AT 2 IS NOT A TESTAMENT TO YOUR CHILD'S BRILLIANCE, BUT TO THE MOUSTACHE-TWISTING BRILLIANCE OF APP DESIGNERS. Trying to buck the trend of giving kids a phone while we're out to dinner so we can enjoy a glass of wine in peace (we didn't give it to them, against real pressure from others who shall remain nameless, and it was a huge fucking pain in the ass, and they are now phenomenal conversationalists).
And now, here we are, a bunch of 2 year olds (of all ages) who can't sit in the grocery cart and take in the colors of Lucky Charms and other crap for 10 minutes without a device in their hand.
I'm in a very ranty mood today.
But short of frying the grid and consigning us all to an apocalyptic hell of prehistoric barbarity, I can only think that putting our eggs in the basket of open-source (as a "catch all") civic tech that can pull us out of this abyss like a rope dropped into a well is the only way. That, I guess, was the point of my comment. What do you think?
Also: I have about 10 “tribes” currently and I value each of them in their own right. And I very much value the people that contribute here with thoughtful comments and responses. It was nice to get so many likes for comments I made in the Krugman post. But let me offer a thought experiment. If we haven’t been able to cook up a new “approach” here after years of discussion, what’s going to be different about some “network state” that essentially does the same thing albeit on a larger scale?
There is something to be said for the “Tower of Babel” metaphor for online communications even among very thoughtful and talented people. That said, you’ll get no argument from me about how broken the current process of trying to connect with elected representatives is now. But let’s look at that a bit. We send them emails and get auto-replies; or we send auto-petitions and get auto-replies. And more often than not here (Boston area) a call to a senator gets you voice mail these days. Is this state of overwhelm improved by or just caused by e-communications?
Is this the one co-authored by someone from Microsoft? I see that Time magazine (an establishment icon these days) highly recommends the book. In the Time article we learn that "immersive shared reality technologies futuristic cousins of virtual reality headsets like Apple’s Vision Pro and Meta’s Quest, could foster empathy at a distance and allow people to step into another’s shoes. " That tip-off is really all I need to know. It's in Microsoft's technocratic game plan driven by the usual and expected profit motive not by any concern for humanity's best future. I have heard all this before so many times. Howard Rheingold was spouting this nonsense 20 years ago. Nothing new just the same old wine in new bottles. I want us to return to rich and empathic human interaction unmediated by machines before it's too late. The alternative is a dystopian technocratic future.
Actually, I'll just respond quickly so it doesn't get lost. I do understand everything you're saying about returning to authentic human relationships before it's too late. I feel that with every fiber of my being, as I'm sure does every person on this list (since Daniel's writing is so deeply rooted in such an orientation towards humanity).
I think the sense (that I'm leaning towards) is that we are in a moment of near-peak chaos when it comes to communications (though we all know it can get exponentially worse), and that new muscles/tissues/whatever need to be created to turn this jar of confetti (much of it toxic, and much of it Russian at this point, based on that link I sent below) into something of value, something connective, something that actually FOSTERS the IRL human connection we want. If you listen to Audrey Tang or watch any of her interviews, you'll see that her work is very much rooted in harnessing these digital tools not for their own sake, not to add to the cacophony, but to enable us to once again become, as she puts it, "Good enough ancestors" who are able to care for each other, in real life, and with a very clear eye towards the future we're bringing forward with our actions.
Shoot, I forgot about this comment. WIll return to it asap and probably with more thoughtfulness than today allowed. Apologies for hte rant above, which I will nevertheless leave up there, b/c it's an honest record of my communications!
Ok so I’ve dipped into some of the Tang material but remain unconvinced. Here are some initial thoughts.: 1) China is pioneering technocracy 2) Every positive application of digital capability also creates more tech dependency which is very difficult to reverse. 3) Positive digital experiences have shown a long history of degrading to date 4) Musk and DOGE are merging AI and digital modalities with government. Tang’s efforts implicitly sanction this by saying it’s ok as along as we “do it the right way”. 5) Raw AI power in TPTB hands will likely be used to squash attempts to use it for better social purposes or challenge the conventional wisdom 6) Immersive digital experiences alienate us from our own bodies 7) The boiler room mechanics of digital technologies are always controlled by some sort of digital elite.
I truly appreciate that you've been ringing this alarm bell for so long; would love to check out your book, but I can't access the Tribune and can't find it on Bookshop (or even—ugh—amazon).
I agree with pretty much everything you say. I'm just at a complete loss as to how to actualize these insight in a society that's almost as intertwined with digital tech, at this point, as it is with food. I am not unconvinced that there are ways to design it/implement it differently, to wean ourselves off of the dopamine-driven addiction and towards the pro-social seratonin/oxytocin (? is that the right one)-driven usage [Tang's point, not mine], where we are in control and can use technological intermediaries to invite broad participation in a way that's generally impossible (or, yes, degrades) without them (ie my summary, above, of how Pol.is seems to work—no opportunity for it to become something other than what it it is, by design).
I feel like we gotta try. Society didn't listen to people like you, and here we are.
>>I feel like we gotta try. Society didn't listen to people like you, and here we are.
Well sad to say they’re still not listening. But that’s ok it’s an existential drama being played out. The spiritual teachers that I follow (and by the way the most interesting ones are women) indicate that this is a unique time for humanity to chart the future it deserves. I believe this is possible, and also believe in the power of human agency to re-enchant the world rather than simply applying somewhat pathetic band-aids to decaying and moribund systems. My two cents.
Honestly, I’m not going to spend too much time on this. Been there done that really. If you want to see some of the history, please feel free to check out my book, "Digital Mythologies", published in 1998 (link below). In terms of Tang’s ideology, so far I haven’t seen anything that I think is really new. It seems akin to Wired magazine syndrome --- apparent anti-establishment free thinkers and rebels who end up just supporting corporate establishment goals. That said, I will look into it a little more for the sake of thoroughness. Digital immersion quite simply is the polar opposite of human to human contact. The Jewish philosopher Martin Buber is a good source here. He made sharp distinctions between I-Thou relationships and depersonalized I-It relationships. I would suggest that digital relationships are the latter even though they appear to be the former, another paradox of the Grand Seduction. When the Taoist sage Lao Tzu said "A person may know the world without leaving home” he wasn’t referring to digital experience. In the next post, I’ll offer my back of envelope initial comments on Tang.
WHY?
Are we human beings utterly daft? Consider our history:
· With consciousness came self-awareness;
· With self-awareness came the awareness of our mortality;
· With our sense of mortality came fear;
· With fear came the impulse to self-preservation;
· With the impulse to self-preservation came the desire for control;
· With the desire for control came language;
· With language came the elaboration and reification of our abstractions at the expense of our understanding of the objects abstracted;
· With the reification of our abstractions came ideology;
· With ideology came bias;
· With bias came our sense of superiority and entitlement;
· With our sense of superiority and entitlement came exclusion, competition, and violence;
· With exclusion, competition, and violence came error and failure;
· With failure came the return to chaos and fear;
· And the beginning of another cycle.
Around and around we go! With the same assumptions! We always revert to trying to save ourselves by exerting control, developing new and better ideologies, using violence to impose the ideologies on one another, and failing yet again. It’s said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Could it be that good old Homo sapiens is batshit crazy and about to pull the plug on itself?
Do you suppose a species of aliens has come here and looked at us and asked, “What’s wrong with these dear little critters? With all their fun games and music and art? Why do they persist in their assumption that life is imperfect and that their job is to fix it? Such grandiosity! Why can’t they simply accept the outrageous gift of life, celebrate, and make the most of it?
What an opportunity for lucidity, sort of like seeing your life flash before your eyes at the end. How does the wisdom engendered inform the next iteration? Not inventing Utopias but working with the clay of humanity to paint an at least respectful, humble, loving, framework for small communities. Consider the idea of yugas. Or the work of Sir John glubb. After the fall new beginnings.
Hi again, I was part of Evolver London and remember those optimistic days where we felt we could make changes.
In the UK our democracy has been wrested with bloody hands from vested interests and landed gentry. We had several civil wars since the Norman conquest with the land divided and shared into ever smaller cabals, who still hold the land today.
Those cabals had the sense to grant concessions and a social contract (following much turmoil and pushback from the proles), understanding the tenuous position they occupied balancing uneasily on the backs of every worker that made their position possible. Simple self interest on their part but it allowed the system to maintain.
Veneer thin, for whatever reason (resource depletion, digital capabilities, arrogance), our rights and freedoms are again being dispensed with and a return to feudalism is on the cards.
I don't know what's going to happen but I know they won't succeed in what they want.
Part of the reason for the clampdown is that they have lost control of the conversation for many people and are panicking. And it's true, for many there is no going back.
Gaza, is the watershed in all of this. The veil is lifted.
There is a tremendous opportunity right now but we need to unite in the way (as you describe) the Right does. We should forget the minutiae of identitarianism and other blocking mechanisms and sketch a narrative that young people can believe in. I disagree with your appeal to the managerial class, inasmuch as they're too far gone to ever be of use whilst it still matters.
Keep going.
I enjoy reading your posts because they're the product of a keen intelligence and I align with some of the bright shards of truth offered from time to time amid the surfeit of self-promotion. However, I think your last post about the Network State concept that you seem to think will solve our political morass reveals a deep flaw in your thinking.
The idea of using a ”network state” to promote democracy is a contradiction in terms. The idea of a network state is inherently anti-democratic given its exclusionary nature. The most mind boggling aspect is the blind spot wherein you align yourself very closely with the same individual that you’ve been railing against for the last month, Peter Thiel and his cadre of tech-bro supporters with their penchant for libertarian separatism.
I noticed that you haven’t bothered to comment on this rather serious error which I brought up and supported with research and links in my last series of posts. This is troubling. I would urge you to at least try to resolve this contradiction to maintain credibility about the notion of using technology tools alone to address the current political crisis in the US. You also need to address how your idea feeds into strengthening the self-same technocratic system of governance being promoted by Elon Musk, DOGE, and all of the other transhumanist-oriented Big Tech oligarchs. Finally, you claimed in the last post that mass protests were not in the cards and yet we saw them take place across the nation very recently, an amazing turnout. And in this post, you fail to even mention this very important development. Why?
My sense is that we need a way to harness the 21st century tools — so brilliantly presented by Tang, in the book and everywhere — as a whole new arsenal of arrows in the gigantic quiver needed to reinvigorate our participatory democracy.
Right now, for example, our communications infrastructure for civic engagement is woefully inadequate. We call our senators and reps, and only receive (and expect to receive) a much-delayed formulaic email. Understandable, but insufficient. We have town halls, etc, and they can be energizing (or not), but they are also insufficient. Obviously, voting — which we all know is majorly under attack (I'm on the board of the Voter Protection Board, and there's a quick plug for a gathering on 4/15 I will share in a separate comment).
As one example (perhaps one degree more elevated than literally throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks), I'm working on our AG's campaign for governor, and am proposing we take a stab at using Pol.is as part of a MUCH LARGER emphasis on reclaiming communities of responsibility, engagement, and care.
As I said in my email "pitch":
this "could be truly a phenomenal online representation of his entire being/message/ethos, which is to really engage Coloradans in the conversations that matter and to LISTEN to their responses. We all know he really walks that walk, for which efforts like Deep Canvassing are highly representative.
I'll be honest—I'm still trying to figure out how it all works. But I think that his campaign, if he's interested, could really be on the cutting edge (how very Colorado) if it even begins to think about implementing tools like this. Not for nothing, I also think he could get some pretty widespread attention for doing so well beyond Colorado's borders.
For lack of time (or capacity) to really explain what Pol.is does, I turned to good ol' ChatGPT:
"Pol.is is a lightweight, AI-assisted public conversation tool that helps you listen at scale—without turning your site into a comment war zone. Unlike traditional forums or social media, Pol.is isn’t about back-and-forth debates. Participants respond to statements, not each other, by agreeing, disagreeing, or adding their own. The system groups people by shared perspectives and surfaces areas of consensus—often revealing surprising common ground. It’s low-maintenance, hard for bots to game, and designed for clarity over chaos. Used well, it shows voters you’re listening—and gives you a map of what unites them."
I guess I'm sharing in case anyone wants to try and get this going in their own localities, and needs a nudge.
To your point, it's not "network state or bust," IMO but really, again, using the new tools at hand to create something new to bolster the nearly-timeless principles of our representive democracy.
Thanks for your comment Allison. Sure experiment with new tools. Push the envelope. Look for new forms of engagement and leverage. But so far each new layer of tech communications has been like cell division separating us more and more from each other and putting in place layers and layers of digital mediation and compartmentalization. I’ve been writing about technocracy for many decades and was the first journalist to report on the advent of the public Internet. So (now) as a futurist, I think I might have some valid views of the dangers of where we’re headed.
I would also observe that many dedicated and intelligent folks have failed to see the very real and substantive connection between authoritarianism and an over-dependence on an ever-enveloping technology infrastructure. That's understandable to a large extent b/c that infrastructure is in a sense invisible. But it appears that we’re headed in the direction of China in that regard. Very concerning. I’m simply pointing out an error in DP’s thought patterns as he himself presents what he describes as an overarching solution to contribute our efforts towards. I’m not smart enough to say that I have an answer here myself just yet. Just that it’s important to call out erroneous statements and approaches for the sake of common understanding.
A recent article related to all this in Counterpunch here:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/02/17/elon-musk-is-instituting-technocracy/
I haven't forgotten about you!
I have someone coming over shortly, but I will read your article before responding and am really grateful for the substantive dialogue! I will be thinking about your question above (about e-communications) as well—all great food for thought. I really welcome the opportunity to have my thoughts and ideas clarified thorugh pushback and challenge. The only way to know if they're sound or foolish (probably why my husband and I added "challenge" to "love and honor" in our vows. Definitely a through line in our 21 year (so far) conversation haha). :)
Good one :-) My partner and I challenge each other quite a bit. Genuine and open dialogue these days seems to be a lost art. Cheers.
I read your (outstanding) article. Twice. I am in complete and total agreement, particularly with the underlying thesis that the people in charge of flying the plane are essentially apply the skills they developed while driving a Model T.
They, and we, are being played. Hard.
Have you seen this, from the American Sunlight Project? Sorry for the long link: It's called "A Pro-Russia Content Network Foreshadows the Automated Future of Info Ops."
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/6612cbdfd9a9ce56ef931004/t/67bf1de6429a912e3cbe8c83/1740578284208/PK+Report.pdf?utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=356220025&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-922YHQFCFbotAaAkG3zNqRbBM2KoAp1niFxdnm19QTuHPeNwazl_TOhI7O4PSjDeeBiD0t8MK0udfDdLg8gVXu-WDHiTtiF9muivBjV3ldPur7X6w
I love your suggestion of non-partisan oversight. I have no idea how we might begin to actualize such an idea, but it's just the kind of actionable thinking we need to at least sound the alarm and shine a light on what people "don't know that they don't know."
It is more than ironic that I am coming across as (in any way) a technophile, since, as my kids will attest, I have spent two decades railing against what has been SO FUCKING OBVIOUS to me since jump: that even as we extol the virtues of the good (ie Arab Spring), the poisons are not being reckoned with properly. I mean, my first child was born in 2006. My entire parenting life has been spent, like chicken little, trying to communicate (without shaming others) that THE FACT THAT YOUR KID KNOWS HOW TO USE AN IPAD AT 2 IS NOT A TESTAMENT TO YOUR CHILD'S BRILLIANCE, BUT TO THE MOUSTACHE-TWISTING BRILLIANCE OF APP DESIGNERS. Trying to buck the trend of giving kids a phone while we're out to dinner so we can enjoy a glass of wine in peace (we didn't give it to them, against real pressure from others who shall remain nameless, and it was a huge fucking pain in the ass, and they are now phenomenal conversationalists).
And now, here we are, a bunch of 2 year olds (of all ages) who can't sit in the grocery cart and take in the colors of Lucky Charms and other crap for 10 minutes without a device in their hand.
I'm in a very ranty mood today.
But short of frying the grid and consigning us all to an apocalyptic hell of prehistoric barbarity, I can only think that putting our eggs in the basket of open-source (as a "catch all") civic tech that can pull us out of this abyss like a rope dropped into a well is the only way. That, I guess, was the point of my comment. What do you think?
Also: I have about 10 “tribes” currently and I value each of them in their own right. And I very much value the people that contribute here with thoughtful comments and responses. It was nice to get so many likes for comments I made in the Krugman post. But let me offer a thought experiment. If we haven’t been able to cook up a new “approach” here after years of discussion, what’s going to be different about some “network state” that essentially does the same thing albeit on a larger scale?
There is something to be said for the “Tower of Babel” metaphor for online communications even among very thoughtful and talented people. That said, you’ll get no argument from me about how broken the current process of trying to connect with elected representatives is now. But let’s look at that a bit. We send them emails and get auto-replies; or we send auto-petitions and get auto-replies. And more often than not here (Boston area) a call to a senator gets you voice mail these days. Is this state of overwhelm improved by or just caused by e-communications?
Tom can you read Audrey Tang’s “Plurality”?
Is this the one co-authored by someone from Microsoft? I see that Time magazine (an establishment icon these days) highly recommends the book. In the Time article we learn that "immersive shared reality technologies futuristic cousins of virtual reality headsets like Apple’s Vision Pro and Meta’s Quest, could foster empathy at a distance and allow people to step into another’s shoes. " That tip-off is really all I need to know. It's in Microsoft's technocratic game plan driven by the usual and expected profit motive not by any concern for humanity's best future. I have heard all this before so many times. Howard Rheingold was spouting this nonsense 20 years ago. Nothing new just the same old wine in new bottles. I want us to return to rich and empathic human interaction unmediated by machines before it's too late. The alternative is a dystopian technocratic future.
Actually, I'll just respond quickly so it doesn't get lost. I do understand everything you're saying about returning to authentic human relationships before it's too late. I feel that with every fiber of my being, as I'm sure does every person on this list (since Daniel's writing is so deeply rooted in such an orientation towards humanity).
I think the sense (that I'm leaning towards) is that we are in a moment of near-peak chaos when it comes to communications (though we all know it can get exponentially worse), and that new muscles/tissues/whatever need to be created to turn this jar of confetti (much of it toxic, and much of it Russian at this point, based on that link I sent below) into something of value, something connective, something that actually FOSTERS the IRL human connection we want. If you listen to Audrey Tang or watch any of her interviews, you'll see that her work is very much rooted in harnessing these digital tools not for their own sake, not to add to the cacophony, but to enable us to once again become, as she puts it, "Good enough ancestors" who are able to care for each other, in real life, and with a very clear eye towards the future we're bringing forward with our actions.
This was a recent interview that I enjoyed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXgne-9F7uU
Shoot, I forgot about this comment. WIll return to it asap and probably with more thoughtfulness than today allowed. Apologies for hte rant above, which I will nevertheless leave up there, b/c it's an honest record of my communications!
Ok so I’ve dipped into some of the Tang material but remain unconvinced. Here are some initial thoughts.: 1) China is pioneering technocracy 2) Every positive application of digital capability also creates more tech dependency which is very difficult to reverse. 3) Positive digital experiences have shown a long history of degrading to date 4) Musk and DOGE are merging AI and digital modalities with government. Tang’s efforts implicitly sanction this by saying it’s ok as along as we “do it the right way”. 5) Raw AI power in TPTB hands will likely be used to squash attempts to use it for better social purposes or challenge the conventional wisdom 6) Immersive digital experiences alienate us from our own bodies 7) The boiler room mechanics of digital technologies are always controlled by some sort of digital elite.
To clarify, the Chinese connection is of course obviously more of a cultural and technological one in nature given Taiwanese separatism.
I truly appreciate that you've been ringing this alarm bell for so long; would love to check out your book, but I can't access the Tribune and can't find it on Bookshop (or even—ugh—amazon).
I agree with pretty much everything you say. I'm just at a complete loss as to how to actualize these insight in a society that's almost as intertwined with digital tech, at this point, as it is with food. I am not unconvinced that there are ways to design it/implement it differently, to wean ourselves off of the dopamine-driven addiction and towards the pro-social seratonin/oxytocin (? is that the right one)-driven usage [Tang's point, not mine], where we are in control and can use technological intermediaries to invite broad participation in a way that's generally impossible (or, yes, degrades) without them (ie my summary, above, of how Pol.is seems to work—no opportunity for it to become something other than what it it is, by design).
I feel like we gotta try. Society didn't listen to people like you, and here we are.
I found this video about tech dependency quite interesting. Please see all of the alarming stats at around one minute in:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cia4mv0QyMk
>>I feel like we gotta try. Society didn't listen to people like you, and here we are.
Well sad to say they’re still not listening. But that’s ok it’s an existential drama being played out. The spiritual teachers that I follow (and by the way the most interesting ones are women) indicate that this is a unique time for humanity to chart the future it deserves. I believe this is possible, and also believe in the power of human agency to re-enchant the world rather than simply applying somewhat pathetic band-aids to decaying and moribund systems. My two cents.
And thanks for the kind words.
It's still on Amazon. Cheers.
https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Mythologies-Hidden-Complexities-Internet-ebook/dp/B073WQ9J2S
Honestly, I’m not going to spend too much time on this. Been there done that really. If you want to see some of the history, please feel free to check out my book, "Digital Mythologies", published in 1998 (link below). In terms of Tang’s ideology, so far I haven’t seen anything that I think is really new. It seems akin to Wired magazine syndrome --- apparent anti-establishment free thinkers and rebels who end up just supporting corporate establishment goals. That said, I will look into it a little more for the sake of thoroughness. Digital immersion quite simply is the polar opposite of human to human contact. The Jewish philosopher Martin Buber is a good source here. He made sharp distinctions between I-Thou relationships and depersonalized I-It relationships. I would suggest that digital relationships are the latter even though they appear to be the former, another paradox of the Grand Seduction. When the Taoist sage Lao Tzu said "A person may know the world without leaving home” he wasn’t referring to digital experience. In the next post, I’ll offer my back of envelope initial comments on Tang.
Link for "Digital Mythologies":
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2000/03/26/tracing-the-decline-of-faith-in-the-cyber-church/