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from the bleeding-hearts-and-artists-making-a-stand dept.
Silicon Valley is dictating the way we live through design. From smartphones to dating websites, we increasingly experience the world and basic human connection through platforms and devices Silicon Valley created for us. It is the artist’s job to turn a critical eye on the world we live in. At the Rhizome event, it seemed like the artists were deeply troubled by the ways in which technology is limiting our ability to see that world.
There is the common refrain that everyone’s eyeballs are glued to their smartphones, even while walking into traffic, but this is a deeper concern, that the way we are designing technology is taking away the best parts of our humanity. On Facebook, you must “like” everything. On Vine, things must be interesting in 7 seconds or less. On Google, you must optimize or you will disappear.
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Technologists tend to think about their creations in terms of code and efficiency, whereas artists excel at helping us see the humanity in the machine, pinpointing moments of beauty, ugliness and truth in the way we live. We need artists to help save us from the ‘fitter, happier, more productive’ world that Silicon Valley is creating, a world that doesn’t seem to be making us all as happy as it promised. The Rhizome experiment is just the start of getting technologists to think more deliberately about the world they are making the rest of us live in.
Are technologists dehumanizing the world?
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @06:42AM
In a world where you can't even discuss the artistic merits of a satirical comedy film like GAYNIGGERS FROM OUTER SPACE without being modded down into oblivion, artists have good reason to be worried.
For instance, have you noticed how the film GAYNIGGERS FROM OUTER SPACE starts out in black-and-white but suddenly shifts to color near the end? Have you noticed how that simple yet deliberate choice of filming technique hides such a massive spoiler so very effectively? Have you noticed what color of uniform the GAYNIGGERS wear?
We pay lipservice to tolerance but do we actually practice tolerance? Can we all get along? Can we get along? Can we stop making it horrible for each other?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @03:00PM
Nice try. No way I am looking at a movie whose title contains unnecessary caps.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Bot on Monday August 03 2015, @03:20PM
The article reflects a very naive POV.
Technologists do NOT control the world.
Artists never did.
Look at apple.
They tried for 20 years to push the envelope, result, almost bankrupt.
Then they lock things up with their imacs and ipods and app stores, result, a shower of billions.
No way you can explain it with tech vs artist.
Thirst for power controls the world, or, more precisely, thirsty people act as proxies for satan, which is either an entity if you so believe, or an abstraction for the system emerging from the evil behavior of people. I mean that those that you rightfully hate and wrongfully envy because they rule and influence you, are even more enslaved to that system than you are.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @08:43PM
You forgot to mention how they hired marketing people (I use the word "people" loosely) to sell overpriced stuff to the boutique crowd.
In both cases (as Nuke (3162) hints at below), you have artsy types who would be assigned to The B Ark.
...and you're talking about a perverse market that is common enough to have multiple names for the same thing. [google.com]
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday August 05 2015, @12:42PM
DAT GOOGLE SEARCH QUERY LINK
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