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posted by CoolHand on Monday August 03 2015, @05:55AM   Printer-friendly
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.
...
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?


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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by bradley13 on Monday August 03 2015, @06:45AM

    by bradley13 (3053) on Monday August 03 2015, @06:45AM (#217261) Homepage Journal

    In the early days of factories, I am sure that some artists thought that working with machines was dehumanizing. Of course, the overall reduction in back-breaking field labor was actually hugely beneficial to people overall.

    It's much the same now. Technology proceeds apace, we have even less physical work to do. Machines work with machines, people work with information. The knowledge of the entire world is at your fingertips. Once again, a huge advance for humanity, but some people find change frightening.

    That's my polite explanation: artists are people who are frightened by change.

    Less polite is: Too many professional artists are navel-gazers who think their personal insights into the world are somehow more important than anyone else's. Who believe that being a professional artist makes them superior to the rest of us who play music, write, create, sketch, or design as a hobby.

    Silicon valley dictates how we live? Perhaps the artists would rather do without the machines, and return to an idyllic, agrarian way of life. Sixteen hours a day in the field, weeding your turnips by hand.

    --
    Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @07:50AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @07:50AM (#217277)

    That's my polite explanation: artists are people who are frightened by change.

    What about transhumanist artists?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @10:12AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @10:12AM (#217325)

      Ask Bruce Jenner.

  • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday August 03 2015, @11:19AM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Monday August 03 2015, @11:19AM (#217342) Journal

    That's my polite explanation: artists are people who are frightened by change.

    Less polite is: Too many professional artists are navel-gazers who think their personal insights into the world are somehow more important than anyone else's. Who believe that being a professional artist makes them superior to the rest of us who play music, write, create, sketch, or design as a hobby.

    And yet, as much as I love technology it has never come close to moving me to tears. That experience I have had with art. I saw an exhibition by El Anatsui [wordpress.com], an artist from Ghana who weaves immense tapestries and shapes out of pieces of trash (bottle caps and such), a couple years ago at the Brooklyn Museum of Art and was blown away that somebody could take utter refuse and transform it into something so sublime.

    To me, that's worth something.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
    • (Score: 3, Funny) by penguinoid on Monday August 03 2015, @07:03PM

      by penguinoid (5331) on Monday August 03 2015, @07:03PM (#217508)

      And yet, as much as I love technology it has never come close to moving me to tears.

      We have a special technological solution for that (tear gas).

      --
      RIP Slashdot. Killed by greedy bastards.
  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Monday August 03 2015, @12:52PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday August 03 2015, @12:52PM (#217377)

    Too many professional artists are navel-gazers who think their personal insights into the world are somehow more important than anyone else's.

    I've seen ingenious technological things that are cooler than some shitty painting of a daisy, but it takes a higher level than kids with crayons to "see" it.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @06:11PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @06:11PM (#217480)

    Funny thing - if they phrased it such that joe schmos find the observation concerning, I (and likely many others) would have responded with "hmmm... maybe there is something there."

    Instead, it says "artists are worried", and it comes across as whining of some pretentious douchebags who think too highly of themselves.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @09:34PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @09:34PM (#217601)

    In the early days of factories, I am sure that some artists thought that working with machines was dehumanizing.

    Actually, I'm really, really concerned about how all this technology is affecting the horse and buggy whip makers. Just sayin'.