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?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @06:03AM
Yes.
Next question?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @06:32AM
A classic in this vein is Langdon Winner's essay "Do Artifacts Have Politics?".
Copy pasting that name with quotes included into your favourite search engine will produce a copy.
I for one believe we should be quite worried. Machines are controlling the society ever more. If they shut down today, millions would starve to death. We must ascertain that we control the machines, technically and legally. One important building block of this is Free software. https://fsf.org/ [fsf.org] We also need free hardware to run it on.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Monday August 03 2015, @11:35AM
This is very important. There is another component that is often forgotten--the human practice of using those things. So much of the world goes on as it does because people are afraid of trying new things or making mistakes and breaking stuff and getting laughed at. People who overcome that barrier learn important lessons about how things are made and problems are solved, and much of the time the reaction is, "Huh! I had no idea it was that simple." But the balance of humanity does not overcome that barrier. So it's key to have, along with Open Source and Open Hardware, Open Instruction.
The Internet, with Instructables and DIY wikis and videos, gets us part of the way there. But there's often no substitute for standing next to someone with mastery, performing something with confidence that you would be loathe to attempt for fear of losing a finger.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Monday August 03 2015, @09:49PM
The problem isn't whether or not we control the machines, but whether or not the machines control us.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday August 03 2015, @11:28PM
The machines control the people, and the ruling class controls the machines. This is the natural order, n'est pas?
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @03:19AM
shhh! you'll wake them!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @09:03PM
And I'm proud to call myself a technologist.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @06:17AM
http://xkcd.com/1227/ [xkcd.com]
I don't see what people are complaining about. It's not as though I have a red bull IV drip hooked up and will die of caffinnnneeeeee ppooooiisssooonnniiinggg aannnnyy ^$%*ĝ9*9& [ NO CARRIER ]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @06:49AM
Interesting. Can we find similar quotes from 100 years previous?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @07:17AM
That was my first thought. Something from 1815 perhaps.
I do know this and have been passing it around the news aggregators for fifteen years:
I have more donated from soylentils, unfortunately I can't seem to find them at the moment. Perhaps someone else will chime in.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Monday August 03 2015, @11:53AM
I don't see your point. This thread was about art versus tech, not old versus young.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday August 03 2015, @12:45PM
Old always complain about the young's pointless addictions.
Its no different than complaining about kids watching TV (mine don't, they're all about the youtube). TV used to be described as a vast wasteland because everybody watched a few channels of crap, but now nobody watches hundreds of channels of crap, its all about streaming paid video or streaming ad supported youtube video. I have a perfectly good 10+ year old mythtv system with great HDTV OTA reception and also some cable channels and there's basically nothing to record anymore, or nothing to watch that doesn't have better quality than streaming it for free or a subscription I already have.
Music industry rock music from the 50s was an instrument of the devil, before than comic books were ruining our children in the 20s/30s... Just old people whining.
Note that young people are really bad about understanding fads. Even the kids themselves will be laughing about people using facebook soon enough, ha ha people back then were so stupid, but us modern kids would never do anything that dumb like sit around all day clicking like on facebook feeds. Yeah, sure, kids have been saying that kind of stuff for at least a century.
I don't think the artists have anything to worry about. The person thats clicking like compulsively wasn't sitting in the art museum B.F. (before facebook). They were doing the usual fad BS. The artists aren't losing anything.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Common Joe on Monday August 03 2015, @12:17PM
The XKCD link certainly has quite a bit of truth to it, but it misses something fundamental with art created by software: 1) Some files can no longer be open opened [I have some old word processing documents from the DOS days that I can no longer open], 2) Dependencies [Related to #1; Soylent News barely worked when it first started because the old software depended on old hardware and old software], 3) Software controlled by outside entities will one day make your creations go away if you do not save your own copies with your own backups [How long will Devian Art be around?]... and further complicated by reasons I gave in #1 and #2. 4) Insane laws and culture revolving around copyright, DRM, and censorship.
And these are valid concerns not only for artists but all of us. It's nothing new to most of us here on Soylent News, but based on the responses poo-pooing artists, I thought I should at least bring these points up.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Tuesday August 04 2015, @12:04AM
"I have some old word processing documents from the DOS days that I can no longer open"
Dosbox?
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Tuesday August 04 2015, @03:58AM
I tried that a few years ago, but to no avail. They're PFS Write documents. It requires some funky settings in the autoexec.bat / config.sys to run. I haven't found anything open source that can update the files to something more modern. They include both graphics and text. Perhaps I should try again or I have print outs that I could just scan one day.
And to complete the anecdotal story, I used this program because, as a student, I felt paying for it was better than pirating the way-too-expensive Word Perfect 5.1. At least in today's world, there are better options. I use LibreOffice whenever I can.
I recall some program from 20+ years ago that updates whole directories of files from one word processing format to another. I don't know of anything like that today.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Thursday August 06 2015, @12:21AM
What era system do you need? Which OS? I have access to an original IBM PC from 1981 and a few things in between.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Sunday August 09 2015, @11:04AM
I greatly appreciate the offer, but I'll decline. I have print outs so those will do ok. (I just have to get up off my lazy butt and scan them.) PFS Write doesn't have great export options. The most "universal" I could find was printing out to an old laser jet. It was before PDF and it was a competitor to WordPerfect and they chose not to be able to import / export with WordPerfect. (And quite frankly, WordPerfect 5.1 was superior in almost every way except for WYSIWYG which PFS Write did surprisingly well for a DOS program. Of course WordPerfect 5.2 for Windows kicked its butt in that.)
Quite frankly, I'm surprised you have access to that kind of working technology. That's pretty friggin' awesome.
I have 5 1/4" floppies, a copy of Windows 3.0 on 3.5" and unused punch cards somewhere. Even brought them with me moving to Europe. I have no idea if the floppies will still work. I once saw 8" floppies and floppy disk drives at a government office I used to work at about 20 years ago collecting dust. The earliest tech I ever used was the TRS-80 (with audio tape deck to save / load data) followed by the Commodore 64. I had to use a desk fan to keep the disk drive cool enough to use. I regret getting rid of both of them.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by OwMyBrain on Monday August 03 2015, @03:22PM
When I saw you post an XKCD comic in this article, I though for certain it was going to be this one. [xkcd.com]
These artists can continue to go on about how technology is dictating people's lives, and I will continue to ignore them. Technology is not forcing people to have their face in their phone all the time or to like everything on facebook. People are doing that themselves. Technology is just a tool. The public decides how to use them. I'm all in favor of critical analysis of our technological lives by artists or whomever, but I think the conclusion they have come to is misplaced.
From the article, "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." I agree with this statement, but not the article's implication that technologists are creating some sort of authoritarian culture where only they can choose how people interact with the world. People choose to use their smartphones or social media or not, and that says important things about our lives. However, I think these artists are barking up the wrong tree by putting all the blame in Silicon Valley. The question they should be exploring is why is it so easy for people to use technology as a proxy for real life or if this is really such a bad thing. But don't listen to what I say. My degree is in computer science, and I'm really craving a burrito.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday August 03 2015, @04:29PM
These artists can continue to go on about how technology is dictating people's lives, and I will continue to ignore them.
You as well as every generation of mankind since the beginning of the species.
Starving shivering, predator persued people do not create art. Well fed, warm, secure people do.
Technology always comes first. Art is always an afterthought.
It's worked this way for eons, long before Maslow [simplypsychology.org] explained it.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(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
Account abandoned.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bradley13 on Monday August 03 2015, @06:45AM
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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @07:50AM
What about transhumanist artists?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @10:12AM
Ask Bruce Jenner.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday August 03 2015, @11:19AM
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
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
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
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
Actually, I'm really, really concerned about how all this technology is affecting the horse and buggy whip makers. Just sayin'.
(Score: 4, Funny) by spamdog on Monday August 03 2015, @06:49AM
Well maybe artists should start making art that lets me download gigs and gigs of porn.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @06:59AM
Your one-stop site for amateur art and amateur porn. [deviantart.com]
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday August 03 2015, @11:09AM
"Artists" make the gigs and gigs of porn. At least, that's what the porn actress I met once called herself.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 03 2015, @07:10AM
I look at the world around me - and yes, people are far to engrossed in their electronic toys. They have been "dehumanized" to some extent, because they prefer to play with their toys, than to interact with the people around them.
But, good things come from all this tech. The single best thing I can think of right now, are the police and racial issues. I've always known that black males are targeted by the cops - but how in hell do you prove something like that? Well - tech is giving us the means to prove the issue exists, to document it, to define it - and possibly to do something about it. Most recently, a cop opened a motorist's door, attempted to pull that motorist out of his car, and when that motorists resisted, the cop shot him dead. The FACTS documented by the body camera only vaguely resemble the story told by the cop and his partner. In this and similar cases, tech helps to bring out our humanity and/or inhumanity.
As has always been true, each of us must find our own pathway to hell. Each of us has to decide whether we will use technology, or we permit technoloty to use us. The herd won't resist, but individual members can and will resist being dehumanized. Individual members are exposing the inherent evil of the establishment, almost daily.
What of those who are part of the establishment? Well - the herd seems to be using tech to further dehumanize us. They see tech as a tool to control the masses. The individual steps up, now and then, to use that tech for the betterment of the masses, instead of controlling the masses. To wit - the prosecutor who charged the previously mentioned cop with murder.
The prosecutor stated that this was the worst case of police work he had seen in thirty years on the job. The fact is - he has never seen such a piss-poor example of police work, because the videos have never been available before. The "hero" prosecutor has probably unwittingly assisted dozens of cover ups in the past thirty years. THIS TIME, he has documentation to work with, and decided not to assist in yet another cover up.
Dehumanizing? It's your call. Each and every day, it's your call. Are you another mindless drone, responding to stimuli from your environment?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by No Respect on Monday August 03 2015, @07:18AM
Who's "us"? It certainly doesn't include me. 90% of the internet serves no purpose and exists only to capture peoples' attention so advertisers can sling their pitches. That's what these technologists are doing to "us", I guess. Except "us" ain't "me". At the end of the day, people get what they deserve.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Nuke on Monday August 03 2015, @12:08PM
90% of the internet serves no purpose and exists only to capture peoples' attention so advertisers can sling their pitches. That's what these technologists are doing to "us", I guess.
Advertisers are not technologists, they are arts people. The vast majority of web site designers are arts people. Steve Jobs was an arts person. Not all "artists" paint landscapes and portraits, or make sculptures, in fact only a tiny minority of them do (after college anyway) or can earn a living that way.
When the internet was owned entirely by techies it was used almost entirely for the transmission of technical information, without graphics, and that was all they imagined it would ever be used for. Don't blame techies for what it has become.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday August 03 2015, @12:55PM
When the internet was owned entirely by techies it was used almost entirely for the transmission of technical information, without graphics,
If by technical information you include pr0n, sure.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @02:16PM
Ah, CSHOW was a delight to behold. For informational purposes only, of course.
I am not sure who actually downloaded pictures of like balloons and apples and trees and stuff, except for vendors selling new VGA monitors and needed something family friendly to display in the store. Then bikini pictures came out, too.
(Score: 0, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @07:36AM
It has always been the case that the world was getting better and better until the time of your childhood, but then it started to go downhill. It doesn't matter when or where your childhood was.
(Score: 5, Funny) by wonkey_monkey on Monday August 03 2015, @07:51AM
There is the common refrain that everyone’s eyeballs are glued to their smartphones, even while walking into traffic
That is not true I walk and text all the time and
qp4$b
#54hst
amblance pls
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @08:58AM
It's called natural selection...
It's nature's way to cope with improved health care and car safeties...
(Score: 4, Funny) by MrNemesis on Monday August 03 2015, @11:52AM
sup bro callin you ablnc now #EmergencyServicesYUNoTwitter #HelpWonkeyMonkey #ItsBleedingRealBad #IsThatMeantToBeStickingOutLikeThat
wot fone u usin tat dnt brk whn u hit bi cr?
"To paraphrase Nietzsche, I have looked into the abyss and been sick in it."
(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Monday August 03 2015, @08:26AM
In the English speaking world, "If its useful, its not art".
Artists go out of their way to make sure their products have no useful function, while "technologists"
deliberate ignore appearance. There are exceptions (Shakespeare plays teach about the outcome of
social scenarios, Apple, Sony, while Mr Sony was in charge took care over appearance),
but this is true in the majority of cases.
It is not necessarily the same in outside the English speaking world.
It is a consequence of our education system, and particularly (here in the UK) the media being run
by luvvies who make a point of denigrating people who can actually do anything at all, and displaying
there own ignorance as a virtue. (Watch out for this one, it ends in Boko Haram).
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @08:46PM
I disagree.
There is no reason that a tech venture can't employ artsy types to make the facade of their products more appealing.
In fact, it happens all the time.
Sometimes form even follows function and you get something better than the technologists' prototype.
Apple, Sony
Interesting that you chose 2 of my least-favorite corporations.
Mr Sony
There never was a "Mr. Sony".
"Sony" is a misspelling.
The name is a reference to USAians thinking of each of the post-war Japanese people as "sonny boy" and the We'll-show-them attitude of those Asian industrialists.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Monday August 03 2015, @10:10AM
WTF have they got to do with "de-humanising" ? I thought they were about bringing people together. Better than sitting in a basement waiting for "heaven" to do something,because it doesn't happen. Of course, "artists" move in circles where they meet plenty of other people and by nature are perfectly at ease with this. Despite being supposedly "imaginative" they cannot imagine any other way of life.
Major misconception about Dating Websites that non-users have :- incredibly, they seem to think that you are compelled to date/partner/marry someone that the computer choses for you. I have heard people say "I wouldn't want a computer to choose my partner for me!"
Before Dating Websites, there were dating clubs and marriage bureaux where either you first exchanged letters after browsing through lists of people, or the bureau arranged an exchange of letters or a direct blind date between people. Such facilities existed at least back into Victorian times. Absolutely nothing to do with computers.
Once you meet someone, you decide whether to continue with it or not, no matter how the introduction was done.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by C R Johnson on Monday August 03 2015, @10:23AM
What technologists are doing is what make humans different from animals: Creating things by thinking and production.
It takes us further from our animal self's. Away from living in nature and being emotion driven. De-animalizing is more correct.
Most artists I know are emotional basket cases and are always whining about something. That why they are artists.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @01:31PM
Absolutely! If anything, technologists are humanising the world by transforming it in ways that may suit us (for a short period), but are detrimental to other life forms on the planet.
(Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Monday August 03 2015, @11:05AM
Someone ought to remind the artist that they're the ones who pumped out their dystopian future stuff for many, many decades before any of this technology stuff was ever invented.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by MrNemesis on Monday August 03 2015, @03:34PM
I feel inclined to point out that much of the technology in dystopian fiction is identical to the technology in utopian fiction. It seems to be up to the author as to whether the people using or controlling it are good or a shower of bastards. And that has always been the problem that the artists, and humanity at large, has grappled with with any technology.
"To paraphrase Nietzsche, I have looked into the abyss and been sick in it."
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @11:58AM
Remember when the Fappening happened, the artists sued Google for aggregating links to the photos, not Apple for hosting the photos with shit security. 10 years ago, the major fear was that Intel had enough purchasing power to buy every major movie studio and turn them into something different (probably akin to what Netflix/Amazon Prime turned into but U digress). As a result of MPAA action, Intel now has to put binary blobs in the kernel to "protect the user" from evil pirates, and just about every single laptop screen comes with a shitty 16:9 resolution, perfect for watching movies and not much else. Except for the artists favorite company, Apple of course, who can do no wrong.
(Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Monday August 03 2015, @01:46PM
Are technologists dehumanizing the world?
Nope. That doesn't even make sense. Hope the artists have better luck telling the masses to stop using Facebook and Vine (WTF is Vine?) and stop putting blind faith in the Oracle at Google when finding vendors and making purchasing decisions. (For that matter, avoid Oracle at all costs!) Humans choose to do these things. Humans choose to purchase iBling because they need their status symbols.
A little more about the Google situation: this is what we observe when there are a million vendors all providing the same service. Let us get the blessing of Priests of the Temple of SEO, in order to make an offering to the Oracle at Google, so that the great computers will rank our business first!
Face it, artists. Humans are conformists. I must not be a technologist, nor must anyone else who believes in free software. From what I can tell most of us here—I know the thought will disturb some greatly—have more in common with the artists than these “technologists.”
Humanity willingly plugs itself into the Matrix because Facebook is “cool” and iPhones are hip and Google is “easy to use.” Do any of these (dare I use the term?) sheep care at all about what Facebook is doing with their data? Do they care about what the possibilities might be with a supercomputer in their pocket? Ah, but there's the rub! Everybody has a supercomputer in their pocket these days, helpfully DRMed and locked down so that we can only run what's been blessed by the Gods of Mt. Cupertino and the Oracle at Google. Willingly enslaved they are!
So, say sorry, I don't think there's much to be done, not when the average person struggles with how to compute an average and is hopeless at determining whether the mean is more appropriate than the median given the data they're analyzing and what they're trying to determine. Yes, we can all wish for a world light-years away, through astral nights and cosmic days, where the gifted man is valued over mediocrity.
Nope, say sorry. We live in a world where yap-yap-yap duckspeaking masses value the Kardashians, the intrigue of Caitlyn Jenner, and iBling. After all, you don't want to be some icky nerd do you? I'll tell you, I'm not sure about those artists and free software hippies. They must be communists! Put 'em up against the wall!
(Apologies to Rush et al!)
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday August 03 2015, @03:47PM
Should we let those people limit what humanity can do? If we do, we can freeze all scientific activity because what we have now is good enough.
Or, maybe we can recognize that inspiration and ability are not evenly distributed across human populations, and if those who have more of those qualities cease because most people have less of those qualities, then everyone loses, permanently.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Monday August 03 2015, @11:17PM
More seriously, I suppose it's a problem of visibility. Never before has the common man been able to get up on Twitter, Facebook, or to a lesser degree YouTube and make the entire world aware of his ignorance or perhaps “vulgarity” (to use an archaic sense of the word). Therefore, it seems that technologists are the architects of the “vast wasteland,” if I may apply that term to the interweb(s).
The problem for me at least is that I don't see a way to avoid it, not without some intervention from some authority or another. Then, who decides who the authority is and what the message is?
Reading TFA, I see two themes emerge: the idea that algorithms, especially with machine vision, fail to capture artistic merit or rather attempt to bring it to a few bland data points that are sometimes correct and sometimes hilariously wrong; and a critique of the Silicon Valley startup churn.
On the first theme, I guess I don't see that as much of a problem. As others above have intimated, if somebody is trusting an algorithm to judge artistic merit or to choose Mr. Right infallibly, they're doing it wrong.
On the second theme, I'm not certain what that has to do with technology. It more speaks to failings of humans who may lie or who may be gullible, and moreover, it speaks to the desperate search for the next Google, Facebook, or whatever goose that lays golden eggs.
Perhaps the aversion to “vulgarity” that drove many of us from the old site is the natural answer to the quandary of preventing those “gifted men” from being bogged down by the masses. On the other hand, that does not help achieve what we seem to be striving for: are we asking for “gifted men” to apply their gifts in order to alleviate the vulgar condition of the masses?
Well, I may be overlooking a third theme, which is the power of propaganda. However, another name for propaganda is advertising. Brand recognition. That's a quagmire I don't think we'll find a way out of until the post-scarcity singularity comes. Companies and governments naturally want to find an axis of narratives that not only promotes their own image, but justifies an entire sociopolitical system that lets the Masters of the Universe, as it were, be the Masters of the Universe. There will probably always be Masters of the Universe, but under post-scarcity, we can just ignore them. I'll just head out into the garage and 3d print and robo-assemble my 2016 Corvette. Until that's true, I have to play along with the Masters of the Universe in desperate hope that maybe I'll obtain a position that will let me buy a 2016 Corvette.
(Although, truth be told, I'm sure I'm on more than enough lists I'll never have to worry about being in a position that would provide me with status symbols like that.)
The root problem is that in order to get a job that pays that much with my talents, I'd find myself applying technology in an opposite fashion than TFA would wish I would. Maybe I'll become a quant on Wall Street or get hired by Facebook or Google to improve their data mining and enhance the quality of what they report to the NSA. Maybe I'll solve the machine vision problem (unlikely), but it won't be used to compare Renoir to Rembrandt and identify the different techniques in use! (Otoh, maybe my graphic designer friend would be less irked every time I use the terms constructivist or avant garde incorrectly if I had an advanced algorithm to consult first!)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @02:36PM
Short version: No.
Longer version. What is this "the world we live in" is? Nature? It was never about humans to begin with. The world of humans? We are creating and changing our world therefore it is not "dehumanized," whatever that means.
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Monday August 03 2015, @02:51PM
"These satanic steam engines and other machines will dehumanize the world! Man shall have to be a machine himself as these won't adapt to his way of working!"
Yeah, buddy, having a washing machine instead of doing the "humanizing" task of pounding my clothes at the stream with a rock really dehumanized me.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @04:04PM
Even writing was once considered to be a serious threat to humanity: [wikisource.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @08:55PM
In your rosy picture, you're overlooking the externalities.
Think: the nasty air in London for over a century. [google.com]
For USAians: St. Louis for many decades; L.A. too.
...then there's fracking to get cheaper hydrocarbons and the nearby folks who can now ignite what comes out of their water taps--but obviously can't drink that.
I'm also thinking of the river that was so polluted with industrial waste that it caught fire in 1969.
Technology -can- improve life but industrialists are often abusive to the local (and now global) ecosystem and the humans who depend on that.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Monday August 03 2015, @11:39PM
I'm probably one of the few here who can say they've done laundry in a stream pounding it with a rock (extended field exercise in the Army).
I am confident that a few times doing so the new of it wears off will make you put the "externalities" in context.
Besides, getting the effluent put through a modern treatment plant makes what flows downstream a lot better than just untreated stuff flowing down the river.
Now, if you want to talk about cleaner ways of getting the power like renewables whatnot and sustainability in raw material re-use, that's a good thing. But older methods often have more of those externalities per capita than modern ones.
"caught fire in 1969"
The Cuyahoga in Ohio. I remember that one vaguely (I was 7), but it certainly wasn't the only one that did. The Chicago River famously caught fire in 1899.
My standard example is the air in Gary Indiana being orange when I was there in the late 60s.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @03:39PM
Are artists worried or is it middlemen that are worried. Technology has been giving artists new opportunities to distribute their art, gain recognition, and find ways to profit. and they have been doing just that. It seems more like the distributors are the ones that are worried because now they can be cut out of the loop.
(Score: 2) by morgauxo on Monday August 03 2015, @08:33PM
When I was religious I heard the message all the time that the popular, secular world was out to destroy everyone's faith and that the world was becoming more and more secular.
Now I am not and it certainly seems like the religious-right is in control of most politics and steadily making inroads into education to teach our children that we live in a 6000 year old universe where dinosaurs were once the pets of humans.
It seems to me that most people have an inherant bias against technology. The smartphones and tablets that are all the rage trade pc functionality for style. TVs are thinner, cords are going away, antennas disapearing, the entertainment center is steadily disapearing into the furniture. I was just thinking on the way to work this morning how technology is more hidden then it was when I was a kid and wondering if this reduced exposure reduces children's liklihood of developing an interest in engineering.
The population is more and more anti nuclear power as they deny the climate change which results from releasing CO2. Meanwhile diseases are returning because people are chosing not to vaccinate their children.
And here is an article about how "Technologists" control the world and art suffers!
Is it just that it's human nature to feel marginilized and really none of us are? Is it both myself and the author that is full of it? Or is it just the other side?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @09:24PM
Now I am not and it certainly seems like the religious-right is in control of most politics and steadily making inroads into education to teach our children that we live in a 6000 year old universe where dinosaurs were once the pets of humans.
But it is! That picture box just had me meet these, "Flintstones," and they had a dinosaur as a pet!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @01:41PM
It is technology that has created an environment in which we can have artists in the first place. Surplus food and other resources mean that we don't all have to exist in a subsistence culture where anything that doesn't directly create food or shelter is an unnecessary burden.
Likewise, unless these artists work by smearing their own shit on cave walls, technology is what allows them to create their art in the first place. What they are really saying is that technology became limiting once it moved beyond their own preferred medium. If they can't see a way to create art using 7-second video clips (or, mind-blowingly, a series of 7-second clips) then they are the ones with limited imagination. Imagining things is hard, whether you are an artist or a technologist!