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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, 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.