Critical Theory of Technology

[criticaltheoryoftechnology]

three paragraphs on place

"The little Leninist study groups won’t do it. We need to use video, audio, the Internet. We also need to work on the basics of rebuilding community. How are you going to organized or liberate your community if you don’t have one? I live in Cuba, right? We get U.S. movies here, and I am sick of the monsters; it’s the tyranny of the monsters. Every other movie is fear and monsters. They’ve even got monster babies. People are expected to live in this world of alienation and fear. I hear that in the States people are even afraid to make eye contact in the streets. No social change can happen if people are that isolated. So we need to rebuild a sense of community and that means knocking on doors and reconnecting." - Assata Shakur, interview with Christian Parenti, 1997

"A decade later, globalisation’s progress was tracked in “New Circuits of Imperialism.” In the advanced capitalist world, deindustrialisation and automation had ravaged working class communities and enervated trade unions. Capital, he controversially pronounced, had freed itself of labour. In the dependent capitalist world where manufacturing had relocated, and where some Latin American and Southeast Asian countries were newly-industrialising, economic growth had not removed the mass of people from poverty, hunger and hopelessness. Humanity possessed the technological means to increase productivity with less labour, to distribute work more equitably, to increase time for creative leisure, and to provide a basic income to all. However, this won’t and can’t happen under capitalism, he insisted." - "At the Interstices of Race, Class and Imperialism: A. Sivanandan (1923-2018)"

"Can you imagine a pair of noise-canceling headphones for geography? That’s how I started to think of Roam. When you want to, you can block out your sense of place entirely and exist in a hazy, calm, featureless space that could be anywhere. This nomadic bubble goes beyond a hotel in that it stretches around the world and is built to encompass your entire life; it promises to become your post-geographical home. Yet I found there to also be an anxiety to this hermetic placelessness, no matter how beautifully unburdened or minimalist it appears. Living anywhere is a lot like living nowhere." - Kyle Chakya, "When You’re a ‘Digital Nomad,’ the World Is Your Office"

[nostalgicfuturity]

I hope you live without the need to dominate, and without the need to be dominated. I hope you are never victims, but I hope you have no power over other people. And when you fail, and are defeated, and in pain, and in the dark, then I hope you will remember that darkness is your country, where you live, where no wars are fought and no wars are won, but where the future is. Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country. Why did we look up for blessing — instead of around, and down? What hope we have lies there. Not in the sky full of orbiting spy-eyes and weaponry, but in the earth we have looked down upon. Not from above, but from below. Not in the light that blinds, but in the dark that nourishes, where human beings grow human souls.

Ursula K. Le Guin, “A Left-Handed Commencement Address” (Mills College, 1983)

this passage planted itself in my consciousness when i was 24, and 10 years later, it informs so much of my approach to living, thinking, creating.

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p>(via quantumcorean)

[pussy-strut]

tag yourself

[rainy-days-will-never-end-deact]

Remember what I was saying before about how microtransactions are geared specifically to exploit addicts and “If you don’t like it don’t buy it” isn’t an argument?

[angel-x-guts]

@asynca

[asynca]

Thank you for @-ing me. 

For those of you who don’t know, I’m a specialist problem gambling financial counsellor. This means that I’m specially trained, qualified and experienced in aiding the rehabilitation of people struggling with problem gambling, and working with people who are affected by others’ problem gambling protect themselves and rebuild their lives. I spend 30% of the hours of my day job working with these people. 

I’m going to make a very bold statement: micro-transactions with a ‘chance’ element are gambling. They are what is called an ‘embedded gambling element’ in a game. They may be a ‘softer’ form of gambling than sitting at a poker machine, but they are gambling. They normalise gambling to children (which has been shown to lead to problem gambling). They groom future problem gamblers, and they exploit people who have neurochemical imbalances (ie, depression). There is a very, very strong link between gambling and mental illness.  People who gamble in games are more likely to susceptible to current and future gambling problems.

I’m going to focus on lootboxes in Overwatch, because it’s the game I know the most about. I also know a lot about how poker machines are psychologically designed to be highly addictive, specifically exploiting known psychological triggers to reel people in and keep them spending. 

Poker machines ‘tease’ you with near wins which provide you with the same adrenaline and dopamine release as an actual win. 

Overwatch lootboxes do the same - you know that feel of seeing a purple/gold coin flipping in the air??? OMG! Is it going to be THAT THING YOU REALLY!!!!-oh. 

Bright colours, exciting lights, the visceral feel of pushing the button/spinning the wheel is important to addiction. Blizzard has does the same with lootboxes - by vibrating your controller. By shaking the camera. By having the lootbox rATTLE AND EXPLODE!!!! with your reward. The sounds and specially engineered to build excitement and tensions and remind you of wealth. The ‘coin’ system of the lootbox reminds you of wealth. This is all super deliberate - it’s not a mistake. Using subconscious cues like exploding money boxes!!! the sound of money, the shape of money - that’s likening the process to a lottery. 

While it’s quite unlikely someone could actually spend ENORMOUS amounts of money chasing that ‘jackpot’ (the skin they really want for their character, for example), it is possible. HOWEVER, it’s much more likely that the person will have this sort of reward system normalised, will find the element of chance ‘exciting’ (because, dude, we’re psychologically engineered to be more interested in ‘chance’ events than certain/impossible events), and seek out and enjoy other similar passtimes. Like actual gambling with real money. 

Every time you gamble, you change the structure of your brain. I’m not exaggerating. Every time you take a chance on that lootbox, you flood your brain with adrenaline and dopamine. The presence of those two neurochemicals changes the density of the receptors of them minutely. After a few boxes, it’s unlikely you’ll become addicted. However, if you keep doing it, your receptors change density so that you need more adrenaline and more dopamine to get the same excitement and pleasure from the hit. 

Worse, this rush of adrenaline and dopamine is much, much more addictive to people with mental illness (or a susceptibility to mental illness), as the presence of these chemicals is a very unhealthy (but unfortunately effective, at least in the extremely short term) way of medicating mental illness. Unfortunately, because of the escalating changes in receptor density, it eventually makes mental illness much worse in the long run. There is a strong link between gambling and suicide. 

Compare your first lootbox with the lootboxes you get now. Are you getting the same enjoyment? Nope. 

Think how many times you bought 11 lootboxes…. only to buy another 11 and another 11 and another 11. It becomes mechanical, pressing that button, opening another lootbox. Kind of like sitting at a poker machine. 

Think about how normal the lootbox system seems now. 

Chance-based gambling reward systems in games are dangerous, and should be replaced either by work-and-reward systems (you get 10 credits per level, and you can spend these on rewards of your choice), combined with micro-transaction-based currency for people who do not have the time to commit to leveling 300 times for that epic Christmas skin. 

Remove chance. Just remove it. 

[criticaltheoryoftechnology]

We don't see this phenomenon only in games. Facebook, for example, provides a system of variable rewards with every refresh and infinte scroll. You don't know what you'll see, but there's a chance it might be what you want. And then they addict you.

[criticaltheoryoftechnology]

"One of the main, alienating assumptions is that the categories and frameworks we use to make sense of reality, from common sense, all the way to experimental science, are shaped by the ideology of the powerful to the point that these frameworks are always suspect. Furthermore, the Left, because it refuses to embrace a sort of universalism – a common human experience that transcends gender and race, is unable to reach out to those who aren’t “initiated”, given that the Left is not vested in creating a universalized language. Instead, the Left has produced a labyrinth of “woke” signalling, that can only be understood and accepted by members of a specific subcultures – in this case, the Left, and the humanities. The Left’s hostility against universalism is related to the post-structuralist turn in academia, where all broad statements about humanity are rendered suspect, because all knowledge, even the superficially objective type, is always tainted by power structures. For example, a common post-structuralist attack against “positivism”, the tendency of science to abstract all social and physical phenomena into well defined, quantitative laws, is that it is rooted in euro-centric understanding of the world; in other words, the fact that we accept positivism as valid is connected to the dominance of western civilization."

[bonneibennett]

- Carl Sagan, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey

[allisonburtch]

Militant fidelity to the possibility of another world.

Hi all. Last week furious and grieved and depressed and sad and angry and scared…and surprised. Now, I think, I’m gearing up for the long haul. The world is up for grabs.

What is to be done will largely be defined by what one thinks happened. The question “What is going on?” globally, in the US, and “where is the world is headed?” is relevant.

Hillary “we have to bring them to heel” Clinton gambled on the fight that she wanted: she ponied up to Wall Street, offered corporate feminism, this grossly entitled “I’m with her” platform, and promoted Trump’s racism and misogyny, all while ignoring his attacks on banks, unemployment, her warmongering and his anti-war message - and lost. The DNC made massive, irreparable miscalculations that will bring suffering to millions of people and I’m not super interested to hear how most of the establishment (and liberal media) remain inculpable in their own analysis.

A three way fight, had Hillary won, between the left and liberals and conservatives, was far more preferable. Because the contradictions between the liberal center and the left need to be defined, and in a two way fight they aren’t.

Obama deported 2.8 million people in six short years with smug liberal civility. Trump promises to deport “up to 3 million” but with metastatic perversion. I am furious at liberals for their sudden outrage, as if the world that the US has flung its entitlement upon has not already been reeling. To the newly scared white people: welcome to the world.

I’m in Malawi right now, in which social services are run entirely by NGOs, with primary business investments by India and China. It’s one of the poorest countries in the world.

I don’t think I ever was as clear that truly, like Rosa Luxembourg said, the only options for liberal society are “socialism or barbarism”.

The liberal center will not hold, globally, because though capitalism (i.e. civil society) manages to end patriarchal relations in place of cash-based relations (helping some bourgeois women), it is a road to suffering for most, and so many in the world see it and reject it. The far right is gaining ground globally - in Russia, India, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Bungary, Bulgaria, Poland, France, Israel, ad nauseum. In other words, what is offered to Malawians right now is to ‘work harder’ - the rest will rot.

I also think that smearing the “Berniebros” was an incredibly dumb political move. Had liberals any fucking sense they would have organized a left-wing militia. Who will fight for socialism? There’s no global people’s army. The alt-right with their militias and police is the only group, globally, with weapons. We know that a platform of liberal civility has not and will not cut it. But it turns out that liberals think highly of their own entitlement, and white men have three options: be rich, racist, or silent.

Affectively: the protests against Trump are important and need to continue to show every kid, every scared student, every Muslim, every person of color who is now terrified, that they are not alone.

Effectively: Our enemies want to divide the world into two: haves and have-nots; men and women; white and black; Sunni and Shia; Hindutva and untouchables. A suitable maxim for the future: there is only one world. Being anti-_ is not being for. Anti-imperialism, anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-capitalism - not only has it not worked, but to be anti-_ is to be defined by what you are against. It is not the same thing as a productive, emancipatory, powerful - dare I say - communist, horizon. We need not only create the means for our self-preservation, but to get ready for a big fight. Taking ourselves seriously as political subjects is a start.

No allegiance to white supremacy! Nihilism is to be rejected at all costs. Also, the youth are alright.

As Assata said, every line of which is deeply controversial: “It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.”

Here’s to militant fidelity to the ecstatic possibility of another world.

<3

[allisonburtch]

Nothing produces greater satisfaction on the part of the oppressors than to hold elections everywhere, to impose them, by war if need be, on people who did not ask for them.

Alain Badiou, The Meaning of Sarkozy (via allisonburtch)

[criticaltheoryoftechnology]

Not too often that a book about biology ends like this.

Biology Under the Influence: Dialectical Essays on Ecology Agriculture and Health, Richard Lewontin & Richard Levins

[criticaltheoryoftechnology]

Progress is not from qualitative to quantitative. Quantitative description of a system is not superior to qualitative understanding. When approaching complexity, it is not possible to measure "everything," plug it all into a model, and retrieve intelligible results. For one thing, "everything" is too big. Qualitative understanding is essential in establishing quantitative models. It intrudes into the interpretation of the results. The task of mathematics is to make the arcane obvious and even trivial. That is, it must educate the intuition so that confronted with a daunting complexity we can grasp the crucial features that determine its dynamics, know where to look for the features that make it what it is, suspect mainstream questions as well as answers.

Biology Under the Influence: Dialectical Essays on Ecology Agriculture and Health, Richard Lewontin & Richard Levins

[criticaltheoryoftechnology]

Thus a systems analysis of the regulation of blood sugar may include the interactions among sugar itself, insulin, adrenaline, cortisol, and other molecules but is unlikely to include anxiety, or the conditions that produce the anxiety such as the intensity of labor and the rate of using up of sugar reserves, whether or not the job allows a tired worker to rest or take a snack. Models of heart disease are likely to include cholesterol and the fats that are turned into cholesterol but not the social classes of the people in whom the cholesterol is formed and breaks down. Systems analysis would not know how to deal with the pancreas under capitalism or the adrenals in a racist workplace. Models of epidemics may include rates of reproduction of viruses and their transmission but not the social creation of a sense of agency that may allow people to take charge of their exposure and treatment.

Biology Under the Influence: Dialectical Essays on Ecology Agriculture and Health, Richard Lewontin & Richard Levins

[criticaltheoryoftechnology]

Radical defenders of science cannot defend science as it is. Instead, we have to come forward as critics both of liberal science and of its reactionary enemies. The present right-wing attack on science is part of a more general assault on liberalism, now that the demise of a worldwide socialist challenge makes liberalism unnecessary and intensified competition during a period of long-term stagnation makes liberalism seem too costly. Although its opposition to liberalism is opposition to the liberating aspects of that doctrine, the reactionary attack on liberalism often emphasizes the oppressive or ineffectual sides of liberalism. We have to call for opening up science to those who have been excluded, democratizing what is an authoritarian structure modeled on the corporation, and insist on the goal of a science aimed at the creation of a just society compatible with a rich and diverse nature. We should not hide behind but rather undermine the cult of expertise in favor of approaches that combine professional and nonprofessional participation. __The optimal condition for science is one foot in the university and one in the community in struggle__, so that we have the richness and complexity of theory coming from the particular and the comparative view, and generalizations that only some distance from the particular can provide. It also allows us to see the combination of cooperative and conflicting relations we have with our colleagues and ways in which political commitment challenges the shared common sense of professional communities.

Biology Under the Influence: Dialectical Essays on Ecology Agriculture and Health, Richard Lewontin & Richard Levins

[criticaltheoryoftechnology]

We should not pretend or aspire to a bland neutrality but proclaim as our working hypothesis: all theories are wrong that promote, justify, or tolerate injustice. We should not cover up or lament in private the triviality of so much published research but denounce that triviality as coming from the commodification of careers in scholarship and from the agendas of domination that rule out of order many of the really interesting questions. We should challenge the competitive individualism of science in favor of a cooperative effort to solve the real problems. We should reject the reductionist magic bullet strategy that serves commodified science in favor of respect for the complexity, connectedness, dynamism, historicity, and contradictoriness of the world. We should repudiate the aesthetics of technocratic control in favor of rejoicing in the spontaneity of the world, delighting in the incapacity of indexes to capture life, savoring the unexpected and anomalous, and seeking our success not in dominating what is really indomitable but in far-sighted, humane, and gentle responses to inevitable surprise. The best defense of science under reactionary attack is to insist on a science for the people.

Biology Under the Influence: Dialectical Essays on Ecology Agriculture and Health, Richard Lewontin & Richard Levins

[criticaltheoryoftechnology]

A radical critique of science extends also to the inner workings of the research process. In approaching a new problem, Marxism encourages me to ask two basic questions: Why are things the way they are instead of a little bit different, and why are things the way they are instead of very different? Here "things" has a double meaning, referring both to the objects of study and to the state of the science studying them. The Newtonian answer to the first question is that things are the way they are because nothing much is happening to them. But our answer is that things are the way they are because of the actions of opposing processes. This first question is that of the self-regulation of systems, of homeostasis. In the face of constantly displacing influences, how do things remain recognizably what they are? Once posed, it enters the domain of systems theory in the narrow sense, the mathematical modeling of complex systems. That discipline starts with a set of variables and their connections and applies equations to ask: Is the system stable? How quickly does it restore itself after perturbation? How much does it respond to permanent changes in its surroundings? How much change can it tolerate? It asks, when external events impinge on the system, how do they percolate through the whole network, being amplified along some pathways and diminished along others? We work with notions such as positive and negative feedback loops, pathways, connectivity, sinks, delays, reflecting and absorbing barriers. In its own terms, this analysis is "objective." But the variables themselves are social products.

Biology Under the Influence: Dialectical Essays on Ecology Agriculture and Health, Richard Lewontin & Richard Levins

[criticaltheoryoftechnology]

Marxist critique attempts to see science, in both its liberating and oppressing aspects and its powerful insights and militant blindnesses, as a commoditized expression of liberal European capitalist masculinist interests and ideologies organized to cope with real natural and social phenomena. Its ideology is both a product of European liberalism and a self-generated contribution to that ideology, not a mere passive reflection of it. Radical critiques of agriculture, medicine, genetics, economic development, and other areas of applied science point out both the external and internal aspects that limit science's ability to reach its stated goals. The external refers to science's social position as a knowledge industry, owned and directed for purposes of profit and power as guided by shared beliefs, carried out mostly by men.      The modes of recruitment into and exclusion from science, the various subdivisions into disciplines, the hidden boundary conditions restraining scientific inquiry become intelligible when we examine its social context. We can approach the dominant modalities of chemical therapy in medicine and farming as expressions of the commodification of knowledge by the chemical industry. But the reliance on molecular magic bullets is also congenial to the reductionist philosophy that has dominated European/North American science since its formation in the seventeenth century, and in turn is supported by the atomistic experience of bourgeois social life. (As we trace the connections, we see that "internal" and "external" are in fact not rigidly alternative explanations, another example of the general principle that there are no nontrivial, complete, and disjunct subdivisions of reality.      Yet science is still plagued by the false dichotomies of organism/environment, nature/nurture, deterministic/random, social/individual, psychological/physiological, hard/soft science, dependent/independent variables, and so on.) The internal refers to the reductionist, fragmented, decontextualized, mechanistic (as against holistic or dialectical) ideologies and liberal-conservative politics of science.      Marxist and other radical critics have always called for broadening the scope of investigations, placing them in historical context, recognizing the interconnectedness of phenomena and the priority of processes over things, whereas conservative ideology usually advocates elegant precision about narrowly circumscribed objects and accepting boundary conditions without even acknowledging them.

Biology Under the Influence: Dialectical Essays on Ecology Agriculture and Health, Richard Lewontin & Richard Levins

[criticaltheoryoftechnology]

Organisms do not experience or fit into an environment, they construct it.

Biology Under the Influence: Dialectical Essays on Ecology Agriculture and Health, Richard Lewontin & Richard Levins

[criticaltheoryoftechnology]

Nothing is more central to a dialectical understanding of nature than the realization that the conditions necessary for the coming into being of some state of the world may be destroyed by the very state of nature to which they gave rise. As it is in nature, so it is in the study of nature. Darwin's most powerful contribution to the development of modern biology was not his creation of a satisfactory theory of evolutionary mechanism. Rather, within that theory, it was his rigorous separation of internal and external forces that had, in previous theories, been inseparable.

Biology Under the Influence Dialectical Essays on Ecology Agriculture and Health, Richard Lewontin & Richard Levins