#on technology

[daydreamerdrew]

It’s All For U (If U Rlly Want It)

woven jacquard, glass seed beads and machine embroidery

59 x 85 1/2 in

2024

Waiting to Exhale

woven jacquard and glass seed beads

2022

Qualeasha Wood

[poeteunoia]

i'm not a robot

Sources: Dalai Lama / Tumblr / Ollie Jones: Intruder/ Flower Face: The Garden / EXO: MAMA / Pinterest / Serial Experiments Lain / MARINA: I'm Not A Robot

[physics-dirtbag]

“I think one of the reasons that I feel empty after watching a lot of TV, and one of the things that makes TV seductive, is that it gives the illusion of relationships with people. It's a way to have people in the room talking and being entertaining, but it doesn't require anything of me. I mean, I can see them, they can't see me. And, and, they're there for me, and I can, I can receive from the TV, I can receive entertainment and stimulation. Without having to give anything back but the most tangential kind of attention. And that is very seductive.

The problem is it's also very empty. Because one of the differences about having a real person there is that number one, I've gotta do some work. Like, he pays attention to me, I gotta pay attention to him. You know: I watch him, he watches me. The stress level goes up. But there's also, there's something nourishing about it, because I think like as creatures, we've all got to figure out how to be together in the same room.

And so TV is like candy in that it's more pleasurable and easier than the real food. But it also doesn't have any of the nourishment of real food. And the thing, what the book is supposed to be about is, What has happened to us, that I'm now willing--and I do this too--that I'm willing to derive enormous amounts of my sense of community and awareness of other people, from television? But I'm not willing to undergo the stress and awkwardness and potential shit of dealing with real people.

And that as the Internet grows, and as our ability to be linked up, like--I mean, you and I coulda done this through e-mail, and I never woulda had to meet you, and that woulda been easier for me. Right? Like, at a certain point, we're gonna have to build some machinery, inside our guts, to help us deal with this. Because the technology is just gonna get better and better and better and better. And it's gonna get easier and easier, and more and more convenient, and more and more pleasurable, to be alone with images on a screen, given to us by people who do not love us but want our money. Which is all right. In low doses, right? But if that's the basic main staple of your diet, you're gonna die. In a meaningful way, you're going to die.”

- David Foster Wallace

[stargir1z]

soft coercion, the city, and the recorded female voice by nina power 

[pikslasrce]

CYBER LOVE IN AN ANXIOUS AGE

big dater, big data (ft joywave) // studying online-love and cyber-romance, nicola döring // when you're bored, joywave // x // stay awake?, bastille // love online: emotions on the internet, aaron ben-ze'ev // stay awake?, bastille // oil on water, bastille // oh no!, marina // oil on water, bastille // heart of glass (compassion), hedi xandt // holding hands, daniel arsham + hajime sorayama // dreamland, glass animals // cyberlove: creating romantic relationships on the net, malin sveningsson // x // plug in..., bastille // love online: emotions on the internet, aaron ben-ze'ev // comfort of strangers, bastille // like real people do, hozier

[tamsoj]

I think they’ll use sounds and tones and music and use it in their virtual reality machines. And just listen to it that way and get the same emotions from it. And then go to a party. There’ll be a virtual reality machine there with a whole bunch of headphones and if you wanna talk to people and listen to the virtual reality machine you can do that and go into the other bedroom and fuck and drink and… but actually I think virtual reality machines will get you high. Technology will be that good. And then there’ll be like virtual reality junkies lying there dead on their couch from OD’ing.

Kurt Cobain to Michael Azerrad in an interview from 1992 or 1993, in Kurt Cobain: About a Son

[sinhronicitet]

"Psychologists who study empathy and compassion are finding that, unlike our almost instantaneous responses to physical pain, it takes time for the brain to comprehend “the psychological and moral dimensions of a situation”. Simply put, the more distracted we become, and the more emphasis we place on speed at the expense of depth – redefining “text” from what fills the hundreds of pages of a novel, to a line of words and emoticons on a phone’s screen – the less likely and able we are to care. [...] But technologies are not only effective at achieving or thwarting the aims of those who encounter them, but are affective. Technology is not strictly technical. “I love you” – the same “I love you” issuing from the same person with the same sincerity and depth – will resonate differently over the phone than in a handwritten letter, than in a text message. [...] Most of our communication technologies began as substitutes for an impossible activity. [...] But then a funny thing happened: we began to prefer the diminished substitutes. It’s easier to make a phone call than to make the effort to see someone in person. Leaving a message on someone’s machine is easier than having a phone conversation – you can say what you need to say without a response; it’s easier to check in without becoming entangled. [...] Each step “forward” has made it easier – just a little – to avoid the emotional work of being present, to convey information rather than humanity.

The problem with accepting – with preferring – diminished substitutes is that, over time, we too become diminished substitutes. People who become used to saying little become used to feeling little. Or just feeling what’s been designed and sold to us to feel. [...] We often use technology to save time, but increasingly, it either takes the saved time along with it, or makes the saved time less present, intimate and rich. I worry that the closer the world gets to our fingertips, the further it gets from our hearts. It’s not an either/or situation – being “anti-technology” is perhaps the only thing more foolish than being unquestioningly “pro-technology” – but a question of balance that our lives hang upon."

- Jonathan Safran Foer: technology is diminishing us