TED talks have increasingly gone the way of AI booster propaganda. But they still platform some great voices critical of Silicon Valley. Ruha Benjamin is one of them, and her talk here echoes a lot of what I said in "Move Fast & Break People" about the emptiness of Silicon Valley's utopia/dystopia visions, which both result in the people giving up power to technology. She advocates instead for UStopia (borrowed from Margaret Atwood), and collective intelligence over artificial intelligence.
Technology exists downstream of politics, social relations, and economics, and only through a transformation of these latter factors can we bring about tech that actually serves the people. To do this, we need to “stop policing the borders of our own imagination,” and remove ourselves from the ever-narrowing conception of the future offered by billionaires, entrepreneurs, tech-eugenicists, and boosters who uncritically accept an authoritarian top-down approach to technology.
watch video on watch page
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Come talk slop with me, next monday at 5pm CT. Click this link and then 'notify me' to be reminded via YouTube: youtube.com/live/I8o_Ff5Lqvk?feature=share
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When the circle-jerk of AI spending runs dry, when people wise up to the fact that OpenAI is running the grift of the century, what happens to the data centers?
The most likely use-case, I argue in this piece, is an entrenchment and expansion in surveillance and military tech. windblowncuriosities.substack.com/p/when-the-ai-bu…
Surveillance capitalism is the result of decisions made by the ultra-rich to control the masses. If we want a truly democratic society, if we want technology to be the liberatory force it was supposed to be (or at least not actively used to harm us), we need to exercise our power of refusal.
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DROWNING IN A SEA OF NOISE [NEW VIDEO]
Shortly after Charlie Kirk was shot, graphic video of the incident went viral and was seen by millions, most of whom never wanted to see it. Those like me who managed to avoid the video are nonetheless bombarded with images of brutality in the form of live-streamed genocide, mass starvation, and the brutalization of our neighbors by ICE to the point that we’ve become desensitized. The speed and intensity with which we see images of atrocity and violence is unprecedented and can bring up a lot of emotions: grief, anger, helplessness, anxiety, fear, loneliness.
Our response to the overwhelming chaos, by and large, is to accept our supposed powerlessness and turn our attention to the one thing we can control--ourselves. We seek individual solutions to individual problems, rather than addressing problems at the root. We might seek to cure our anxiety through substance abuse. We might pacify our helplessness with mindless consumption. We might direct our fear and anger against ourselves and each other. We might seek to answer loneliness in the vapid companionship of generative AI.
On the right, grifters and opportunists capitalize on these emotions by providing scapegoats: immigrants, trans people, the CCP, Antifa, and countless other manufactured threats. To be sure, there is some truth to their derision towards powerful people running the show, the media, and big pharma, but of course they never reckon with actually understanding, much less solving these issues.
On the left, as Byung-chul Han writes, “we are not inclined to revolution so much as depression.” We have been so thoroughly crushed by decades of repression and neoliberal policy (like union-busting) that our will to fight largely lies dormant. We watch the relentless rise of fascism, thinking, ‘someone oughta do something about this,’ and then scroll on. We speak in hushed tones about the revolution, scared that if we scream it might damage our personal brand.
We don’t dare relax. We don’t dare make room for stillness. Our rest becomes absorbed into capital and turned into a commodity. We don’t contemplate, we don’t linger; rather, we fill our time with distraction, scared of what might pop into our minds should we have truly free time. We are increasingly, desperately alone, isolated in online echo-chambers and spiraling deeper into the state of polarization that certain liberals told us Charlie Kirk was trying to bridge.
This video is about stillness, and the power that awaits those who wait. It’s about the importance of real rest as a means of rejuvenation so that you can survive to fight another day. It’s about granting yourself permission to grieve, permission to rest, and permission to be radically inactive. It’s a call to inaction, because only with periods of inactivity can we find the space for actually effective action.
FULL VIDEO, AD FREE AND EARLY: www.patreon.com/posts/drowning-in-sea-141717168
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Just saw something that made me gasp out loud (in a good way). Guillermo Del Toro's Frankenstein comes out November 7th !! From my research for the Pan's Labyrinth video, I know that Del Toro has a nuanced understanding of the creature and the tragedy of its story, so I expect the movie will be much more faithful to the novel than the 1931 film. I also think the creature design is going to be jaw dropping—I am specifically avoiding the trailer for this reason.
Real ones may know but my first real video on this channel was about Frankenstein (the book). It's a pretty bad video lmao but it's still up if you want to see the roots of the channel. I mayyyy just have to do a remaster, now that I know what I'm doing; I even have an angle in mind. If, that is, the film lives up to expectations, because I love Del Toro, but his bigger budget english language films have been pretty hit or miss. I have high hopes, though, seeing how passionate he is about Frankenstein.
Image: Bernie Wrightson's illustration of Frankenstein & the creature
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I was very excited to speak with one of my favorite tech journalists, Brian Merchant, in preparation for an upcoming video about, among other things, the Luddite uprising, Dune's "Butlerian jihad," and where we go from here in a world largely controlled by sociopathic tech billionaires.
Brian is the author of Blood In The Machine, a history of the early 1800s Luddite Uprising, and runs a tech newsletter of the same name. His book tells the true story of the first time machines came for human jobs—and how the Luddite uprising explains the power, threat, and toll of big tech and AI today. In our conversation, Brian and I dispel some misconceptions about the Luddites, mainly that they “hated” technology. What they hated was exploitation, and the factory owners who leveraged the power of new machinery to degrade their wages, deskill their labor, and devalue their work (sound familiar?).
It’s no coincidence that Brian is also one of the leading critics of generative AI, a massively overhyped technology that does a fraction of the things it claims to do. And yet, executives and bosses are buying the hype, shoving generative into workflows for which it makes no sense, and otherwise doing the exact same degradation of work that factory owners did in the Industrial Revolution. Brian explores this in an ongoing series’ on his blog is called AI Killed My Job; in each installment he dissects a different industry––translation, creative work, technology––and how the rollout of AI has affected each field of work. We talk about all of this in our conversation, and also, I should note that this was recorded the Friday after Charlie Kirk was killed, so naturally we have a discussion about that, as well.
I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation and look forward to sharing the supporting video. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this interview.
FULL INTERVIEW HERE: www.patreon.com/posts/should-we-w-140629043
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MICROSOFT DESERVES NO PRAISE, BUT...
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The tides are turning against Israel. It's a long time coming, and it's time to step up the pressure.
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On Thursday, September 25, the Guardian broke news that is equal parts historic as it is unsatisfactory. Microsoft, whose Azure Cloud services have been paramount to Israel’s nearly-2-year genocide campaign, has cut off Israeli spy agency Unit 8200 from accessing its cloud and AI services. According to the Guardian, Microsoft found that Unit 8200 was engaging in mass surveillance on Palestinians, collecting and storing on Azure millions of civilians’ phone calls per day.
This is a monumental win and signifies a turning of tides against Israel, but let’s be clear about one thing: Microsoft deserves no praise for making this decision. They literally had no other choice. Let me explain.
CONTINUE READING: windblowncuriosities.substack.com/p/microsoft-dese…
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This book opened my eyes to so much covered up history and systematic repression, and is essential reading for anyone looking to understand the deep deeeep racism and carceral violence in this country. Things make more sense having read it. RIP Assata.
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Best podcasts I've been listening to (+ some other updates)
Check out my latest post for a link to the playlist, and updates on the videos coming soon. Available for free and paid members on Patreon: www.patreon.com/posts/best-podcasts-to-139264946
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ON THE DANGERS OF APPEALING TO FASCISTS
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Liberal institutions are, once again, manufacturing consent for an authoritarian crackdown
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In the aftermath of right-wing political commentator Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Vice President JD Vance guest-hosted The Charlie Kirk Show from the White House. Vance interviewed a number of Trump administration staff and former friends of Kirk, including White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, Stephen Miller. After Miller remarked on his fond memories of Kirk, the conversation shifted to what is to be done.
Specifically, what is to be done about the “organized campaign that led to this assassination.” Miller and Vance say they want to “focus” their anger over Kirk’s death towards the goal of “uproot[ing] and dismantl[ing] these terrorist networks.” Miller goes into specifics on this supposed leftist network:
The organized doxxing campaigns, the organized riots, the organized street violence, the organized campaigns of dehumanization, villification, posting people’s addresses, combining that with messaging designed to trigger and incite violence, and the actual organized cells that carry out and facilitate the violence. It is a vast domestic terror movement, and with God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people. It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie’s name.
I don’t think I need to point out the irony of claiming the left is responsible for doxxing, dehumanization, villification, messaging that incites violence, and organized domestic terror cells. While Miller’s comments are chilling, I want to underscore that this repression campaign was already underway. Vance alluded to as much by asking Miller to expand on what they “have been” working on.
The Heritage Foundation’s “Project Esther,” published before Trump took office, designates Palestinian solidarity groups like Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), and countless others as part of a “global Hamas Support Network (HSN),” and recommends drastic measures to punish such organizations.
Shortly after Trump took office, he began implementing Project Esther’s ideas, revoking student visas and deporting activists who had criticized Israel, monitoring immigrants’ and visa applicants’ social media, withholding billions of dollars in grants to some of the country’s most prestigious research universities, and more. Further, the Trump admin has gone so far as to demand oversight or control over the curriculum of Columbia, Harvard, and the like.
The right-wing is undoubtedly exploiting Kirk’s death to intensify their repression campaign, but as writer and organizer Kelly Hayes wrote on Bluesky, if it wasn’t Kirk’s death it would be another manufactured crisis. She writes, “That’s why respectability policing—and thinking that if everyone moves and talks just so, they won’t be able to escalate—is magical thinking.”
CONTINUE READING: windblowncuriosities.substack.com/p/on-the-dangers…
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Joined 12 April 2024