A secret question hovers over us, a sense of disappointment, a broken promise we were given as children about what our adult world was supposed to be like. I am referring not to the standard false…
Before reading the article, i just have to say that technology has advanced hugely in the past 20 hears,
how? society has not moved and inch since the 80's. if technology was as transformative as it was in the past we'd see the 80's as a hopelessly antiquated time abyss instead of the last time mass culture created anything
This is just head in the sand doomerism. You’re deliberately ignoring the evidence of your own senses.
The internet has put the sum total of human knowledge in the palm of our hands. I have a universal translator in my pocket that I can point at a road sign or written document and see it translated in real time. These are changes that are fundamentally changing society the world over.
You could argue that the changes haven't been for the better, but the changes aren’t finished yet. These technological changes are causing social upheavals that likely wont be resolved for decades to come.
For the technologies that did emerge proved most conducive to surveillance, work discipline, and social control. Computers have opened up certain spaces of freedom, as we’re constantly reminded, but instead of leading to the workless utopia Abbie Hoffman imagined, they have been employed in such a way as to produce the opposite effect. They have enabled a financialization of capital that has driven workers desperately into debt, and, at the same time, provided the means by which employers have created “flexible” work regimes that have both destroyed traditional job security and increased working hours for almost everyone. Along with the export of factory jobs, the new work regime has routed the union movement and destroyed any possibility of effective working-class politics.
The Internet is a remarkable innovation, but all we are talking about is a super-fast and globally accessible combination of library, post office, and mail-order catalogue. Had the Internet been described to a science fiction aficionado in the fifties and sixties and touted as the most dramatic technological achievement since his time, his reaction would have been disappointment. Fifty years and this is the best our scientists managed to come up with? We expected computers that would think!
It's really so much more than that, though. Besides, the person I'm responding to said that technology hadn't advanced since the 1980s, and that's just not true.
I mean, there's more to it in that - as u/GenXen quoted - the internet has primarily brought about new ways of exerting social control, surveillance, marketing, financialization, and admin.
We all spend increasing amounts of time punching passwords into our phones to manage bank and credit accounts and learning how to perform jobs once performed by travel agents, brokers, and accountants
Graeber isn't saying that the internet isn't a technology that's developed, he's saying that it's been developed in forms that work against revolutionary or poetic activity. That's, like, the whole thesis. Unless you're suggesting that social media is actually good.
Fat load of good it's done, we don't even have brain computer interfaces or implantable drug glands or people with Iridescent skin because of gene editing
Unless I get to eat one and they taste super good it aint worth it. I can pet elephants already and they are way cooler because they're grey and grey is a fun color for an animal to be
Graeber really emphasizes in that article about the importance of “blue sky” research.
Doing cool shit for the sake of knowledge is exactly what we should be aiming for. Shouldn’t be all of our focus, but someone fascinated in wooly mammoths should be able to run with that.
same. At this point I read Peter Watts books and go "WOW Cool Future!" because at least that has cyborgs and brain implants that eliminate the need for sleep
Part of the answer has to do with the concentration of resources on a handful of gigantic projects: “big science,” as it has come to be called. The Human Genome Project is often held out as an example. After spending almost three billion dollars and employing thousands of scientists and staff in five different countries, it has mainly served to establish that there isn’t very much to be learned from sequencing genes that’s of much use to anyone else. Even more, the hype and political investment surrounding such projects demonstrate the degree to which even basic research now seems to be driven by political, administrative, and marketing imperatives that make it unlikely anything revolutionary will happen.
how? society has not moved and inch since the 80’s
lol I love how cranky this take is. I’m not going to go and list all the tech advancements and medical breakthroughs that have occurred because it would honestly be a waste of time.
You’re delusional (and likely privileged) if you really believe that we haven’t advanced technology, culture, and society at all.
Technology has advanced hugely. What the predictions of the 50s and 60s got wrong is the notion that those advances would be working to improve the lives of the average person. The sophistication of the algorithms running Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Amazon are truly staggering, and are leagues ahead of what was possible even at the turn of the century (much less 50 years before that). The issue is not that we haven't advanced--it's that all those advancements have been turned to the purpose of enhancing capital, exploiting normal people, and generally making the lives of everyone except the ultra-rich much, much worse. We live in an age of wonders, but those wonders ain't for you.
how? society has not moved and inch since the 80's. if technology was as transformative as it was in the past we'd see the 80's as a hopelessly antiquated time abyss instead of the last time mass culture created anything
This is just head in the sand doomerism. You’re deliberately ignoring the evidence of your own senses.
The internet has put the sum total of human knowledge in the palm of our hands. I have a universal translator in my pocket that I can point at a road sign or written document and see it translated in real time. These are changes that are fundamentally changing society the world over.
You could argue that the changes haven't been for the better, but the changes aren’t finished yet. These technological changes are causing social upheavals that likely wont be resolved for decades to come.
It's really so much more than that, though. Besides, the person I'm responding to said that technology hadn't advanced since the 1980s, and that's just not true.
I mean, there's more to it in that - as u/GenXen quoted - the internet has primarily brought about new ways of exerting social control, surveillance, marketing, financialization, and admin.
Graeber isn't saying that the internet isn't a technology that's developed, he's saying that it's been developed in forms that work against revolutionary or poetic activity. That's, like, the whole thesis. Unless you're suggesting that social media is actually good.
I'm not arguing with Graeber, I'm arguing with OP.
This is a boomer-tier understanding of the internet and technology lol
We went from full genome DNA testing costing 100 million dollars in 2001 to $1,000 today.
Fat load of good it's done, we don't even have brain computer interfaces or implantable drug glands or people with Iridescent skin because of gene editing
We now have the full genome of over a dozen Neanderthals.
If we wanted to we could bring them back like they plan to do with the wooly mammoths.
but like, how does that make my life better
You get to pet a woolly mammoth
Unless I get to eat one and they taste super good it aint worth it. I can pet elephants already and they are way cooler because they're grey and grey is a fun color for an animal to be
Graeber really emphasizes in that article about the importance of “blue sky” research.
Doing cool shit for the sake of knowledge is exactly what we should be aiming for. Shouldn’t be all of our focus, but someone fascinated in wooly mammoths should be able to run with that.
Come on science, I want plant skin already. 😩
same. At this point I read Peter Watts books and go "WOW Cool Future!" because at least that has cyborgs and brain implants that eliminate the need for sleep
lol I love how cranky this take is. I’m not going to go and list all the tech advancements and medical breakthroughs that have occurred because it would honestly be a waste of time.
You’re delusional (and likely privileged) if you really believe that we haven’t advanced technology, culture, and society at all.
Removed by mod
You’re watching the wrong kind of movies and need a better hook up for your drugs.
Technology has advanced hugely. What the predictions of the 50s and 60s got wrong is the notion that those advances would be working to improve the lives of the average person. The sophistication of the algorithms running Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Amazon are truly staggering, and are leagues ahead of what was possible even at the turn of the century (much less 50 years before that). The issue is not that we haven't advanced--it's that all those advancements have been turned to the purpose of enhancing capital, exploiting normal people, and generally making the lives of everyone except the ultra-rich much, much worse. We live in an age of wonders, but those wonders ain't for you.