It's really unfortunate that SSC is gone, and somewhat ironic that the death-knell was the attraction of a kind of heat spoken about in this specific article. It is disappointing to see how quickly the climate of so much of the public commons has become so weaponized, so corrosive to participate in without some kind of a psychic jumpsuit. Maybe it was inevitable, anyways, with the rise of centralized social media.
When I think about centralized social media, I think about an ultra-fine grain subdivision and liquidation of human social interaction into a digitally mediated and transparently priced attention economy. I see an infinite screen pixelated by individual smartphones manned by individual human beings, being driven by a PageRank algorithm like a display controller. To visualize something like that is to visualize an incredible feat of human engineering. But it is also to visualize an intrinsically uncanny valley and a hellish cacophony of synthesized speech and high-strung puppets.
Do you get the sense that all the interaction is ginned up to seem more compelling than it really is, that it's sort of an arms race. Well, maybe it is. Maybe it is the same cold war which never really ended, simply accelerated in a new era with new weapons, and of course horrific new ways to enact the same old brutalities.
When I think about centralized social media, I think about an ultra-fine grain subdivision and liquidation of human social interaction into a digitally mediated and transparently priced attention economy. I see an infinite screen pixelated by individual smartphones manned by individual human beings, being driven by a PageRank algorithm like a display controller. To visualize something like that is to visualize an incredible feat of human engineering. But it is also to visualize an intrinsically uncanny valley and a hellish cacophony of synthesized speech and high-strung puppets.
Do you get the sense that all the interaction is ginned up to seem more compelling than it really is, that it's sort of an arms race. Well, maybe it is. Maybe it is the same cold war which never really ended, simply accelerated in a new era with new weapons, and of course horrific new ways to enact the same old brutalities.