posted
  • place: Cedaredge, Colorado

pulling plugs

Can you make a harsh illustration about leaving Twitter because of its toxicity?

I finally pulled the plug on Twaddle, aka eX, deleting my account last month. Long overdue, and I would call on anyone else who is still propping up one of the least socially-conscious oligarchs on the planet to cease-and-desist. Meanwhile, I’ll cheer that misfit on to Mars. As for the rest of them, well, let them eat cake.

Back in the ‘aughts’ I routinely early-adopted social media platforms to maintain current experience for my teaching on what was then still called “new media”. A decade into the World-Wide-Web, 2003 or so, Web 2.0 had arrived, signaling the evolution of general ‘interactive’ web platforms that allowed for user-driven and collaborative experiences. Web 2.0 transformed the internet from a generally static platform into a space where users could dynamically create and share content, but its rise also brought about critical (social, behavioral, personal) concerns that I explored in many of my workshops and lectures. This era’s defining features—social media, user-generated content, and algorithms that tailor information, and now AI—have amplified both personal expression and misinformation, often blurring the lines between fact and opinion. While Web 2.0 promised a democratized digital space, it has led to powerful tech companies amassing vast troves of user data, raising privacy issues and consolidating control over information flow, features almost completely unregulated in the US. Surveillance Capitalism anyone? Algorithms designed to maximize engagement have also been criticized for promoting social echo chambers and polarizing content, contributing to social divides. It’s all about eyeballs in the ‘attention economy‘. Through their perversely inverted efforts to be user-centered, the oligarchs of Web fostered a landscape where manipulation, privacy concerns, and misinformation are increasingly prevalent: it’s user-centered alright, but the user is merely the object of extracted wealth.

Yup, here we are. I hadn’t been active on Twaddle for some years aside from attention paid to the CGS work account up until last year, and a very occasional glance at my feed. It was functional for a time, but the ‘new ownership’ indeed sent it to 100% shit, stimulating the departure. The entire arc of evolution completely confirmed my hypothesis how those who control a communications protocol control both the form(s) and content of the communications occurring. Not only that, but the protocol and its ‘owner’ actually tap off a certain amount of power—real social power—from those using the platform. The X possessor is a case in point, and a case that threatens the stability of the social system. I long ago departed from FazeBuch (2010) and mostly from InstaHam (still have an account but don’t post and rarely look at it).

What about BlueSky and Mastodon? They provide more direct user control without a central governing entity. Back to distributed models versus centralized models: a deep conflict that’s been raging since computing began!

Of course, in the end, there is no privacy left in the US social sphere. What you consume—from food to media, everything; where you go; who you communicate with; what you say; what you do; how much money you have; what medical issues you have; where you work; what you studied; your interests and beliefs; your voting history; your criminal and court records; ad infinitum …

Not only that, all those terabytes of data are subpoenable in a court of law: What’s your level of confidence in the justice system in the US these days?

On the related topic of concentration of wealth, that this infographic is more than ten years out of date makes it even more disturbing:

posted
  • place: Cedaredge, Colorado

Windigo thinking

Cripple Creek & Victor Gold Mine, Victor, Colorado, September ©2011 hopkins/neoscenes.
Cripple Creek & Victor Gold Mine, Victor, Colorado, September ©2011 hopkins/neoscenes.
The fear for me is far greater than just acknowledging the Windigo within. The fear for me is that the world has been turned inside out, the dark side made to seem light. Indulgent self-interest that our people once held to be monstrous is now celebrated as success. We are asked to admire what our people viewed as unforgivable. The consumption-driven mind-set masquerades as “quality of life” but eats us from within. It is as if we’ve been invited to a feast, but the table is laid with food that nourishes only emptiness, the black hole of the stomach that never fills. We have unleashed a monster.

Ecological economists argue for reforms that would ground economics in ecological principles and the constraints of thermodynamics. They urge the embrace of the radical notion that we must sustain natural capital and ecosystem services if we are to maintain quality of life. But governments still cling to the neoclassical fallacy that human consumption has no consequences. We continue to embrace economic systems that prescribe infinite growth on a finite planet, as if somehow the universe had repealed the laws of thermodynamics on our behalf. Perpetual growth is simply not compatible with natural law, and yet a leading economist like Lawrence Summers, of Harvard, the World Bank, and the U.S. National Economic Council, issues such statements as, “There are no limits to the carrying capacity of the earth that are likely to bind at any time in the foreseeable future. The idea that we should put limits on growth because of some natural limit is a profound error.” Our leaders willfully ignore the wisdom and the models of every other species on the planet—except of course those that have gone extinct. Windigo thinking.

Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. New York: Milkweed Editions, 2013.
posted

Experimental Conviction

Long life is one of the greatest Blessings that we Mortals can enjoy; it being what all Men naturally desire and wish for. Nay, when Men are come to the longest Date, they desire yet to live a little longer. But, however, Health is that which sweetens all our other Enjoyments, without which the longest Life would be no more than a living Death, and render us burdensome to our selves, and troublesome to all about us.

But though Life be so desirous, and Health so great a Blessing, yet how much is both the one and the other undervalued, by the greatest Part of Mankind? Whatever they may think or say of the inestimableness of those precious Jewels, yet ’tis plain, by their Practice, that they put the Slight upon, and despise them both; and the most Man are hardly sensible of the worth of Health, ’till they come in good Earnest to be deprived of it.

How many Men do we daily see, by their Intemperance and Excess, to lay the Seeds of future Distempers, which either carry them off in the flower of their Age, which is the Case of most or else render their Old Age, if they do arrive to it, uneasy and uncomfortable? And though we see others daily drop into the Grave before us, and are very apt with Justice to ascribe the Loss of our Friends, to their living too fast, yet we cannot forbear treading in the same Steps, and following the same Courses, ’till at last, by a violent and unnatural Death, we are hurried off the Stage of Life after them.

What the Noble Cornaro observes of the Italians of his Time, may very well be applied to this Nation at present, viz. “That we are not contented with a plain Bill of Fare; that we ransack the Elements of Earth, Air, and Water, for all sorts of Creatures to gratify our wanton and luxurious Appetites: That as if our Tables were too narrow and short to hold our Provisions, we heap them up upon one another. And lastly, That to create a false Appetite, we rack our Cook’s inventions for new Sauces and Provocations to make the superfluous Morsel go down with the greatest Gust.”

This is not any groundless Observation, but it carries an Experimental Conviction along with it. Look into all our publick Entertainments and Feasts, and see whether Luxury and Intemperance be not too predominant in them. Men, upon such Occasions, think it justifiable to give themselves the Loose, to eat heartily, and to drink deeply; and many think themselves not welcome, or well entertained, if the Master of the Feast be so wise as not to not give them an Occasion of losing the MAN, and assuming the BEAST.

Cornaro, Luigi. Sure and Certain Methods of Attaining a Long and Healthful Life. London, UK: Daniel Midwinter, 1722.
posted
  • place: Earth

mull on this

Year
World Population
 Yearly
Change		 Net
Change		 Density
(P/Km²)
2023 8,045,311,447 0.88 % 70,206,291 54
2022 7,975,105,156 0.83 % 65,810,005 54
2021 7,909,295,151 0.87 % 68,342,271 53
2020 7,840,952,880 0.98 % 76,001,848 53
2019 7,764,951,032 1.06 % 81,161,204 52
2018 7,683,789,828 1.10 % 83,967,424 52
2017 7,599,822,404 1.15 % 86,348,166 51
2016 7,513,474,238 1.17 % 86,876,701 50
2015 7,426,597,537 1.19 % 87,584,118 50
2014 7,339,013,419 1.22 % 88,420,049 49
2013 7,250,593,370 1.24 % 88,895,449 49
2012 7,161,697,921 1.25 % 88,572,496 48
2011 7,073,125,425 1.25 % 87,522,320 47
2010 6,985,603,105 1.27 % 87,297,197 47
2009 6,898,305,908 1.27 % 86,708,636 46
2008 6,811,597,272 1.27 % 85,648,728 46
2007 6,725,948,544 1.27 % 84,532,326 45
2006 6,641,416,218 1.27 % 83,240,099 45
2005 6,558,176,119 1.27 % 82,424,641 44
2004 6,475,751,478 1.28 % 81,853,113 43
2003 6,393,898,365 1.29 % 81,491,005 43
2002 6,312,407,360 1.31 % 81,660,378 42
2001 6,230,746,982 1.33 % 81,848,007 42

more “mull on this”