Well, that was cheery. Good stuff nonetheless. Attaching some reward – tangible, like video game progress, to arbitrary, like “streaks” – to everyday tasks like walking does seem to be in line with both the interests of tech companies who want you to integrate their product with your life and interact with it as much as possible, and with the interests of governments like China. Already the latter assigns “social credits” (or deducts them, if one is bold enough to object against the Chinese government online) to mundane chores like attending yoga sessions or visiting a relative. Like the author said, perhaps some mystique is overdue in our attitude towards human nature. Drop the behavioural psychology and freedom-damning neuroscience. Give us back the mysterious, unplumbed mind full of possibilities and staunchly untouched by the outside world. Paradoxically, we might just learn more about what it means to be human with that approach, anyways.
Well said. Though I’m not sure we have to totally drop the behavioural psychology. Some gamerfication in ones life can be both fun & useful. For example, when I do an online learning course, I love the points, levelling up & badges, and I think it helps me learn better, faster & with more enjoyment. But yes, the neuroscience should not be at the expense of the mysterious and the invsible world.
Jason Highley
1 year ago
Everything able to be data vacuumed will be commoditized. Humans will increasingly function mostly as robots for the elite who live in an entirely different reality. The sooner the elite can replace them with ACTUAL robots, the better in their minds.
I worry about this. A small part of me wonders if the current tensions being stoked up by US politics and media are really about gearing people up to attack groups with strong individualistic tendencies.
Adam Bartlett
1 year ago
Thanks for a stimulating article. Nietzsche’s take on “Know thyself” is interesting: “A thing known is a thing no longer of concern.” So “Know thyself” could be seen as an injunction to become objective and direct ones attention almost entirely to the outer world.
But for me Socrates meant it literally, or at least that was one of his intended meanings. He was an alchemist and as such practiced what is perhaps the only reliable set of methods to succeed at the undertaking, which involves a deep dive into the perilous unconscious. An undertaking that while involving an interior transformation, also brings down Heaven into Earth, and hence can benefit all people, and Nature herself. Sadly it’s an almost impossible task in the current age. Napoleon is said to have felt a calling to alchemy, but even back then it seemed easier to him to set out to conquer the external world, rather than face the realm within.
So a deep dive into the now neglected unconscious is not for everyone, unless they’re up for a major risk of wasted time at best and psychosis or death at worst. But all can benefit from looking after their unconscious a bit better. If your fitbit is saying you need a walk, try and take it in nature. And it doesnt have to be an ‘opportunity for reflection’, (which seems the common way left brained folk like to see it) but it can be a chance just to attend to nature and not consciously think at all, giving the unconscious a chance. The same with brief moments when one encounters unmetricised art. I guess I couldnt agree less about our proper selves being “grounded only in phenomenal consciousness, and following no rule.” But still an excellent article overall.
Dustshoe Richinrut
1 year ago
And at Christmas-time, when that old bard is singing and strumming his guitar, busking for change, in the metro, and he whispers “Merry Christmas” or “God Bless” to somebody who drops a coin into his cap, could he look forward to a “Merry Christmas to you, too” in return?
Maybe a tepid “And to you, too” to “God bless.” Maybe a harsh “Don’t mention it”? Maybe, heaven help us, “Happy Holidays” to the bard’s “Merry Christmas,” followed by a wan smile to the down-on-his luck entertainer.
Maybe the coin is the most important sign of genuine recognition. But then cash is frowned upon now and folk want to shed the cash.
AC Harper
1 year ago
Nope, not persuaded that the unmeasurable is some wonderful elixir that brings us back to our humanity. What is our humanity?
For all the limitations and risks of relying on materialism (and there are many as the article suggests) the idea of ‘proper selves’ grounded only in phenomenal consciousness is also limited and risky. Especially when the great and good set themselves up to guide the huddled masses to the glorious uplands.
Warren Trees
1 year ago
And to think that I was against “videoing” my wedding 35 years ago for the same reasons. Some things are meant to be preserved for the memory only. I still enjoy getting completely “lost” in a museum or antique store on a Saturday afternoon, completely oblivious to the outside world. I feel more human afterwards.
I no longer go on things like facebook, but when I did i was saddened by the people I know going on holiday and spending more time documenting it on facebook than actually enjoyIng it! I have gone away with my family and forgotten to take pictures because I was too busy enjoying the moment!
Julian Farrows
1 year ago
I don’t own a FitBit, but I do own an Apple Watch. While I recognize the author’s concerns, it has objectively made me fitter.
Julian — has it made you body fitter? Or the whole of you?
James Anthony Seyforth
1 year ago
Like Heidegger intimated the world has been ‘pictured’, we picture everything now, nothing is a real unfolding, everything is framed and copied even history itself; not that history doesn’t repeat, it does, but that we lack the imagination and distance to create properly new culture and history. Fukuyama was also right in that the ‘end of history’ would look something like the whole of the 21st century so far and that technological self-knowledge would not necessarily tell a more meaningful story than the past humanistic attempts. I.e. We might survive more easily in the 21C but perhaps not equally mean more, or feel more certain about who or what we are or what we are doing with ourselves. That can only come to those who entertain an integrated humanity instead of a reductionist humanity.
Richard Abbot
1 year ago
Knowledge of self is asymptotic, always expanding but never complete.
Data is not knowledge.
Knowledge of self is gained when behaviour is changed in light of experience, when the data is fed back in and applied.
There are no contradictions or mysteries here. Simply a lack of interest on the part of most people, together with an obsession with the idea of progress, a means by which people can pin responsibility for their life on a series of externalities.
Alan B
1 year ago
This excellent essay got me thinking along with it!
The oracle was Delphic after all. And Plato’s Apology draws out brilliantly the irony of Socrates’ “obedience” to the divine command to “know thyself”/”don’t tell me what to do”.
Also, the flip side of money colonizing art is art colonizing money: Kant’s “purposiveness without purpose” would seem to describe the NFT and the digital token (that is, its tokos), albeit in different senses.
Jeff Krinock
1 year ago
Two thoughts I wish you would have explored as well: 1) Aristotle did not list deliberation (i.e., choosing among weighable options) as a particularly good form of thinking. 2) St. Maximus the Confessor’s concept of gnomic willing seemed to at least parallel Aristotle’s viewpoint about deliberation.
For the thought of both of those men, quantification of everything (and, sadly, of everyone) is necessary for deliberative thought to work. St. Maximus contrasted gnomic willing with natural willing. The differences between those two forms of willing (or rather, the consequences of adopting one or the other as normative for the human condition) are astounding, imo.
Which is a very long way of saying that, yes, your Fitbit may indeed be in the process of stealing your soul.
Richard Ross
1 year ago
Re: those “rough and sweet airs of an old bard’s singing voice” – The once-universal view of humans as mysterious, half-divine *creatures* was bound to be replaced by a model of Man-as-Animal, once the Creator was removed from Creation. Now that even Nature has been atomized into her bits and bytes, dying in the process of dissection, we are left with the model of Man-as-Machine, and as usual the arts – particularly music – are ahead of most of society in illustrating that model. Music has become easy to create, wide-open, freely-accessible – and ultimately unsatisfying, as an overview of global music consumption shows.
But the human needs for *security* and *significance* remain, unsatisfied by any number of “likes” or social credit points. We hear the echo of our searching in those “rough and sweet airs” in the metro stations. But only the echo.
Paul Claireaux
1 year ago
Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.
William Bruce Cameron
Paul Claireaux
1 year ago
Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.
William Bruce Cameron
Aman Shukla
1 year ago
Seems like black mirror SS1 EP2 turning out to be real.
Bright X
1 year ago
I play the fit bit metric game. I am subject to countless algorithms and I consume many copies of art and engage in allographic pursuits. So what? Take self-knowledge to its proper ends and authenticity disappear along with the allographic. Trying to avoid algorithmic existence and pretend you are following along some kind of authentic existence is illusory in itself. The fit bit is just another tool. It helps me align my bodily feelings with bodily facts. Culture has warped my perceptions of myself. Advertising, subsidizing, and presentation of junky food has destroyed my body’s ability to make healthy choices. I had a warped sense of what it means to be healthy before the fit bit came along. The fit bit grounds me to some extent.
It seems like a straw man argument to make fit bits and other tools of healthy living out to be soul destroying pursuits. There is a reason the Buddha came along when he did, before fit bits and mass advertising. People have been suffering for eons. The fit bit and algorithms did not cause this. Like anything in life they can make us be too attached to them and we need to learn how to use them with mindfulness. It is hubris to assume that we can’t do this and that there is a way to view art that is better.
Simon Blanchard
10 months ago
My faith in my FitBit was dented somewhat when after having forgotten to put it back on after a shower, it nevertheless turned in a night’s worth of sleep-tracking data for me, the following morning.
Well, that was cheery. Good stuff nonetheless. Attaching some reward – tangible, like video game progress, to arbitrary, like “streaks” – to everyday tasks like walking does seem to be in line with both the interests of tech companies who want you to integrate their product with your life and interact with it as much as possible, and with the interests of governments like China. Already the latter assigns “social credits” (or deducts them, if one is bold enough to object against the Chinese government online) to mundane chores like attending yoga sessions or visiting a relative. Like the author said, perhaps some mystique is overdue in our attitude towards human nature. Drop the behavioural psychology and freedom-damning neuroscience. Give us back the mysterious, unplumbed mind full of possibilities and staunchly untouched by the outside world. Paradoxically, we might just learn more about what it means to be human with that approach, anyways.
Well said. Though I’m not sure we have to totally drop the behavioural psychology. Some gamerfication in ones life can be both fun & useful. For example, when I do an online learning course, I love the points, levelling up & badges, and I think it helps me learn better, faster & with more enjoyment. But yes, the neuroscience should not be at the expense of the mysterious and the invsible world.
Everything able to be data vacuumed will be commoditized. Humans will increasingly function mostly as robots for the elite who live in an entirely different reality. The sooner the elite can replace them with ACTUAL robots, the better in their minds.
I worry about this. A small part of me wonders if the current tensions being stoked up by US politics and media are really about gearing people up to attack groups with strong individualistic tendencies.
Thanks for a stimulating article. Nietzsche’s take on “Know thyself” is interesting: “A thing known is a thing no longer of concern.” So “Know thyself” could be seen as an injunction to become objective and direct ones attention almost entirely to the outer world.
But for me Socrates meant it literally, or at least that was one of his intended meanings. He was an alchemist and as such practiced what is perhaps the only reliable set of methods to succeed at the undertaking, which involves a deep dive into the perilous unconscious. An undertaking that while involving an interior transformation, also brings down Heaven into Earth, and hence can benefit all people, and Nature herself. Sadly it’s an almost impossible task in the current age. Napoleon is said to have felt a calling to alchemy, but even back then it seemed easier to him to set out to conquer the external world, rather than face the realm within.
So a deep dive into the now neglected unconscious is not for everyone, unless they’re up for a major risk of wasted time at best and psychosis or death at worst. But all can benefit from looking after their unconscious a bit better. If your fitbit is saying you need a walk, try and take it in nature. And it doesnt have to be an ‘opportunity for reflection’, (which seems the common way left brained folk like to see it) but it can be a chance just to attend to nature and not consciously think at all, giving the unconscious a chance. The same with brief moments when one encounters unmetricised art. I guess I couldnt agree less about our proper selves being “grounded only in phenomenal consciousness, and following no rule.” But still an excellent article overall.
And at Christmas-time, when that old bard is singing and strumming his guitar, busking for change, in the metro, and he whispers “Merry Christmas” or “God Bless” to somebody who drops a coin into his cap, could he look forward to a “Merry Christmas to you, too” in return?
Maybe a tepid “And to you, too” to “God bless.” Maybe a harsh “Don’t mention it”? Maybe, heaven help us, “Happy Holidays” to the bard’s “Merry Christmas,” followed by a wan smile to the down-on-his luck entertainer.
Maybe the coin is the most important sign of genuine recognition. But then cash is frowned upon now and folk want to shed the cash.
Nope, not persuaded that the unmeasurable is some wonderful elixir that brings us back to our humanity. What is our humanity?
For all the limitations and risks of relying on materialism (and there are many as the article suggests) the idea of ‘proper selves’ grounded only in phenomenal consciousness is also limited and risky. Especially when the great and good set themselves up to guide the huddled masses to the glorious uplands.
And to think that I was against “videoing” my wedding 35 years ago for the same reasons. Some things are meant to be preserved for the memory only. I still enjoy getting completely “lost” in a museum or antique store on a Saturday afternoon, completely oblivious to the outside world. I feel more human afterwards.
I no longer go on things like facebook, but when I did i was saddened by the people I know going on holiday and spending more time documenting it on facebook than actually enjoyIng it! I have gone away with my family and forgotten to take pictures because I was too busy enjoying the moment!
I don’t own a FitBit, but I do own an Apple Watch. While I recognize the author’s concerns, it has objectively made me fitter.
Julian — has it made you body fitter? Or the whole of you?
Like Heidegger intimated the world has been ‘pictured’, we picture everything now, nothing is a real unfolding, everything is framed and copied even history itself; not that history doesn’t repeat, it does, but that we lack the imagination and distance to create properly new culture and history. Fukuyama was also right in that the ‘end of history’ would look something like the whole of the 21st century so far and that technological self-knowledge would not necessarily tell a more meaningful story than the past humanistic attempts. I.e. We might survive more easily in the 21C but perhaps not equally mean more, or feel more certain about who or what we are or what we are doing with ourselves. That can only come to those who entertain an integrated humanity instead of a reductionist humanity.
Knowledge of self is asymptotic, always expanding but never complete.
Data is not knowledge.
Knowledge of self is gained when behaviour is changed in light of experience, when the data is fed back in and applied.
There are no contradictions or mysteries here. Simply a lack of interest on the part of most people, together with an obsession with the idea of progress, a means by which people can pin responsibility for their life on a series of externalities.
This excellent essay got me thinking along with it!
The oracle was Delphic after all. And Plato’s Apology draws out brilliantly the irony of Socrates’ “obedience” to the divine command to “know thyself”/”don’t tell me what to do”.
Also, the flip side of money colonizing art is art colonizing money: Kant’s “purposiveness without purpose” would seem to describe the NFT and the digital token (that is, its tokos), albeit in different senses.
Two thoughts I wish you would have explored as well: 1) Aristotle did not list deliberation (i.e., choosing among weighable options) as a particularly good form of thinking. 2) St. Maximus the Confessor’s concept of gnomic willing seemed to at least parallel Aristotle’s viewpoint about deliberation.
For the thought of both of those men, quantification of everything (and, sadly, of everyone) is necessary for deliberative thought to work. St. Maximus contrasted gnomic willing with natural willing. The differences between those two forms of willing (or rather, the consequences of adopting one or the other as normative for the human condition) are astounding, imo.
Which is a very long way of saying that, yes, your Fitbit may indeed be in the process of stealing your soul.
Re: those “rough and sweet airs of an old bard’s singing voice” – The once-universal view of humans as mysterious, half-divine *creatures* was bound to be replaced by a model of Man-as-Animal, once the Creator was removed from Creation. Now that even Nature has been atomized into her bits and bytes, dying in the process of dissection, we are left with the model of Man-as-Machine, and as usual the arts – particularly music – are ahead of most of society in illustrating that model. Music has become easy to create, wide-open, freely-accessible – and ultimately unsatisfying, as an overview of global music consumption shows.
But the human needs for *security* and *significance* remain, unsatisfied by any number of “likes” or social credit points. We hear the echo of our searching in those “rough and sweet airs” in the metro stations. But only the echo.
Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.
William Bruce Cameron
Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.
William Bruce Cameron
Seems like black mirror SS1 EP2 turning out to be real.
I play the fit bit metric game. I am subject to countless algorithms and I consume many copies of art and engage in allographic pursuits. So what? Take self-knowledge to its proper ends and authenticity disappear along with the allographic. Trying to avoid algorithmic existence and pretend you are following along some kind of authentic existence is illusory in itself. The fit bit is just another tool. It helps me align my bodily feelings with bodily facts. Culture has warped my perceptions of myself. Advertising, subsidizing, and presentation of junky food has destroyed my body’s ability to make healthy choices. I had a warped sense of what it means to be healthy before the fit bit came along. The fit bit grounds me to some extent.
It seems like a straw man argument to make fit bits and other tools of healthy living out to be soul destroying pursuits. There is a reason the Buddha came along when he did, before fit bits and mass advertising. People have been suffering for eons. The fit bit and algorithms did not cause this. Like anything in life they can make us be too attached to them and we need to learn how to use them with mindfulness. It is hubris to assume that we can’t do this and that there is a way to view art that is better.
My faith in my FitBit was dented somewhat when after having forgotten to put it back on after a shower, it nevertheless turned in a night’s worth of sleep-tracking data for me, the following morning.