Social media’s turbocharging of humanity’s hive-mind tendencies should not entirely blind us to more positive aspects of the digital age. Whatever failings can be levelled at Google (particularly its recent Leftist ideological capture), the invention of the search engine thirty-odd years ago has been an absolute marvel for those able to maintain an intellectual balance between curiosity and scepticism., Previously (ie pre-internet), being even baseline ‘well-informed’ required obsessive curiosity and legwork (searching in libraries etc).
But it’s also been disastrously disorienting for others… especially the very young. And it has created a different problem for the grown-up would-be informed citizen. The gigantic ‘supply’ of digital information/disinformation coming at you now greatly exceeds both the demand for it and one’s ability to properly process it. Digitised mass media – and more especially social media – has deluged people with an ‘information’ overload of a scale that even the most informed struggle to intelligently parse and filter. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/the-madness-of-intelligentsias
Sounds a bit AI, doesn’t it? Equivocation/double speak.
It’s an “if by whiskey” argument; like the one originally delivered by Judge “Soggy” Sweat in the Mississippi Legislature, 1952. Google it!
The question is: Which side do you stand on?
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago
Libertarians are anything but sinister. And Zuckerberg is and always will be a creepy parasite. His business model is fundamentally parasitic.
Alex Lekas
1 month ago
Interesting. When the tech world was the domain of the left, I do not recall articles like this. Until the release of the Twitter files, I recall people being on board with the govt outsourcing censorship to these platforms and anyone who objected being told to build their own. Now, it’s subversive and sinister.
The MSM used to regularly reference things trending on Twitter as part of their reporting on an issue. Of course that was as when it was a left wing cesspit. Now it’s a right wing cesspit it is only ever mentioned in the MSM as either loss making or in some Elon hit piece.
El Uro
1 month ago
“The tech discourse has tipped over from mere libertarianism toward something far more grandiose and sinister, namely accelerationism, predicting (and encouraging) the agglomeration of all intelligence into a post-human singularity” – Can someone explain this sentence to me?
I take it to be a reference to a far-reaching idea that homo sapiens is to be eventually replaced by a more rational entity of some kind. It’s a sort of evolutionary hypothesis, sort of 2001: A Space Odyssey sort of thing, but not to be taken as a trivial cliche, but a simple evolutionary outcome.
This idea should not be discarded out-of-hand, I think.
I do not think it is a minor quibble – it goes to the essence of the notion. It means “I will be the emperor of the world, or I will be nothing”, meaning “I want to be emperor of the world, and if I cannot be that, then I might as well be dead.”
Zuckerberg is not content with being an oligarch, one of the few. He wants to be the one and only.
All in all, a truly endearing personality, very much in touchy-feely line with democracy.
Cantab Man
1 month ago
Humans are far too complex for the current so-called Oracles of Tech Delphi to proclaim they truly “know” someone (i.e. the person’s current and future selves) from their collected and rudimentary surface data, or to proclaim from their Tech temples that their Tech companies facilitate true communication to become “One” as a society.
In partnering with powerful and wealthy progressive activists, the Tech giants weaponized their data by allowing the data to be measured using highly simplistic progressive Intersectionality grids (based on immutable characteristics) to give these progressives the unimpeded and unprecedented power to determine the ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ in society based on these immutable surface characteristics.
These wealthy progressive activists use this power not to enable transparent communication to become One as a society, but to act in secret unilateral and asymmetrical warfare to affect devastation and destruction upon the lives of their designated enemies – the ‘losers’ – while avoiding all communication with them so that there is no viable organized defense by those who are unfairly judged by their immutable characteristics.
Thus, someone can be fired from their job because their data signify that they are a ‘straight, white, christian, male colonizer’ with absolutely no regard for the content of their character or their merit (i.e. who they really are that’s not just skin-deep or at a rudimentarily surface level), nor by considering whether that ‘straight, white christian, male, colonizer’ may have children who are officially designated as BIPOC by using the same Intersectionality grids for measurement purposes.
This last point also highlights the hypocrisy of the current progressive movement. They may say they merely fired the ‘straight, white, christian, male colonizer,’ but if, for example, that male has children who are Native American through his spouse’s side, the progressive activists actually stole the future from those Native American children by ensuring the family’s father has no income to give his children opportunities gained by their father’s merit to help these children succeed in their lives. And because most Americans have mixed heritage through marriage, the progressive movement has evidenced itself to be all about gaining advantage for the current generation in power … it’s not about furthering opportunity for victimized people.
The sad reality is that many Tech companies have shaken hands with the devil when they threw their lot in with progressive bigots who use Intersectionality grids, not to help a victimized people but to selfishly burnish their own careers and attainments often through victimizing of innocent people and the very groups of people they claim to care about.
Paul Rodolf
1 month ago
If Zuck truly stands up to the “Evil Empire” aka the neo-Cons in their latest form of the Biden/Harris administration, then I will gladly create an Instagram account.
Benedict Waterson
1 month ago
Nmkl
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago
Which Caesar do you have in mind- Caligula?
Kiddo Cook
1 month ago
This is why “Trans” is so well funded by big tech, all part of accelerationism……
Main Edition
US
FR
Social media’s turbocharging of humanity’s hive-mind tendencies should not entirely blind us to more positive aspects of the digital age. Whatever failings can be levelled at Google (particularly its recent Leftist ideological capture), the invention of the search engine thirty-odd years ago has been an absolute marvel for those able to maintain an intellectual balance between curiosity and scepticism., Previously (ie pre-internet), being even baseline ‘well-informed’ required obsessive curiosity and legwork (searching in libraries etc).
But it’s also been disastrously disorienting for others… especially the very young. And it has created a different problem for the grown-up would-be informed citizen. The gigantic ‘supply’ of digital information/disinformation coming at you now greatly exceeds both the demand for it and one’s ability to properly process it. Digitised mass media – and more especially social media – has deluged people with an ‘information’ overload of a scale that even the most informed struggle to intelligently parse and filter. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/the-madness-of-intelligentsias
So what exactly are you saying?
Sounds a bit AI, doesn’t it? Equivocation/double speak.
It’s an “if by whiskey” argument; like the one originally delivered by Judge “Soggy” Sweat in the Mississippi Legislature, 1952. Google it!
The question is: Which side do you stand on?
Libertarians are anything but sinister. And Zuckerberg is and always will be a creepy parasite. His business model is fundamentally parasitic.
Interesting. When the tech world was the domain of the left, I do not recall articles like this. Until the release of the Twitter files, I recall people being on board with the govt outsourcing censorship to these platforms and anyone who objected being told to build their own. Now, it’s subversive and sinister.
The MSM used to regularly reference things trending on Twitter as part of their reporting on an issue. Of course that was as when it was a left wing cesspit. Now it’s a right wing cesspit it is only ever mentioned in the MSM as either loss making or in some Elon hit piece.
“The tech discourse has tipped over from mere libertarianism toward something far more grandiose and sinister, namely accelerationism, predicting (and encouraging) the agglomeration of all intelligence into a post-human singularity” – Can someone explain this sentence to me?
I take it to be a reference to a far-reaching idea that homo sapiens is to be eventually replaced by a more rational entity of some kind. It’s a sort of evolutionary hypothesis, sort of 2001: A Space Odyssey sort of thing, but not to be taken as a trivial cliche, but a simple evolutionary outcome.
This idea should not be discarded out-of-hand, I think.
It’s the definition of fascism.
A minor quibble, but “aut Caesar aut nihil” means “either Caesar or nothing,” not “all Caesar all nothing.” The latter doesn’t really make sense.
I do not think it is a minor quibble – it goes to the essence of the notion. It means “I will be the emperor of the world, or I will be nothing”, meaning “I want to be emperor of the world, and if I cannot be that, then I might as well be dead.”
Zuckerberg is not content with being an oligarch, one of the few. He wants to be the one and only.
All in all, a truly endearing personality, very much in touchy-feely line with democracy.
Humans are far too complex for the current so-called Oracles of Tech Delphi to proclaim they truly “know” someone (i.e. the person’s current and future selves) from their collected and rudimentary surface data, or to proclaim from their Tech temples that their Tech companies facilitate true communication to become “One” as a society.
In partnering with powerful and wealthy progressive activists, the Tech giants weaponized their data by allowing the data to be measured using highly simplistic progressive Intersectionality grids (based on immutable characteristics) to give these progressives the unimpeded and unprecedented power to determine the ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ in society based on these immutable surface characteristics.
These wealthy progressive activists use this power not to enable transparent communication to become One as a society, but to act in secret unilateral and asymmetrical warfare to affect devastation and destruction upon the lives of their designated enemies – the ‘losers’ – while avoiding all communication with them so that there is no viable organized defense by those who are unfairly judged by their immutable characteristics.
Thus, someone can be fired from their job because their data signify that they are a ‘straight, white, christian, male colonizer’ with absolutely no regard for the content of their character or their merit (i.e. who they really are that’s not just skin-deep or at a rudimentarily surface level), nor by considering whether that ‘straight, white christian, male, colonizer’ may have children who are officially designated as BIPOC by using the same Intersectionality grids for measurement purposes.
This last point also highlights the hypocrisy of the current progressive movement. They may say they merely fired the ‘straight, white, christian, male colonizer,’ but if, for example, that male has children who are Native American through his spouse’s side, the progressive activists actually stole the future from those Native American children by ensuring the family’s father has no income to give his children opportunities gained by their father’s merit to help these children succeed in their lives. And because most Americans have mixed heritage through marriage, the progressive movement has evidenced itself to be all about gaining advantage for the current generation in power … it’s not about furthering opportunity for victimized people.
The sad reality is that many Tech companies have shaken hands with the devil when they threw their lot in with progressive bigots who use Intersectionality grids, not to help a victimized people but to selfishly burnish their own careers and attainments often through victimizing of innocent people and the very groups of people they claim to care about.
If Zuck truly stands up to the “Evil Empire” aka the neo-Cons in their latest form of the Biden/Harris administration, then I will gladly create an Instagram account.
Nmkl
Which Caesar do you have in mind- Caligula?
This is why “Trans” is so well funded by big tech, all part of accelerationism……