The Convivial Society, No. 12
"Just as the commons of space are vulnerable, and can be destroyed by the motorization of traffic, so the commons of speech are vulnerable, and can easily be destroyed by the encroachment of modem means of communication .... The issue which I propose for discussion should therefore be clear: how to counter the encroachment of new, electronic devices and systems upon commons that are more subtle and more intimate to our being than either grassland or roads - commons that are at least as valuable as silence. Silence, according to western and eastern tradition alike, is necessary for the emergence of persons. It is taken from us by machines that ape people. We could easily be made increasingly dependent on machines for speaking and for thinking, as we are already dependent on machines for moving."
— Ivan Illich, "Silence Is A Commons"
I'd written a few paragraphs to open up this over-due newsletter, but horrendous evil flashes across your screen and whatever you had in mind to say seems trivial and banal. What can one possibly say when 50 people are shot down mercilessly in their place of worship? It seems to me that there is, initially at least, a speechlessness that is entirely appropriate in response. Such silence is a beginning not an end. It is an incubator of action.
The media ecosystem within which we tend operate, however, tends to undermine such silence. At the very least, it makes it very difficult to practice. I was first struck by the force of this compulsion to exist by speaking in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shooting several years ago. I learned about that tragedy, as so many did, when I logged on to Twitter. I suddenly felt the urge to say something, and immediately thereafter realized that such an urge was really a temptation. I was tempted by the rhetorical context, one in which I exist and am taken notice of only in the act of communicating. If I am alone, I would feel no urge to speak, except perhaps in prayer, and even then words fail. If I were in the presence of another, our silence would "say" enough, it would be meaningful, accompanied perhaps by an embrace or hands held against the sorrow. On social media, I am neither alone nor in anyone's presence. My silence would convey nothing, it would be meaning-less. To be silent is to cease to exist, to be unregarded, unnoticed.
This is only one way to understand the relationship between social media and tragedies such as the Christchurch massacres. More starkly than ever before, or so it seems, this evil was optimized for virality and was born out of the matrix of the dark web. Ian Bogost wrote perceptively about this reality and its apparent inevitability and its nihilistic quality. I don't have much to add to Bogost's analysis. I did, however, think of how Arendt (in)famously spoke of the banality of evil in the context of her reflections on the meaning Adolf Eichmann's crimes.
Arendt was trying to understand the unique character which evil took in the twentieth century. Something about the evil she witnessed defied conventional and inherited understandings. Whether Eichmann is actually a case in point of the banality of evil as Arendt described it has been vigorously debated. But whatever we make of Eichmann, it seems to me that there is something useful in Arendt's characterization (which was anticipated by Joseph Conrad and T.S. Eliot, see this post). At the very least, there was something useful in the effort, in the recognition that a new understanding was needed. Mass society, industrialization, and bureaucratic structures generated distinct possibilities for the expression and manifestation of evil that defied conventional analysis.
I mention all of this only to say that we are in need of a similar attempt to formulate an understanding of the peculiar kind of evil elicited by the structures of contemporary society, digital society if you like. My sense is that the Christchurch massacre is an adumbration if not already a case in point. Conventional analysis, and conventional remedies, falter to the degree that they fail to grapple with the new conditions which elicit new manifestations of old evils.
Think of the following as preliminary considerations. Whereas mass society was experienced as a realm anonymity and a threat to individuality, the society constituted by the use of digital networks is experienced as a field of algorithmically inflected self-expression and self-realization.
In the twentieth century, banal evil was characterized by a thoughtless complicity that took an ideological and/or bureaucratic bent. It was paired to the condition of faceless, unindividuated subjectivity. In our time, thoughtless complicity takes on a different character. It arises not from our being cogs in the machine but relays in the network. Our complicity is not clerical or a function of silence; it is performative and a function of our self-expression. This is how we sustain the very networks that fuel and solicit these acts of horrendous evil and perhaps even fan their flames.
There's an old line about generals always fighting the last war. I wonder if we might not also say that a responsible public is always fighting the last threat to civil society. I don't know, maybe it doesn't quite work. But it does seem to me that we are in need of novel ways of imagining the threats we face and novel ways of addressing them.
News and Resources
Take about a minute and a half to watch a time lapse video of a rocket launch taken from the International Space Station.
Artificial Intelligence Policy: A Primer and Roadmap by legal scholar Ryan Calo.
‘You can track everything’: the parents who digitise their babies’ lives.
Magic Leap CEO: We’re dead serious about the ‘Magicverse’ (see image right below): To be read alongside Kevin Kelly's article on what he called "mirrorworlds," which I included in the last newsletter. Basically a discussion of the possible uses of augmented reality and spatial computing. I'm intrigued by the "magical" framing. Part of the brand, of course, but also interesting to read this layering of reality with data as a technological re-enchantment of the world. I've toyed with the concept on and off on the blog for the past few years. Compare: "HoloLens 2 hands-on: This feels like practical magic."
In the newsletter of the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College, Ben Wurgaft reflects on the Prologue to Arendt's The Human Condition. You'll need to scroll about two-thirds of the way down: "For if we succeeded in replacing the grown with the made, we would finally find ourselves in an anthropocentric world, one built in the image of our needs, but perhaps not in the image of our potential freedom." (I commented briefly on Arendt's Prologue a few years back, too.)
Will A.I. Ever Be Smarter Than a Four-Year-Old?
Police in Canada Are Tracking People’s ‘Negative’ Behavior In a ‘Risk’ Database
Rectangle After Rectangle: "The book, the photographic print, the screen, and the museum—which has tended to favor this format—all guarantee that we encounter most pictures in rectangular frames."
In the last installment, I passed along a link to a story about the impending "insect apocalypse." A bit overstated, it turns out.
Re-framings
From "The Art of Traveling Slowly," a review of Explorer's Sketchbook:
"With exposures of minutes or days rather than photography’s seconds, these slices of lives in foreign lands delve deeper into a world so much more beautiful than it needs to be — it took William Burchell 120 hours spread out over a month to sketch and paint a still life of his collecting wagon in South Africa’s Cape Province. Observers in the thick of things honed their observation skills. The more they looked the more they saw and committed to paper or memory."
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The German actor Bruno Ganz passed away recently. He may be best remembered for playing Hitler in Downfall, a scene from which an early classic meme was derived. Here is a screenshot from another of his better known performances. Playing an angel in Wim Wender's Wings of Desire, Ganz invisibly passes among train passengers noting their hidden struggles and suffering. In it's own way a reminder of what we too might notice even if we are not angels. You can watch the clip here.
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From Rebecca Solnit's book on walking, which she recalls in this talk on her childhood of reading and walking:
"Walking, ideally, is a state in which the mind, the body, and the world are aligned, as though they were three characters finally in conversation together, three notes suddenly making a chord. Walking allows us to be in our bodies and in the world without being made busy by them. It leaves us free to think without being wholly lost in our thoughts. I wasn’t sure whether I was too soon or too late for the purple lupine which can be so spectacular in these headlands, but milkmaids were growing on the shady side of the road on the way to the trail, and they recalled the hillsides of my childhood that first bloomed every year with an extravagance of these white flowers. Black butterflies fluttered around me, tossed along by wind and wings, and they called up another era of my past. Moving on foot seems to make it easier to move in time; the mind wanders from plans to recollections to observations."
Recently Published
My second essay for Real Life came out this week. In it I explore the heightened self-consciousness that attends the experience of the self online: Always On. Grateful once more for Rob Horning's editorial sharpening.
These two posts are both a product of surplus thoughts connected to that Real Life piece: Stages, Structures, and the Work of Being Yourself and When the Service Is Free, Your Life Is the Work of Art.
Some other recent posts on the blog:
Variations On A Utilitarian Theme
Digital Asceticism and Pascalian Angst
Token Ethicists and Non-existent Moral Communities
Digital Media and the Revenge of Politics
Looking ahead, I'll have a piece coming out in the next issue of The New Atlantis. It will be part of a symposium on social media and public discourse. I'll pass along a link as soon as it is out from behind the paywall, but, really, you all should have subscription anyway. Also, it looks like I'll be giving a lecture in D.C. this May. If you're in the area, you should come out and say hey. I'll pass along more details when they are available.
Not much to add at this point, feeling a bit weary now as I'm sure many of you are, too. Take care.
My best,
Michael
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