8 ms·

Technorealism, Alvin Toffler, and the Forgotten Third Wave

• wpietri 8y ago
  This is about where the article lost me: "It was Facebook, not Russia, that caused the election of Donald Trump." The margin of election was small. A few tens of thousand of votes in a few states. Every factor that produced an effect that size can be said to be causal. And there were many, many factors that qualified. Anybody who says that Trump's election had a single cause is, at best, selling something. And I'm not buying.
  • LMYahooTFY 8y ago
    Agreed. My esperience is teaching me that anyone with "the" answer/solution/cause is selling something either unwittingly or not. I've yet to encounter any event above molecular physics that can be described accurately with this much simplicity.
  • georgeecollins 8y ago
    This is missing the point that cable news always gave Trump a huge share of attention even when he was a fringe candidate. During the campaign Fox would interrupt programming to show him speak live. Lots of candidates of all ideologies would love that. Why did they do that for him? Ratings.
    • wpietri 8y ago
      Fox? That is probably not why Fox does it. Fox is owned by a right wing ideologue, and Fox News was started and run by Nixon's former TV guy. Profit matters to them, but ideology definitely is primary.
  • sunstone 8y ago
    Hillary had 1.2m more votes in the election than Trump. That's not a small number. It indicates that the problem is more related to flaws in the election process than it is to Facebook having it's finger on the scale. This is the single cause of Trump "winning" this particular election.
    • wpietri 8y ago
      Again, I think a single-cause model is unhelpful for this. It's an approach used to push an argument, not to understand. This strikes me as particularly dubious. Trump won because of some decisions made before his grandfather came here? Sure, I guess, if you want. But it's not the only way to analyze it.
• mrspeaker 8y ago
  Captivating, well-written piece. But who is the author of this? No credits, no info: very intriguing! I'd be interested to see what else they've written. [Edit: looking at submissions from that domain, I think the writing in a couple of the other articles seem very similar.]
  • ryukafalz 8y ago
    >looking at submissions from that domain, I think the writing in a couple of the other articles seem very similar. It's a quick webpage creator, akin to pastebin with formatting[0], so that won't tell you much about the author. [0] http://txti.es/about http://txti.es/about
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  • Alex3917 8y ago
    > But who is the author of this? The writing style is very early 2000s, which kind of narrows it down. Based on the content alone there is no obvious reason to publish this anonymously, so maybe someone caught up in #MeToo or similar? Based on the writing style though it sounds clearly like it's from someone associated either with Technorealism, the Cluetrain Manifesto, the Berkman Klein center folks, the Data & Society folks, or the handful of other prominent early bloggers who aren't closely associated with any of those. No one less than 30 or older than 70 writes like this though.
  • mc32 8y ago
    It's probably best its authorship is (for now) unknown, this way people can make judgements on their own rather than thinking is right or wrong based on how they perceive the author(s).
    • shanghaiaway 8y ago
      Why?
• someguydave 8y ago
  “The election of 2016 was the absolute subversion of the idea and practice of legitimate bureaucracy and traditional media and all the Second Wave political science.” Or, widespread Internet use decreased the ability of the traditional gatekeepers of information to manipulate voters.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • kadendogthing 8y ago
    It ruined the safe guard of using the time tested tool of fact checking and having credible sources of information. And opened the flood gates to bad actors acting on irrational actors. The internet is not some magical haven for information and knowledge. In its current form, it's comparable to information anarchy. It's not tenable.
    • keiferski 8y ago
      While you are correct, one could also make the (likewise correct) argument that pre-Internet information was not necessarily always fact-checked and true, but simply the version approved by the authorities. In any case, I think we need a return to some sort of expertise or trusted authority system. Hopefully the internet allows for this to be independent of the political and corporate establishment.
      • someguydave 8y ago
        In general, there seems to be more excitement for crushing ideological enemies on existing platforms rather than cultivating expertise.
        • keiferski 8y ago
          Widespread use of the internet is very, very recent. I'm hopeful that these are just growing pains.
• kadendogthing 8y ago
  >It was the intervention of Twitter and 4chan. The author has lost the plot. >It's pretty apparent that the reason Trump won wasn't Russian intervention (note the extremely Second Wave nature of the explanation: nations playing at geopolitics). Ah yes, a nation pouring an immense amount of resources into propaganda targeting a specific subsection of american society and having close contact with the currently elected administration definitely wasn't the reason they got elected. Let's Correct the Record (don't spritz all over your keyboard HN): Russia abused Twitter/Facebook. But Twitter and Facebook aren't _the_ reason he got elected though. Facebook and the like are useful tools because you can post anything and have it reach a large, "odd"/targeted audience. But without that audience, without that sounding board, the information is nothing. Facebook and Twitter, and all the other social media platforms have significant design flaws with their raison d'etre: the spread of information across some social graph. Assuming that the social graph is comprised of rational actors is a question that keeps getting begged in these discussions. There is no evidence for this being the case and all the evidence against that assumption. So we should correct for it. Just like the existing media platforms do (well, with the exception of one notable media giant who loves abusing that fact who's had a hand in creating the absurd situation we find ourselves in today). We need to fix the problems we know about. That's all. It wouldn't hurt to remember why the media is structured the way it currently is (or was). In any system that gets re-implemented, there is always a duplication of efforts and lessons learned. These New Media systems will be no different. The U.S. had a useful law for dealing with the problems of "today." And it's sad to say we've basically created problems where there never needed to be. Time to re implement the Fairness Doctrine -- across the board. >But the core of the "brain-force economy" is politically retarded - it has a low political IQ and has not achieved political self-consciousness. The old smokestack barons and trade union leaders who dominated during the second wave are still running rings around you guys in Washington." It's not so much as a new wave, but a new class of citizens who desperately need to become actively engaged in the political process. And understanding that the systems they're creating has lead to new power structures and information conduits, and with power comes responsibility. A responsibility to ensure the consumers of their platform are not unduly influenced by incorrect, false, and misleading information (Facebook tried doing this but was lambasted by the right, can't imagine why). A responsibility to support good governance and to support policies that provide a continued foundation for a functioning, healthy, productive, peaceful society. The situation we're in isn't a technological problem. It's a social one.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• temp-dude-87844 8y ago
  Both the author's own words and the quoted ones use big words to make the writing appear more intelligent and insightful that it really is. The gist of the concept seems to be that a utopian future predicted long ago never came to pass, and despite globalization, fast communication, and free movement of goods and sometimes individuals, people devolved into narrowly scoped groups instead. There's contention about control of institutions, control of capital, fruits to the gains of economic activity, so these groups are often at odds, and traditional solutions to their conflict are either too ineffective (government, compromise) or too drastic (protests, unrest, warfare), creating an awkward passive-aggressive state of pervasive discontent no one is happy with. And all of the author's quote-mining seems to be a response to another overwrought essay that noted that tools like protests, angry mobs, identity politics, and the Internet, that were used by progressives to further their causes, did real damage to the credibility of institutions, and both the tools and that mistrust are now being repurposed by nationalists and fascists. This seems like non-news, and is completely to be expected, but somehow the author implies they find issue with the thesis, yet arrives at a very similar conclusion. All these are too many words to say people will opportunistically group together and machinate towards a local betterment for their in-group above most others. Technology has generally lowered the cost and drawbacks of this opportunistic behavior, and free discourse and free assembly laws enable much of this in parts of the world, even when for-profit surveillance is prevalent. In other places, authorities have cracked down on dissent against the regime, so people who have more to lose than gain are too afraid to make waves online. But the factor limiting unrest is their desperation, which has little to do with technology. To me, all of the author's points seem closer to realism, than technorealism. Technorealism tries to have a nuanced conversation about the things that change and the things that stay the same while living in an Internet-connected world, while this writing raves a lot about the decline of society itself and the supposed fault of a loose mob of electing a demagogue for the laughs. It's hardly deserving of the attention it's getting.
  • whatshisface 8y ago
    In an alternate universe where global communication had led to one single identity group, intellectuals would be decrying the death of the community and the alienation of individuals from their neighbors.
• komali2 8y ago
  God I love these clean blogs whenever they pop up. Looks great on the phone, nice and high contrast, loaded in about a half second on my parents terrible internet. Wonder if they just hand wrote HTML or used some sort of generator?
  • theoh 8y ago
    It's http://txti.es http://txti.es, which you could have checked for yourself.
    • RickS 8y ago
      Sometimes on HN a comment will pop up on a biology article from a Ph.D biologist, or the sort. There are lots of severely brilliant people here whose familiarity with web tech is well below average, but who nonetheless add immense value to the community. For that reason it's a mistake to assume that everyone on this website is evenly skilled just because you have the wherewithal to check whether the TLD is a web service or a private domain, or to intuit that the name in the footer might be a company and not a random string. So while perhaps this person could check for themselves in the most literal sense, it's uncool to use a tone that implies their inferiority for not having done so. When you make people feel bad for asking questions, you teach them not to try and get smarter, and that's a bad thing for everyone.
• escape_goat 8y ago
  By all means, let us understand the world through the sweep of grand theoretical terms, without too much reference to quantitative data, free of the muddling influence of specialists busy complicating their painstaking little fields of knowledge and endeavour; let us do this lest we larp somehow a life of inferior concerns: let our vision and mastery remain clear and effortless.
• narrator 8y ago
  This article,instead of starting at first principles, starts at a hypothetical idealized future and works its way back to reality through narrowly focusing its attention, gaslighting and selective amnesia. I guess that what journalism is these days: an attempt to reconcile ideology with reality.
• zackmorris 8y ago
  The most important part I got out of the article was the side link about the Third Wave (information age): http://www.criticalthink.info/Phil1301/Wave3lec.htm http://www.criticalthink.info/Phil1301/Wave3lec.htm In order to remain in the Second Wave (industrial age), the following would need to happen: 9. Families will become non-nuclear. Many say the family is falling apart today. They define the family as a husband-breadwinner, mother-housekeeper, and a numebr of children. This is the "nuclear family" which was created and idealized by the Second Wave. It is falling apart, because the Second Wave industrial complex system is falling apart. If we really want to maintain the nuclear family, here's what we would have to do: * Freeze all technology in its Second Wave stage to maintain a factory-based, mass-production society. * Block the rise of the service and professional sectors in the economy. White-collar, professional, and technical workers are less traditional, less family-oriented, more intellectually and psychologically mobile than blue- collar workers. * "Solve" the energy crisis by applying nuclear and other highly centralized energy processes. The nuclear family survives better in a centralized society. * Return to mass media, and ban cable television, cassettes, local and regional magazines and radio programs. Nuclear families work best where there is a national consensus on information and values, not in a society based on high diversity. * Forcibly drive women back into the kitchen. Reduce wages for those who insist on working. The nuclear family has no nucleus when there are no adults left at home. * Slash the wages of young workers to make them more dependent, for a longer time, on their families. * Ban contraception. This makes for independence of women and for extramarital sex, a notorious lossener of nuclear ties. * Cut the standard of living of the entire society to pre-1955 levels, since affluence makes it possible for single people, divorced people, working women, and other unattached individuals to "make it" economically on their own. * Resist all changes in our society which lead toward diversity, freedom of movement and ideas, or individuality. The nuclear family remains dominant only in a mass society. This is the only explanation of provincial US populism, Trumpism, the Alt-Right, etc etc etc that makes any sense to me. I think that the yearning to go back to a memory of how things were is an instinctive desire deeply rooted in the psyche like sexuality, religion or political affiliation that can't be changed. It may not be mine, but I sympathize with aspects of that sentiment. The great tragedy of it though is an inability to imagine something akin to the nuclear family in a post-industrial society. They don't imagine a coal miner doing subsurface work on the moon. This is why I think that the current hardline focus on escaping the reality of a changing world is going to be short-lived. At some point, as traditionalists get more of what they want, the idealists of the world will pull away to such an extent that their new normal will have the wholesome things manifested rather than just shadows of what once was.
• Animats 8y ago
  This is backwards. Countercultures are dead. There is only one Facebook. There's no hippie Facebook, no goth Facebook, no punk Facebook, no right-wing Facebook. Not with any market share. The Village Voice and the rest of the alternative press are gone. So is Tribe.net, which was briefly the goth Facebook. Even the Weekly Standard just went bust. Instead, there's one big system which automatically caters to the interests of its users.
  • Barrin92 8y ago
    whether we are legally or physically on the same platform (facebook), has little to no bearing on whether we are cross-exposed to content. So yes tribalism can absolutely exist on facebook. It is a digital platform, not a supermarket. There is no guarantee you ever bump into someone you don't want to bump into, and completely isolated communities can be formed on the same base-structure. Reddit has made this sort of design explicit.