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Alexis de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America" [0] is a good read on what he called the "restiveness" of the Western (meaning immigrant north American) mind - t

Alexis de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America" [0] is a good read on what he called the "restiveness" of the Western (meaning immigrant north American) mind - that being a frontier spirit. When compared to Schopenhauer's European pessimism over "despair" and stasis it's a good way to live and unsurprising that a vigorous "work ethic" grew from it. But it scales to a few thousand or a million people. A global population of 8 billion empty, needy "fickle and restless" minds "flapping like a fish thrown on dry ground"... we can't sustain that. There is not enough excitement, adventure, wild frontiers, amusement and frippery to satisfy it. Which is why religion, and the arts, and things people do to find meaning beyond toil and low pleasures not only travelled to America, they prospered there like never before. It's only relatively recently that we've started to use technology to undo that and work against creation of meaning rather than towards it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_in_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_in_America

bamboozled 2y ago
Interesting, can you elaborate on this? It's only relatively recently that we've started to use technology to undo that and work against creation of meaning rather than towards it. Examples?
- nonrandomstring 2y ago
  I can give examples of things I think fit that, but not offer arguments - because some people can claim "meaning" in almost anything. A fairly clear one would be widespread "over-zealous use of intellectual property technology to stifle culture". It's getting easier to do with all kinds of digital handcuffs, TPMs, and mechanisms that take agency and meaning away from the owner of a computer and place it in the hands of who really controls the computer. It's concomitant with "surveillance capitalism" but I think marks a qualitative change from computers as enabling tools in the 20th century, to systems of social control in the 21st. That marks a significant change in the "meaning" of computers qua purpose, optimism and opportunity (for everyone not just geeks and developers.) I feel quite sure artists who worry about AI would say similar but in a different way.

bamboozled 2y ago

Interesting, can you elaborate on this? It's only relatively recently that we've started to use technology to undo that and work against creation of meaning rather than towards it. Examples?

nonrandomstring 2y ago
I can give examples of things I think fit that, but not offer arguments - because some people can claim "meaning" in almost anything. A fairly clear one would be widespread "over-zealous use of intellectual property technology to stifle culture". It's getting easier to do with all kinds of digital handcuffs, TPMs, and mechanisms that take agency and meaning away from the owner of a computer and place it in the hands of who really controls the computer. It's concomitant with "surveillance capitalism" but I think marks a qualitative change from computers as enabling tools in the 20th century, to systems of social control in the 21st. That marks a significant change in the "meaning" of computers qua purpose, optimism and opportunity (for everyone not just geeks and developers.) I feel quite sure artists who worry about AI would say similar but in a different way.