Nick Routledge@nick_routledge
Repost

RT @nick_routledge: @drvandanashiva 1/2 Simultaneously, paralleling its colossal impetus, cloud imperialism's consolidation within and dependence upon an all-aggregating machine-abstraction, reveals the entire ontological edifice as, correspondingly, vastly more ephemeral and exposed than its engineers conceive.

Copy of tweet here:

McLuhan was very fond of the phrase, "the Prince of this world, Satan, is a very great electrical engineer." And tailor to Emperors, too. The cyberspatial conglomeration of evil? A cosmic design feature, not a flaw, making it addressable, ultimately, in one fell swoop. 1 John 3:8

Image of tweet thread:

Technology is too often used as a stealth vector (often by private actors who control the tech) to enact, embody, or constitute quintessentially “political” matters — that is, matters concerning the allocation & legitimation of power & authority.   AI puts this pattern on steroids

Goes both ways. Long before the Web, planetary Sages anticipated the advent of a cyberspace-actualized dimension of meaningfulness, constituting a 'quintessentially political' surprise positively addressing such base shenanigans at a totalizing, substrative, ontological level.
Image description

Original X alt text

Copy of tweet here: McLuhan was very fond of the phrase, "the Prince of this world, Satan, is a very great electrical engineer." And tailor to Emperors, too. The cyberspatial conglomeration of evil? A cosmic design feature, not a flaw, making it addressable, ultimately, in one fell swoop. 1 John 3:8 Image of tweet thread: Technology is too often used as a stealth vector (often by private actors who control the tech) to enact, embody, or constitute quintessentially “political” matters — that is, matters concerning the allocation & legitimation of power & authority. AI puts this pattern on steroids Goes both ways. Long before the Web, planetary Sages anticipated the advent of a cyberspace-actualized dimension of meaningfulness, constituting a 'quintessentially political' surprise positively addressing such base shenanigans at a totalizing, substrative, ontological level.

Quoted or linked post

Nick Routledge@nick_routledge · 26 Jan 2024

@Graeber_social With the totalizing insidiousness massively consolidated by an analog-to-digital shift securitizing modern experience itself, of course. Anton Wilson: "On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.”

"...the backstage fusion between human and machine authority....modes of governance normalised by digital platforms...algorithmic level of governance as an increasingly key field of political struggle...digital post-democracy...‘swarm governance’..."
5:04 AM · Dec 2, 2022
Image description

Original X alt text

"...the backstage fusion between human and machine authority....modes of governance normalised by digital platforms...algorithmic level of governance as an increasingly key field of political struggle...digital post-democracy...‘swarm governance’..." 5:04 AM · Dec 2, 2022

View this post’s context →

Context in the archive

Quoted byRT @nick_routledge: @nils_gilman I once ran into @pmarca hawking a pre-release of Netscape Navigator 1.0. Already, my team had run the first WWW pipe into the U.S. Congress, on Mosaic. Then, as now, as always, if you can't see the paradigm for the trees for the point of it all, your dominative days are numbered.Quoted by@nils_gilman I once ran into @pmarca hawking a pre-release of Netscape Navigator 1.0. Already, my team had run the first WWW pipe into the U.S. Congress, on Mosaic. Then, as now, as always, if you can't see the paradigm for the trees for the point of it all, your dominative days are numbered.Quoted byRT @nick_routledge: @johnrobb Yup. Take exponentially augmented upgrades in persuasive generative AI and the tools to massively amplify it, add bad faith state and tech actors with untold resources on tap, and manipulative media abruptly crosses an authoritarian threshold at the planetary level. Then again...Quoted by@johnrobb Yup. Take exponentially augmented upgrades in persuasive generative AI and the tools to massively amplify it, add bad faith state and tech actors with untold resources on tap, and manipulative media abruptly crosses an authoritarian threshold at the planetary level. Then again...