"Modern civilisation has a number of extremely delicate and highly interconnected components whose graceful degradation is effectively impossible."

It is "much easier to break things than to build them up. The government administrations of Britain, France and Germany for example, were set up at a time in the nineteenth century when the rising middle classes demanded a properly functioning state[…]. It took perhaps a generation for professional, neutral public services to fully emerge."

"Forty years of globalised neoliberalism have broken our societies, our economies and our political systems, and we no longer have the ability to put them back together."

https://braveneweurope.com/aurelien-the-end

#Screens "train us in convenience, which is training in predictability, in the facade of certainty. And when that facade inevitably breaks, we often find ourselves at sea.

"In the brilliant and ever-relevant Seeing Like a State, James C. Scott outlines the many ways states fail; principle among them is an obsession with putting things in order, with simplification and efficiency. More often than not, that efficiency translates into brittleness and weakness, into systems so fragile they break the moment something unanticipated arises."

https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/make-life-possible

"Humanity has endured for 1 million years for one simple reason: it is bound by limits. It is effectively regulated, and it is this regulation that lies at the heart of its genius.
[…]
"Capital very quickly relied on the sciences, and this was not simply the result of cultural impregnation.

"Classical science separates and analyses. All capital relies on this powerful process and adds to it control through quantification. A principle of devitalisation at the heart of modern technique.

"This thanatocratic principle of capital, without which it is nothing, takes place in three stages: privatisation of the means, industrialisation of devitalisation, and being as a commodity."

Thread in French: https://piaille.fr/@Ciriaco/113083670282268574 by @Ciriaco

Françoise #Dastur: "We must ask ourselves what constitutes the essence of theoretical science itself. #Heidegger shows in his lecture [of 1919] that the experience of the "thing", of what we call "reality", presupposes the objectification of life and a devitalisation of the living experience, in the sense of an eradication of the interpretation immediately given to the environment. The result of this process of devitalisation and disinterpretation is nothing other than the real in the form of the #data (Gegebenheit) which is in fact a false immediacy, a theoretical construct."

https://journals.openedition.org/noesis/264 @philosophy

"Technique is no longer some uncertain and incomplete intermediary between humanity and the natural milieu. The latter is totally dominated and utilized (in Western society). Technique now constitutes a fabric of its own, replacing nature."

– Jacques Ellul in “Recherche pour une Ethique dans une société technicienne,” Morale et Enseignement, 1983, page 7

A review of Clia Izoard's book: https://archive.is/r3Def#selection-393.0-393.25

"Locally, the process of radicalization of industrial #mining is detailed through the prism of its social ravages. The mine is above all a gigantic uprooting machine (p. 54), which empties spaces by expropriating the last peoples of the plant. In addition, contemporary mining exposes populations to various diseases and poisoning. In the Bou-Azzer mine in Morocco, we extract responsible cobalt for electric cars; miners and local residents suffer from cancers and neurological and cardiovascular diseases.
"The overall scale of mining sector predation in XXIe century is also outlined through the growing production of waste and pollution. The mining sector is the most polluting industry in the world. For example, an industrial copper mine produces 99.6% waste. Stored near mining pits, the waste rocks, gigantic volumes of extracted rock, generate sulfur releases which drain the heavy metals contained in the rocks and make them migrate towards waterways. Factory pipes constantly spew toxic residues which can, depending on the ore processed, consist of cyanide, acids, hydrocarbons, soda, or known poisons such as lead, arsenic, mercury, etc. Finally, zero-carbon mines are pipe dreams because they are all very energy-intensive. The amount needed to extract, crush, process and refine metals represents approximately 8 to 10% of the total energy consumed worldwide, making the mining industry a major culprit in climate change."

@dys_morphia I just took a look at what #CriticalTheory gets me in the way of discussion, went down the rabbit hole and I am SO blaming you because now I'm following #technoCriticism as a hashtag and my feed has a few new people who may make me grouchy. Might not be what you're hoping for but I thought it was worth coming back to shake my puny fist at you and share the tag.

"Some companies get people hooked with pills and needles. Others with apps and algorithms. But either way, it’s just churning out junkies."

Ted Gioia: https://www.honest-broker.com/p/the-state-of-the-culture-2024

#AI enables acceleration to replace humans with machines.
@alex and @emilymbender are working on clarifying that: #TheAICon.
@estelle already has food for thought: https://techhub.social/@estelle/111811330219400218

B., the senior officer, claimed that in the current war, “I would invest 20 seconds for each target at this stage, and do dozens of them every day. I had zero added value as a human, apart from being a stamp of approval. It saved a lot of time.”

According to B., a common error occurred “if the [Hamas] target gave [his phone] to his son, his older brother, or just a random man. That person will be bombed in his house with his family. This happened often. These were most of the mistakes caused by Lavender,” B. said.

https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/ @israel @data

It was easier to locate the individuals in their private houses.

“We were not interested in killing operatives only when they were in a military building or engaged in a military activity. On the contrary, the IDF bombed them in homes without hesitation, as a first option. It’s much easier to bomb a family’s home. The system is built to look for them in these situations.”

Yuval Abraham reports: https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/

(to follow) #longThread @palestine @israel @ethics @military @idf @terrorism

On display: Consuming culture is not a fundamental need. Our bodies become addicted to entertainment, like they do to nicotine, sugar or chocolate; four industries.

"Reclaiming the use of digital devices at the receiving end does nothing to change the whole technical system. Digital technologies cannot be reclaimed, because they are the fruit of a mass society, of a society of experts, constituted of domination and exploitation, of complex and gigantic infrastructures from which citizens can only be dispossessed."

Julia Laïnae, Nicolas Alep in "Contre l'alternumérisme", 2020

"The alienation of the spectator in favour of the object contemplated is expressed as follows: The more he contemplates, the less he lives; the more he accepts to recognise himself in the dominant images of need, the less he understands his own existence and his own desire... This is why the spectator feels at home nowhere, because the spectacle is everywhere".

Guy Debord, in his book "La société du spectacle", 1967

“The means of communication, the irresistible output of the entertainment and information industry carry with them prescribed attitudes and habits, certain intellectual and emotional reactions which bind the consumers to the producers and, through the latter to the whole social system. The products indoctrinate and manipulate; they promote a false consciousness which is immune against its falsehood… Thus emerges a pattern of one-dimensional thought and behaviour.”

― Herbert Marcuse