The Mind

“The mind is a strange and wonderful thing. I’m not sure it’ll ever be able to figure itself out. Everything else maybe, from the atom to the universe. Everything except itself.”

From Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956).

Ten Reasons Why Facebook is the Soulless Bane of Modern Life

I’m well aware of the painful irony of castigating the world’s most popular social network on a blog, another form of social network. But I don’t have the money to put stamps on hundreds of handwritten letters, so here it goes:

1. Facebook is not social.

Saying hello to someone on the street is social. Having dinner or a drink (or getting falling down drunk…) with someone is social. Exchanging pleasantries or even bodily fluids is social (after all, it can possibly lead to a “social” disease). Arguing while waving your arms frantically at someone is social. Knitting while sitting on a couch together is social (sad, but social). Typing pithy comments about someone’s vacation pictures you vaguely know while hurtling along the Interstate at 80 MPH is not social. It’s just stupid. And dangerous.

2. Does that “net”-work for you?

Feeling trapped? Nothing is more representative of modern life than a forum for “self-expression” which requires you to fill out lame little standardized electronic boxes. Don’t color out of the lines! Touted as a multi-billion dollar computer platform, most of Facebook just boils down to a computerized version of those dorky name tags that say “My name is ____”.

Just think of that word — network. Nothing more than a bunch of virtual tendrils, designed to ensnare and entrap. The question you should be asking is who is the spider and when is he going to come along and suck out all of your vital juices? If you feel like a fly on the wall. Well…Buzz, buzz.

3. All those douchebags with marketing degrees are simultaneously yelling “gotcha”!

Marketers used to actually have to work to sell you stuff and get your attention. Now you come to them, by the millions, like so many lemmings careening off a cliff. And because you are an open (face)book, they know exactly what you want. In fact, some of the stuff they know you want you didn’t even know you wanted…

4. Individuality?

Heck, you can’t even change the bloody typeface on your page. (Note: See #2). And remember, if you post a picture you’d better not be doing anything too inappropriate. Some bot might come along and be offended. I, for one, welcome our Facebook bot overlords. All hail Zuckerberg!

5. All the world’s a stage.

Unfortunately, everyone in the audience is too busy working on their own acting career. Of course, you too can be the star in your very own movie (not sure what the working title is now, but they used to call it “Life”). Everything is a performance. Look, I got a new job! I have moved further up the rung and am mastering the cogs of capitalism. Please, “like” me. Why won’t you like me? Do I need to do something more extravagant? How is it that over half a billion bad actors clamoring for attention isn’t more people’s idea of hell? When did we all become such showoffs? Reality TV? TV is our reality! We’re always on camera, always observed and observing. Too bad none of us are just bloody living anymore. I don’t need to see the beautiful view you saw on your trip to Aruba or walk around the neighborhood. You saw it. It’s yours. That’s precious. Enjoy it.

6. Whatever you’re doing, someone else is doing something cooler.

Facebook is a constant reminder that no matter what you are doing, it is lamer than what a dozen of your “friends” are doing. Just booked a trip to the beach on Maui? Whatever. Your “friend” just bought an island in the south Pacific. Bought a new car? Your “friend” just bought a new yacht. New baby? Your “friend” had triplets! (Well, on second thought, maybe you are better off there…). A regression back to grade school is the order of the day on Facebook. It’s like one big game of “Oh yeah! Well…”.

7. In old sci-fi novels and movies, weren’t hive minds a bad thing?

I remember an old episode of Star Trek where this guy Harry Mudd had found a whole planet of androids. And there were groups of them — copies — such that you had Alan 216 or Mary 109. Facebook is kind of like that. It’s almost impossible to miss someone famous dying these days because fifty of your closest friends will comment about it. Sometimes they’ll even include some maudlin link to a relevant Youtube video. How touching. And some of these people who are venerated are pretty lame. No matter, its all fodder for Facebook.

I’m waiting for the day when some lunatic puts up a status update of “RIP Charles Manson” and the whole Goth world goes (lady) gaga about the passing of Marilyn. Give me a break! I guess the point, if there is one, is all the collective grief and, by extension, the sense of injustice is totally bogus when all it amounts to is clicking on “like” or “share”. Which brings me to…

8. How many cute puppies does it take to stop a dictator from wiping out a whole town?

Politics. Oh yeah. Remember when that word used to imply that the discussion or debate was about an actual place or space? You know, the polis? Now it’s random rants about how dumb some conservative is, or how bleeding heart some liberal is. Mostly it distills down to re-posting (i.e. “sharing”) some clever cartoon about how we are all totally fucked. Well, if things are so bad, do something! Those occupy people, as aimless and indigent and generally stoned as they were, were doing something. Until Facebook came along and turned it all into a bunch of idle slogans. Facebook has become the dumping ground for frustration and impotent rage. It’s as if it was a cleverly constructed release valve for dissent and criticism. Almost seems planned that way. Hmm…

Oh, yeah, and by the way, the answer to the question above is…none. You need a LOL cat.

9. Your friendships begin to resemble that show — Friends.

I hated that show. I really did. It reeked of a neutered middle-class complacency that makes me want to kick puppies (but not the really cute ones people always post on Facebook — just the ugly, faceless puppy in the crowd…). Everyone was always being clever and pithy and drinking coffee on a sofa on Friends. Kind of like what people do now when they are on Facebook.

I like the idea of friends. I used to have friends. I used to hang out with them and see them too. I don’t have to anymore. I live a completely alienated, isolated and lonely life as an academic (“Oh, he’s one of those!”) in a town and state I basically hate. But with Facebook, my plight is supposed to be somehow more bearable. Your experience may be somewhat similar. I sincerely hope not.

10. Like the real world, Facebook has class (but not the good kind!)

Well, no it doesn’t. But it has developed ghettos and upscale neighborhoods. Whether you muck around on Farmville or post stories by way of the New York Times, everything about Facebook is just part of that time honored human tradition of creating arbitrary distinctions.

The only distinction I think is important anymore is this — are you part of the Facebook herd or are you still vaguely trying to maintain some aspect of your humanity? We in the techno-utopias of the “west” may pity or even mock those poor souls for whom Facebook is only a computer program. But I, for one, envy them. If only they also had a bit of peace and food and clean water…

So, yeah, Facebook sucks. Modern life kind of sucks too. Am I bitter? You bet! Angry? Yup! What would make me happy? If dozens, even hundreds (dare I hope for thousands?) of people put a link to this blog post up on…You guessed it: Facebook! I won’t know about it though, since for now (and hopefully, if I’m strong, forever) my Facebook account is deactivated. But maybe, in some little way, I’m not.

Reality Hacker

Are YOU a reality hacker??

Read this and find out!

2012 Transit of Venus

Video streaming by Ustream

One of many live webcasts of this evening’s momentous transit of Venus. You can find more viewing options at NASA’s special transit site.

Roy Henry Vickers’ The Elders Are Watching

By way of the Raincoaster.

The Utter Frustration of Contemporary Thought

As an academic, it is (nominally) my job to contribute to knowledge. I am to do this by publishing books and writing papers. These texts should reflect a certain amount of time and effort: in research, reflection and writing. Recently, I have been thinking about “what I want to write about” next. As someone whose “field” is the history and philosophy of science, my options are quite broad. And, this, unfortunately, is the problem. It’s this problem that has prompted me to forgo research (at least for a day) and write about my reflections on the utter frustration of contemporary thought.

What do I mean by this? A valid question, since contemporary thought is probably not something most people see as frustrating. To most, if they think about it at all, contemporary thought is inspiring. And indeed, on the surface, I suppose it is. New discoveries and new horizons are announced in the media every day. Science and technology appear to be expanding at a dizzying rate…

And, in a way, they are. The production of new knowledge – across all fields – is occurring at an astonishing rate. So quickly, in fact, that we essentially require the new information technology developed over the last 30 years to even keep track of it. Measured in raw terms (i.e. by counting numbers of abstract, papers published, books, etc.), the production of knowledge doubles every seven to ten years. This growth and its consequences was a subject of some interest among scholars in the recent past. There was even a field developed to understand and manage this knowledge production, particularly with respect to science, called scientometrics. This field was a response to Derek J. de Solla Price’s classic book, Science Since Babylon, wherein he explored the ramifications of this development and even speculated on the possible downside of the specialization required to manage and use all this information.

And there, of course, is the key word: specialization. A word we approach with all too much innocence given its tremendous importance in shaping and structuring our contemporary “techno-scientific” society.

The origin of specialization provides insight into the kind of social circumstances it reflects. Originally developed in medicine, specialization was a response to a few factors. Theoretically, it was fostered by a bias in medicine toward organic localism. As medicine grew in scale and sophistication, each part of the body (heart, lungs, eyes, skin, etc…) seemed to require a deeper expertise and attention. This was the essential power of modern medicine – its tendency towards reductionism and mechanism were, by and large, successful epistemological strategies.

There were also social factors. The growth of medicine as a whole demanded that some begin to specialize, but population growth and urbanization created the conditions that allowed specialists to draw on a sufficiently large pool of patients concentrated in a given area.

From its roots in medicine around the mid-nineteenth century, specialization spread to other realms. Sciences began to drastically increase in complexity, giving rise to new fields (and sub-fields). The only way to manage this increasing production of knowledge was through specialization.

Production generally also followed this path. Industrialization and the growth of the economy demanded (and created) appropriate social structures in response. This phenomenon was already clear to observers by the late nineteenth century. Inspired by Marx, the sociologist Durkheim spoke of the “division of labor” as social fact.

This trend, of the compartmentalization of tasks and knowledges, only spread in the twentieth century. Fordism. Taylorism and scientific management. And science, of course, followed along this path. Arguably, it led the march…

The management of aspects of warfare in the dark years of the early twentieth century spawned an even more profound commitment to specialization and the “massification” of the individual. When science and technology (increasingly fused into an amalgam we now call “technoscience”) joined the fray, the process accelerated even further. Even scientists themselves had only a foggy conception of what was coming about. Complexity, scale and specialization evolved together, sometimes in unanticipated ways. When the Manhattan Project began and J. Robert Oppenheimer took charge of the laboratory at Los Alamos, he expected to lead a group of perhaps thirty or forty scientists. Little did he know that in a few months he would direct the activities of a scientific community of about 4-5000 – essentially a small town.

Since the end of the war, this process has only developed further. Specialization, as mentioned, is perhaps that which characterizes contemporary society; and not just specialization, but subspecialization, and subsubspecialization. Science, technology and complexity have grown up together to a degree that a nineteenth century ophthalmologist could not have envisioned or even dreamed of, and their impact on labor and economics is, one can say without hyperbole, epiphenomenal.

I have said much here already about the structures of thought (or how thought, through knowledge, takes shape), but what about thought itself?

This, I believe, is where the utter frustration comes in. For what is one who wants to contribute new ideas faced with? A mountain (or rather, a range of mountains) of information piled so high and deep as to be, well, insurmountable. Any subject (or subset of a subject) has been written about ad infinitum and ad nauseum. The creative mind, seeking a new topic to work on and explore, and wanting to exercise due diligence by consulting sources already written, is faced with a Herculean task. More, even, as the hero’s trials seem simple in comparison.

And what of ideas and thought generally in a world that as of last fall had reached 7 billion souls? Extremes. Either a knowledge or thought is so exclusive as to only be accessible to a small group of experts and specialists with the capacity to use or understand it, or it’s so general and so broad as to have reached the level of complete banality. In this way cultural forms and political discourse are reduced to axioms so simplistic that they can scarcely be understood as culture or politics.

We are faced with increasing specialization and complexity every day. The curve is asymptotic. It’s only by virtue of modern technology and machines that it’s even manageable. In medicine, where the phenomenon first started, it has become necessary to use computers – expert systems – to assist in complex diagnostic analysis. So many tasks have reached a level of complexity that makes us dependent on machine assistance, how long will it be until thought too requires this aid? Has it already happened and we haven’t really noticed? Probably.

The sci-fi author Robert A. Heinlein quipped: “specialization is for insects”. Indeed, we have become a society so segmented into our particular fields, specializations and world-views that we are, essentially, as insects, inured to the larger picture. There was a time, once, when one could be a “Renaissance man” or polymath and have a panoramic vision; of the broad and holistic outlines of things, of the macrocosmic and microcosmic, and of its overall relationship to humanity (hence, humanism). That time has passed. And this, in short, is the central source of the utter frustration of contemporary thought.

Glances could kill. Love was outlawed.

This, I feel, is the best of the six word stories from my now defunct blog. It’s also my response to the short story challenge presented by Aggie on Sithy Things. Hope it’s not too verbose…

Second Hypothesis

“The second hypothesis regarding the vanishing of history is the opposite of the first. It has to do not with processes speeding up but slowing down. It too comes directly from physics.

Matter slows the passing of time. To put it more precisely, time at the surface of a very dense body seems to be going in slow motion. The phenomenon intensifies as the density increases. The effect of this slowing down will be to increase the length of the light-wave emitted by this body as received by the observer. Beyond a certain limit, time stops and the wavelength becomes infinite. The wave no longer exists. The light goes out.

There is a clear analogy here with the slowing down of history when it rubs against the astral body of the “silent majorities.” Our societies are dominated by this mass process, not just in the demographic and sociological sense, but in the sense of a “critical mass,” of passing beyond a point of no-return. This is the most significant event within these societies: the emergence, in the very course of their mobilization and revolutionary process (they are all revolutionary by the standards of past centuries), of an equivalent force of inertia, of an immense indifference and the silent potency of that indifference. This inert matter of the social is not produced by a lack of exchanges, information or communication, but by the multiplication and saturation of exchanges. It is the product of the hyperdensity of cities, commodities, messages and circuits. It is the cold star of the social and, around the mass, history is also cooling. Events follow one upon another, cancelling each other out in a state of indifference. The masses, neutralized, mithridatized by information, in turn neutralize history and act as an écran d’absorption. They themselves have no history, meaning, consciousness or desire. They are the potential residue of all history, meaning and desire. As they have unfurled in our modernity, all these fine things have stirred up a mysterious counter-phenomenon, and all today’s political and social strategies are thrown out of gear by the failure to understand it.

This time we have the opposite situation: history, meaning and progress are no longer able to reach their escape velocity. They are no longer able to pull away from this overdense body which slows their trajectory, which slows time to the point where, right now, the perception and imagination of the future are beyond us. All social, historical and temporal transcendence is absorbed by that mass in its silent immanence. Political events already lack sufficient energy of their own to move us: so they run on like a silent film for which we bear collective irresponsibility. History comes to an end here, not for want of actors, nor for want of violence (there will always be more violence), nor for want of events (there will always be more events, thanks to the media and news networks!), but by deceleration, indifference and stupefaction. It is no longer able to transcend itself, to envisage its own finality, to dream of its own end; it is being buried beneath its own immediate effect, worn out in special effects, imploding into current events.

Deep down, one cannot even speak of the end of history here, since history will not have time to catch up with its own end. Its effects are accelerating, but its meaning is slowing inexorably. It will eventually come to a stop and be extinguished like light and time in the vicinity of an infinitely dense mass…”

Jean Baudrillard, “The Illusion of the End,” in Keith Jenkins, ed., The Postmodern History Reader (London: Routledge, 1997), 40-42.