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A Foundation for Bluetooth
This is, maybe, an oddball choice for an analysis of this type; that’s why I’m doing it. This post is to be a beat-by-beat of the questions posed in the prompt. Q1. This is a question that doesn’t really have a direct, linear answer. Truthfully, Bluetooth is “owned,” in a sense, by anyone that…
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On the Governance of Loss
Freud and McGowan speak of the primacy of loss, or its inherent relevance in how we navigate interests and derive satisfaction. Loss, they say, is a method of injecting value. If everything is great, then nothing is. McGowan uses the example of rooting for a sports team, but I’d posit that it’s equally applicable…
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Garland’s Box
In Alex Garland’s Devs, a quantum computer computer dubbed “The Box” contains a deterministic simulation of the universe. Characters often remark that “The Box contains everything.” I’d like to posit that your phone, though not nearly as advanced, is in some conceptual sense the same thing. We are, at all times, especially on social…
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Instrumentality in Flesh
Passage in reference: pp. 6-12 Proposal: Heidegger briefly mentions that humans in an industrial society can be conceived of as “standing-reserve” in much the same way that a natural resource can. We see this, in a far less oppressive way, in the capitalistic work culture of today. We also see it played out to…
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Words on Reserve
Prompt 3: In a sense, literature. It’s not a natural resource in the way Heidegger conceives of a river, but in the context of life within an industrial society, it might as well be. All the myriad books within my home exist in a liminal state, full of knowledge and yet entirely without someone…
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All the Algorithms, All of the Time
Growing up, I do wonder how many times I heard the world algorithm spoken as if it were of the occult. It was the boogeyman of the primordial internet, math made a monster. The whole of the 2010s, I suppose, was the notion of the algorithm torn asunder, inspected, and regulated. I wholly guarantee…