//[a story of how] governments, financiers and technological utopians gave up on trying to shape the complex real world and instead established a simpler fake world for the benefit of multi-national corporations that is kept stable by neoliberal governments. The film was released on 16 October 2016//
Curtis' signature style is to propose a thesis and develop it entirely via BBC News video archive segments arranged as an impressionistic, editorial montage. The news segments are bound together by V.O. (or text) narrative, and punctuated by a soundtrack of esoteric pop music to impose a personal perspective and stimulate a gestalt critique.
Curtis' impressionistic style follows an approach popularized by H. Marshall McLuhan that McLuhan termed "probes" and gestalt, which combines the classically Greek intellectual features of the trivium with the tactile sensitivities of an artist to find a whole out of parts.
The probe approach allows an interlocutor to transcend rational (Aristotelian) thought without abdicating the powerful tools of the trivium: grammar, logic, and rhetoric. The intellectual gesture utilized is Hegelian "aufheben": the transcendence of contradictions (thesis vs. antithesis) through a lifting-up into a higher order that accounts for the conflict and places the antagonistic precepts into a position of reconciliation (synthesis).
Gestalt is the human capacity to perform aufheben over the entire range of our sensorium and thus perceive a whole that is at once made of parts and greater than the parts.
Cutis applies a probe / gestalt approach with the BBC news archive to develop a thesis that although subject to the tribal zeitgeist of 20th century electronic media, lifts the news artifacts into a synthesis of a theory of corporate political power. His quandary is democratic. He states this in the form of a quote from David Graeber: "The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently"
Curtis' is sometimes derided or dismissed as manipulative for his artistic approach, under an observation that propaganda works on the same probe and gestalt principles, but this isn't a serious criticism because the sociological pathos being examined (in this case a question begged by the thesis of hypernormalization) is ideological by nature, and if a more rigorous linear comprehensioned had generated the sociological features under examination, there should have been be no pathos to examine.
Curtis is aware that the creation of (fake) reality is both the social malaise and its cure.
For example, the fact that Newton's celestial mechanics are incomplete according to relativistic and quantum features doesn't preclude a manned moon mission organized according to Newton's laws. But did Artemis really get to the moon?!
The late social critic Mark Fisher, who coined the term "capitalist realism", applied critical theory and post-modernist philosophy to create influential analysis adjacent to Curtis. Fisher also nodded to esoteric TV and pop music to amplify points about corporate ideology and lifestyles, and routinely evoked personal anecdotes about his own work life as probes.
See:
Hauntology, Lost Futures and 80s Nostalgia - Jonas Čeika (11m)
The suggestion that "hires" won't be human is so offensive; the greatest hazard of AI is the continuing of a 500-year program of chattel enslavement of people. But go ahead, but your little menagerie a virtual pizza party and tell them how important they are to your firm's success— "Our most important asset is our..." robots.
These devices are a form of social pollution, whereby the desires and demands of others are mechanically proxied into common spaces.
When you negotiate others on the causeway, you are involved in human one-on-one exchanges with parity; each encountering the others on the level of interpersonal status, which is about the ways humans observe respect for each other.
But there can be no respect given nor received with a robot. It's an engine that's in competition for your space, presents as both a mechanical advantage and as handicapped, is not interesting nor appropriate to meet, and generally responds so stupidly and unpredictably that it's hazardous-- which makes its insertion into the commons an offense.
Combine the need for vigilance and avoidance with the realization that the robot annoyance is a proxy for someone else's privilege and as robots are instruments of private property extending deeply into common spaces and it's not a surprise to find people who are encroached upon by robots manifesting their displeasure through sabotage.
Anytime any device in any context greets you with "Hello" or "Welcome", it is announcing that it doesn't belong to you, and that you must be vigilant to its exploitation of you.
Windows is remarkable in that it is constantly editing itself, revising terms of service without notice, nudging, cajoling, and end-running you and at every turn.
Update cannot be stopped, yet updater messages make it seem like you are initiating work and responsible for its successful completion:
"You're 90% there...",
"Don't turn off your PC",
"Something didn't go as planned, don't worry your data is safe",
which is eternally followed by "Welcome" lets arrange a few things...
Apple's dark patterns are far lower key as they supply the total stack, it's feels more custodial.
Linux if it says anything-- which it usually doesn't say much-- will say these changes are well-known to wreck things but you're at our mercy, them your system is put into some polluted state associated with a bygone era and all your config and data is your problem hope you're skilled at IT.
For me, this is a memorable line from the 60s movie Becket with Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton, which is a character study about state power, belief and love based on history of King Henry and his Archbishop, done with strong production values that with a thespian ornament distinctive of British film production houses of the decade it made.
According to the Gemeniz (reddit sourced) the line from history is "Will none of these lazy insignificant persons... deliver me from this turbulent priest?" although this was recorded hundreds of years after the fact of its utterance. The essence being that Henry being used to throwing his weight around was truly surprised that his complaint was regarded as an order.
The screenplay of Becket treats this gingerly, O'Toole gives King Henry both grief at the loss of his friend, and elation that his figurehead enjoys new status as Becket is sainted.
Within 10 minutes this presentation becomes exhausting.
Summary:
A thousand words are spoken where a hundred would to, including continuing repetitions of "um," "you know," and "right?", to make a point about reactor terminology so technically trivial that you'll wonder if the speaker knows anything at all about this subject.
The term "heresy" is used seemingly with no comprehension whatsoever.
The speaker tries to break the ice of his presentation by forcing a joke that he admits-- parenthetically, repeatedly-- is meaningless, so as to verbally goosestep towards his opening point about terminology, which is a trivial, personal bone of contention, not some fascinating insight.
The host, who admits he had not prepared for his guest, and oblivious to lack of presentation skills of his guest, interjects a bizarre bro-vibe "keeping going because this is so interesting" without do much as a tic of awareness that his guest (who btw is a phd candidate TA) may have no clear ideas about the domain he's instructing.
Jump ahead 30 minutes:
- "So, you know" "right?"
- "Hmm"
In the 1960s, Marshall McLuhan, a dyed-in-the-wool academic, was remarking that his university was producing phd students who couldn't read nor write. It seems that today that they can't even maintain a conversation.
The presentation could be done better and the speaker repeats too many times "you know", but the real discussion start at 13:30.
The main theme of the presentation is that most decisions in nuclear industry are made because of nuclear non-proliferation not because of nuclear safety.
Yet another sky-is-falling lament about domination and consolidation by "frontier" AI companies that offers the meager insight that ultimately capitalism is a corpse.
A worthwhile question is begged: how will industry evolve humans consume the entire world? But this is not explored.
Makes me think of silly Artemis mission going on right now with a tiny woke cadre of space cadets searching for a new home for humanity on the dark side of the moon, vibing the influential 90s corporate self-help book "Who Moved My Cheese?" Like the Artemis mission, this article lifts off into the void makes an orbit, ands comes back to where it started with previous little information such as toilets are still tricky in zero-G.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dUhVN0UpyH4
//[a story of how] governments, financiers and technological utopians gave up on trying to shape the complex real world and instead established a simpler fake world for the benefit of multi-national corporations that is kept stable by neoliberal governments. The film was released on 16 October 2016//
Curtis' signature style is to propose a thesis and develop it entirely via BBC News video archive segments arranged as an impressionistic, editorial montage. The news segments are bound together by V.O. (or text) narrative, and punctuated by a soundtrack of esoteric pop music to impose a personal perspective and stimulate a gestalt critique.
Curtis' impressionistic style follows an approach popularized by H. Marshall McLuhan that McLuhan termed "probes" and gestalt, which combines the classically Greek intellectual features of the trivium with the tactile sensitivities of an artist to find a whole out of parts.
The probe approach allows an interlocutor to transcend rational (Aristotelian) thought without abdicating the powerful tools of the trivium: grammar, logic, and rhetoric. The intellectual gesture utilized is Hegelian "aufheben": the transcendence of contradictions (thesis vs. antithesis) through a lifting-up into a higher order that accounts for the conflict and places the antagonistic precepts into a position of reconciliation (synthesis).
Gestalt is the human capacity to perform aufheben over the entire range of our sensorium and thus perceive a whole that is at once made of parts and greater than the parts.
Cutis applies a probe / gestalt approach with the BBC news archive to develop a thesis that although subject to the tribal zeitgeist of 20th century electronic media, lifts the news artifacts into a synthesis of a theory of corporate political power. His quandary is democratic. He states this in the form of a quote from David Graeber: "The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently"
Curtis' is sometimes derided or dismissed as manipulative for his artistic approach, under an observation that propaganda works on the same probe and gestalt principles, but this isn't a serious criticism because the sociological pathos being examined (in this case a question begged by the thesis of hypernormalization) is ideological by nature, and if a more rigorous linear comprehensioned had generated the sociological features under examination, there should have been be no pathos to examine.
Curtis is aware that the creation of (fake) reality is both the social malaise and its cure.
For example, the fact that Newton's celestial mechanics are incomplete according to relativistic and quantum features doesn't preclude a manned moon mission organized according to Newton's laws. But did Artemis really get to the moon?!
The late social critic Mark Fisher, who coined the term "capitalist realism", applied critical theory and post-modernist philosophy to create influential analysis adjacent to Curtis. Fisher also nodded to esoteric TV and pop music to amplify points about corporate ideology and lifestyles, and routinely evoked personal anecdotes about his own work life as probes.
See:
Hauntology, Lost Futures and 80s Nostalgia - Jonas Čeika (11m)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gSvUqhZcbVg
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