"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

"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

"It is not only its use, but #technology itself that already constitutes domination (over nature and over people), a domination that is methodical, scientific, calculated and calculating. It is not only after the fact, and from outside, that certain ends and interests specific to domination are imposed on technology - these ends and interests are already part of the constitution of the technical apparatus itself. From the outset, technology is an entire socio-historical project."

#Quote from Herbert Marcuse, taken from his #book Industrialisation and Capitalism, 1964

"Until degrowth becomes an urgent and imperative watchword, industrial capitalism will continue to interpret the demands of social movements as technical challenges".

"We cannot be satisfied with improving the energy efficiency of data storage while Internet traffic increases exponentially. We cannot continue to deploy satellites en masse on the assumption that some of them will provide a better understanding of deforestation..."

~ Andreas Malm in "How to sabotage a pipeline"

“Levy describes a system that has almost reached perfection. The political echelon wants to maintain the status quo, and the military provides it with legitimacy in exchange for funds and status.”

“Levy points out the gradual withdrawal of the old Ashkenazi middle class from the ranks of the combat forces[…]:
• the military’s complete reliance on technology as a decisive factor in warfare;
• the adoption of the concept […] of an army that is “small and lethal”;
• the obsession with the idea of #deterrence, which is supposed to negate the other side’s will to fight; and
• the complete addiction to the status quo as the only possible and desirable state of affairs.”

https://www.972mag.com/yagil-levy-army-middle-class/ @israel @ethics @military @idf

“The idea of effecting decentralization while maintaining technical progress is purely utopian.”
~ Jacques Ellul

"The authorities say they have no choice but to move forward and keep up. Produce more and more, faster and faster. In reality, technological #progress has got out of hand. It's out of our control. And we should be the ones adapting to its frenetic pace. The ecological crisis has become a pretext for increasing global competition, the technological race and social and environmental dumping".

"What green growth offers us as a 'solution' is ever more markets and technology, […] a frantic quest for efficiency and rationalisation, with no regard for sensitivity or the quest for harmonious relations with others and with nature."

"With green industry, new tax credits and guarantees will be granted. Not 12 billion euros for workers and pensions, but hundreds of billions for big business."

Hélène Tordjman (in fr) : https://reporterre.net/Helene-Tordjman-M-Macron-est-enferme-dans-son-delire-productiviste