computerwives

[computerwives]

this made me cry. "being used as an extension of something bigger, something crueller than me" -- ain't that just life.

[computerwives]

Our society's growing reliance on computer systems that were initially intended to "help" people make analyses and decisions, but which have long since both surpassed the understanding of their users and become indispensable to them, is a very serious development. It has two important consequences. First, decisions are made with the aid of, and sometimes entirely by, computers whose programs no one any longer knows explicitly or understands. Hence no one can know the criteria or the rules on which such decisions are based. Second, the systems of rules and criteria that are embodied in such computer systems become immune to change, because, in the absence of a detailed understanding of the inner workings of a computer system, any substantial modification of it is very likely to render the whole system inoperative and possibly unrestorable. Such computer systems can therefore only grow. And their growth and the increasing reliance placed on them is accompanied by an increasing legitimation of their "knowledge base." […] One would expect that large numbers of individuals, living in a society in which anonymous, hence irresponsible, forces formulate the large questions of the day and circumscribe the range of possible answers, would experience a kind of impotence and fall victim to a mindless rage. And surely we see that expectation fulfilled all around us, on university campuses and in factones, in homes and offices. Its manifestations are workers' sabotage of the products of their labor, unrest and aimlessness among students, street crime, escape into drug-induced dream worlds, and so on. Yet an alternative response is also very pervasive; as seen from one perspective, it appears to be resignation, but from another perspective it is what Erich Fromm long ago called "escape from freedom." The "good German" in Hitler's time could sleep more soundly because he "didn't know" about Dachau. He didn't know, he told us later, because the highly organized Nazi system kept him from knowing. (Curiously, though, I, as an adolescent in that same Germany, knew about Dachau. I thought I had reason to fear it.) Of course, the real reason the good German didn't know is that he never felt it to be his responsibility to ask what had happened to his Jewish neighbor whose apartment suddenly became available. The university professor whose dream of being promoted to the status of Ordinarius was suddenly fulfilled didn't ask how his precious chair had suddenly become vacant. Finally, all Germans became victims of what had befallen them. Today even the most highly placed managers represent themselves as innocent victims of a technology for which they accept no responsibility and which they do not even pretend to understand (One must wonder, though, why it never occurred to Admiral Moorer to ask what effect the millions of tons of bombs the computer said were being dropped on Viet Nam were having.) The American Secretary of State, Dr. Henry Kissinger, while explaining that he could hardly have known of the "White House horrors" revealed by the Watergate investigation, mourned over "the awfulness of events and the tragedy that has befallen so many people."

-- Joseph Weizenbaum, Computer Power and Human Reason (1976)

[computerwives]

found a great place to hide (on the floor behind an AV rack)

[computerwives]

[computerwives]

Here I stop them. “Why are you telling me, telling me, telling me things? Your job isn’t to deliver this whole room to me on a silver platter. I don’t want the silver platter. I want to attack this room. I want to own it, just like how the sighted people here own it. Or, if the room isn’t worth owning, then I want to grab whatever I find worth stealing. C’mon, let’s start over. What we’ll do is start to touch things and people here, together, while we provide running commentaries and feedback to each other.”

John Lee Clark on Protactile and partnership vs “access”

[computerwives]

It's a five-year cultural snapshot of what we did in this country when we thought things had a chance of getting better instead of getting worse. We were betrayed by those in power, repeatedly and with great prejudice. The future horrors will require different storytelling.

Zoë Hayden on 9-1-1's finale and the American interregnum

[computerwives]

light reading - I have only just started the introduction but I think they should teach this in schools. Like to high schoolers.

[computerwives]

[computerwives]

thoughts on the "bright side"

this is raw for me, so hopefully it's not too upsetting to anyone. i'll try to be even-keeled.

we're barely 3 days into the second trump regime, which started off with a lot of big moves to the right. understandably, people are still recovering from the paradigm-shift (although, tbf, it's a shift that has been lined up for quite some time). it's hard to regulate right now, let alone calibrate one's senses. some people are feeling giddy fervor because their "side" "won", some people are feeling let-down because their "side" never actually putting up much of a fight to begin with. we're all trying to figure out our next move. it sucks ass.

so it's reasonable, i guess, that one way people will cope with the broad pathos is optimism. it's the sort of response to adversity that the average self-help book would advise. i'm doing it too (albeit from a place of anticipating a 4-∞ year marathon of hardship); i'm trying not to get too caught up in borrowing trouble that will come in due time.

but i do have a gentle critique of this self-soothing mechanism.

you literally do not gotta hand it to trump and the maga set, especially not before they have even accomplished anything beyond sowing chaos. just as the advice for living under a fascist regime commonly starts with "citizens should not obey in advance"... let's not grant them the grace of optimism to comfort ourselves.

optimism works in some tough situations. "hey, it might actually work out for me in the end" is an ok way to approach having to find a new therapist, or adapting to a dietary/mobility restriction, or those small-to-medium personal risks like telling a friend you have feelings for them.

but when it comes to a national-administrative and political slide into fascism: what the fuck are you doing, my guy? the moment does not call for comfort! i hope for everyone to both take and offer respite in ways that don't harm others, and i support the pursuit of that. we all need respite, and we should take it. but saying it might all just work out waters the seed of complacency.

even if that attitude has helped you deal with hardship in the past, even if you're someone who stands to benefit from some portion of the maga policies, please don't dull your empathy with optimism.

[computerwives]

how do i hold the long spoon?

do you remember that tweet from 2020, or maybe 2016, that was like 

“i don’t know how to explain to you that you should care about other people”

?

i feel like’ve ricocheted off of an attempt to explain why one should care about others every 6 months, my entire adult life.

my pattern of approach has been to try reading some ethics text or another for a few weeks, with growing embarrassment about my search for a concrete answer to something that i should just fucking get (as a human, because it’s not something that needs to be proven to be done), until i finally surrender theory for a direct-action nonanswer like buying groceries for old people. 

it’s honestly not hard to get it and just do it. i’m sure this feeling is part of why some people do crazy shit like eat vegan, volunteer at hospice facilities, or go to med school to work in the baby ER. i think leaving it unexplored is fine, possibly even better than fine, because it would really suck to discover something that puts you off altruism. but, like, how can one resist thinking about it?

personally, my “reaching” of “maturity” has been the result of haphazardly staking out social and ethical boundaries that align with “values” i’ve found, inherited, or inherited but thought i found (secret third type). when i demonstrated to myself that i could pick them up and move them with me, throughout different social contexts, like a crinoline defining the shape of my character, i actually did feel quite mature. but i’m actually hugely naive and toddler-like in almost every way, even those in which i feel accomplished.

i’m kinda old-ish now (some scoff, some nod as if i am brave), and i’m not so easily embarrassed by myself any more, which is the first blush of boomer ruin, so i was thinking i could write about what i think, as i think it, publicly, on the internet. it sounds fucking insane as i type it.

although i loved reading smart adult’s blogs in the early 2000s, it is my firm opinion that nobody should ever post. horrifyingly, some of my smartest friends do it now. if it’s my fate now, as an adult, to debase myself, why not do it up?

i’m tagging everything i post with #longspoon, so i can: a) easily delete it all when i get embarrassed or cancelled; b) (with hubris) tag it all for RSS; c) (hubris fading to trepidation) keep this blog organized if i ever post other types of things.

why “long spoon”?

before i explain this, i want to just say 2 things. 

that i don’t buy “heaven” or “hell” as scenarios. i believe only hell is real, we are all living in it right now, and it’s actually not as bad as you hear (but it still sucks a lot).

that this will not be brief so take a bathroom break now.

not the onion.

there isn’t a single parable-form telling of it online that doesn’t reek of clinically uncool self-help language. here’s my version:

basically, imagine a banquet table laid with the most succulent soup-feast imaginable. we’re talking stew, soup dumplings, matzo ball soup, pot pie filling, everything good and hot you can eat with a spoon. but the people seated at this banquet are gaunt and starving. they are unable to eat the soup, because the spoons they’ve been given are too long to reach to their own mouths.  here you might ask, “why not simply choke up on the spoon handle so it functions as a shorter one?” shut up, and get out of my temple, that’s why! for some reason they cannot do that. neither can they reach the soup with their bare hands, or faces. maybe they get a few bites that way, but it doesn’t really work to nourish them.  “but why do they have these impractical spoons?” here is the moment where jesus or buddha or lord siddhartha twists his nasty little face into a grinch smile because you’ve asked him just the question he was hoping for. the spoons are not supposed to be used for feeding oneself. they aren’t meant to be used that way. in the 90s, don norman would have passed by and pointed out that the spoon’s long handle is clearly an affordance which telegraphs its purpose*. (nowadays he is either cancelled or explaining that it is actually called a signifier and an affordance is something else, thus justifying his book’s sustained $30 price tag.) the guests at this banquet are too fucking selfish and hangry to read affordances. they do not understand that they are meant to use their long-handled spoons to feed the person across the table from them, who in turn is meant to feed them. i don’t think anyone is seated at the head or foot of the table. if so, they have extra special long spoon handles which are arched in some manner. this is not a fun banquet.

for our purposes, we’re gonna stay away from that. i don’t think the heavenly version of the banquet exists. it’s more an architectural rendering of how a long-utensil-style banquet could potentially work, given enough budget. 

[computerwives]

In Memoriam

Everyone turned out to be so disappointingly human after all.

Even me.

Even you.

Especially me.

But most especially you.