Every one of them knew that as time went by
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) January 1, 2017
They'd get a little bit older and a litter slower, but
Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All
Saturday, December 31, 2016
As Always, Year's Last Tweet
Friday, December 30, 2016
This Is A Test
Republicans like to pretend Democrats are cartoon villains
Thursday, December 29, 2016
A Handy Tech-Talk Translator:
"Acceleration" = Precarization
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 28, 2016
"Artificial Intelligence" = Denial of Responsibility
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 28, 2016
"Automation" = Dismantlement of Organized Labor
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 28, 2016
"Culturefit" = Bigotry
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 28, 2016
"Democratization" = Rules and Standards Are for the Little People
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 28, 2016
"Digitality" = Loathing and Denial of Material Bodies, Material Brains, Material Historical Struggle
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 28, 2016
"Disruption" = Deregulation
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 28, 2016
"Enhancement" = Eugenics
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 28, 2016
"Free" = Under Duress
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 28, 2016
"The Future" = The Status Quo, Amplified
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 28, 2016
"Gamification" = Let Us Assume Everyone Is A Sociopath
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 28, 2016
"Innovation" = PR-Repackaging
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 28, 2016
"Internet of Things" = People Being Treated As Things Via the Internet
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 28, 2016
"Let the market decide." = Let rich people decide.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 28, 2016
"Maker" = Grifter
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 28, 2016
"Meritocracy" = White Male Mediocrity
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 28, 2016
"New" = Forgotten
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 28, 2016
"Open" = Empty
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 28, 2016
"Progress" = Wealth Concentration
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 28, 2016
"Resilience" = Exploitability
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 28, 2016
"Risk" = Privileged Upward Failure
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 28, 2016
"Roboticization" = Increasing Treatment of Workers As Robots
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 28, 2016
"Sharing" = Sharecropping
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 28, 2016
"Smart" = Not Smart
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 28, 2016
"Spontaneous Order" = Following Orders
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 28, 2016
"Strong Encryption" = Cyberspatial Gun-Nuttery
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 28, 2016
"Think Tank" = Spin Room
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 29, 2016
"Thought Leader" = Mouth of Sauron
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 28, 2016
Wednesday, December 28, 2016
Democrats Do Have Something Superior To Sell If Only They Would Sell It
Democrats rarely celebrate our accomplishments -- we are too eager to focus on their flaws or move on to the next thing instead. 1
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 29, 2016
Meanwhile, Republicans boast accomplishments that aren't even real (or about Democratic accomplishments they actually fought against). 2
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 29, 2016
Be very clear: the result is not that people think Democrats are virtuous but that people think Republicans are accomplished. 3
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 29, 2016
There is no mystery why Republicans are considered "better on the economy" even though they wreck the economy over and over again. 4
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 29, 2016
There is no mystery why Republicans are considered "better on defense" despite their destabilizing belligerence, illegal & unpopular wars. 5
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 29, 2016
People buy what Republicans are selling because Republicans are at least selling something. 6
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 29, 2016
Tuesday, December 27, 2016
Citizens and AI (Actual Intelligence) in the Trump Crisis
1 In television commercials people interact with Siri and Alexa as if they were actual artificial intelligences...
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 26, 2016
2 …that is to say, as if they were capable of actually-intelligent, actually-respons(ive/able) interactions with human beings.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 26, 2016
3 I used to think the clear difference of interactions between humans and devices and these hilariously false portrayals…
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 26, 2016
4 …would render people more skeptical of "Tech" claims more generally. I see now how wrong I was, and even begin to understand why.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 26, 2016
5 It is not so much that people think their own inept devices perform with the seamless perfection of the lies on tee vee…
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 26, 2016
6 …but that the lies create the frame in which they interpret these failures as intimations of perfections to come.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 26, 2016
7 A commercial for a quite conventional laptop computer this holiday season culminates in the declaration on the part of its owner…
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 26, 2016
8 …that using the device makes her feel "she is living in The Future." After saying so, she chuckles, and her laughter is crucial:
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 26, 2016
9 She knows her device is really the usual disappointing, landfill-destined piece of crap, but this "knowing" is the occasion…
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 26, 2016
10 …for the ideological pleasure she takes in imbuing the object with the Romance of The Future (which is what is being sold here)…
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 26, 2016
11 …which depends very specifically on NOT assuming a critical or organizational stance in respect to the device.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 26, 2016
12 We inhabit a present transformed by artifacts exhibiting futuristic style, interpreted through elements of futurological ideology…
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 26, 2016
13 …into a stage setting in which we enact collective fantasies of techno-progressive and even techno-transcendental agency.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 26, 2016
14 Of course, futurity is indeed a dimension of present time, the openness inhering in the diversity of beings sharing the now,
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 26, 2016
15 …but the futurological Future would foreclose this openness, fill it with dead data to sell you things and control contingency.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 26, 2016
16 The futurological Future forecloses the open futurity in which political freedom lives, substituting for that freedom promises…
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 26, 2016
17 …of instrumental capacitation (enhancements, reassurances, satisfactions) and substituting for thought-in-freedom legible routines.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 26, 2016
18 "The Future" would foreclose futurity in much the same way Progress-qua-Destiny would foreclose progress as collective struggle.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 26, 2016
19 It's not just that treating Siri or Alexa as intelligent when they are not, or smart cards, cars, houses as "smart" when they are not…
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 26, 2016
20 …is a deception peddling fraudulent devices to credulous consumers (though it is). And it's not just that an habituation to attribution…
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 26, 2016
21 …of intelligence to non-intelligent devices evacuates that attribution of substance when its recognition in our fellow beings…
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 26, 2016
22 …is indispensable to the recognition and protection of our dignity, integrity, and standing and so…
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 26, 2016
23 …threatens the rights and hopes of us all (though it does) -- human, Great Ape, cetacean. But also, these little ideological dramas...
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 26, 2016
24 …in which futurologists (and Tech-Talkers more generally) are training us to perform are also undermining the fundamental…
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 26, 2016
25 …terms on the basis of which political life proceeds, a political life in which we experience the freedom, progress, and dignity…
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 26, 2016
26 …without which forms of human flourishing may be entirely lost to us, in exchange for a handful of useless, polluting crap.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 26, 2016
27 That Americans reading these tweets happen to be entering a time of great peril in which thriving political action, criticism, struggle…
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 26, 2016
28 …are the only hope for an open futurity not foreclosed by "The Future" of the statisticians, the salesmen, and the bomb builders…
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 26, 2016
29 …just makes it all the more urgent that we resist the deceptive, distracting, hyperbolic, faith-based (self-)promotional-infomercial…
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 26, 2016
30 …norms and forms of the tech-marketeers and the corporate-military think-tank "Thought Leaders" and "Designers" who…
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 26, 2016
31 …would make bets and call it having thoughts and sell you crap and would call it making freedom.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 26, 2016
32 I must add, by way of conclusion, since there are now just two sides you can be on, it comes to matter more than ever that the Democrats…
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 26, 2016
33 …that is to say, the side that must prevail if sustainable equitable diverse freedom would prevail (flaws errors notwithstanding FOCUS!)…
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 26, 2016
34 …then we must grasp the unique danger represented by the undeniable seduction of much of the Democratic left by siren songs…
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 26, 2016
35 …of tech-entrepreneurship (feudalism), disruption (deregulation), big-data (insensitivity), technocracy (anti-democracy).
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 26, 2016
36 Democrats are the last best hope in America for freedom, progress, convivial multiculture, social and environmental justice…
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 26, 2016
37 …and so we cannot tolerate the loss of that hope to the reactionary seductions of futurology, techno-feudalism and earth-alienation.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 26, 2016
38 Siri, Alexa, facebook profiling algorithms, and heat-signature targeting software in drones will never be citizens, but we must be. Now.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 26, 2016
Monday, December 26, 2016
Lies, Damn Lies, and Futurism
I think most of what passes for "Tech" design should be disregarded
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 25, 2016
and most of what is accepted as "Tech" promotion should be prosecuted.
Most "Tech" marketing & design peddles the truly terrible lie that we are approaching the Star Trek future rather than the feudal past.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 25, 2016
We have grown so accustomed to being lied to by advertising that we now tend to imitate advertising even when we lie to ourselves.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 25, 2016
Social media is the consummation of false advertising.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 27, 2016
Sunday, December 25, 2016
And What Have You Done?
Saturday, December 24, 2016
Christmas Effects by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
What’s “queer?” Here’s one train of thought about it. The depressing thing about the Christmas season -- isn’t it? -- is that it’s the time when all the institutions are speaking with one voice. The Church says what the Church says. But the State says the same thing: maybe not (in some ways it hardly matters) in the language of theology, but in the language the State talks: legal holidays, long school hiatus, special postage stamps, and all. And the language of commerce more than chimes in, as consumer purchasing is organized ever more narrowly around the final weeks of the calendar year, the Dow Jones aquiver over Americans’ “holiday mood.” The media, in turn, fall in triumphally behind the Christmas phalanx: ad-swollen magazines have oozing turkeys on the cover, while for the news industry every question turns into the Christmas question -- Will hostages be free for Christmas? What did that flash flood or mass murder (umpty-ump people killed and maimed) do to those families’ Christmas? And meanwhile, the pairing “families/Christmas” becomes increasingly tautological, as families more and more constitute themselves according to the schedule, and in the endlessly iterated image, of the holiday itself constituted in the image of "the" family.
The thing hasn’t, finally, so much to do with propaganda for Christianity as with propaganda for Christmas itself. They all -- religion, state, capital, ideology, domesticity, the discourses of power and legitimacy -- line up with each other so neatly once a year, and the monolith so created is a thing one can come to view with unhappy eyes. What if instead there were a practice of valuing the ways in which meanings and institutions can be at loose ends with each other? What if the richest junctures weren’t the ones where everything means the same thing? -- Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Tendencies, Duke University Press, 1993, pp. 5-6
Friday, December 23, 2016
Scolding Hypocrites Is Not Enough
1 Hundreds of Trump hypocrisies exposed daily! But who really cares about these? Most will normalize them, his supporters celebrate them.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 22, 2016
2 There are actual violations of law happening, there are people who will suffer or die because of his decisions. These should be the focus.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 22, 2016
3 I can think of few things that are finally more ineffectual and also self-defeating than the left's obsession with political hypocrisies.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 22, 2016
4 Look, I am far from declaring hypocrisy nice or good or a virtue or what have you -- but there are worse things than hypocrisy.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 22, 2016
5 Trump policies will victimize people with whom majorities will identify if we tell their stories over and over and over again.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 22, 2016
6 Trump policies will be based on demonstrably false economic, environmental premises that majorities can be made to understand…
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 22, 2016
7 …if we provide better alternatives in a pithy, consistent way over and over and over again (yes, even if that bores the hot take left).
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 22, 2016
8 So, let's do THOSE things.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 22, 2016
Trump is a hypocrite.
We get it.
Trump's supporters don't care about what they claimed to.
We get it.
Do more.
9 Indulging in endless exposures of these hypocrisies serves little I fear but to provide yet another stage for more left purity cabaret…
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 22, 2016
10 that is until the next primary offers its charismatic DreamPrez for straight white people to fall in love with to serve the same purpose.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 22, 2016
11 I worry, mulched into the left's endless exposure of hypocrisies is a hostility to compromises, qualifications, dynamism in all politics.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 22, 2016
12 This connects with the weird incapacity of the left to let anybody root for our actual accomplishments, especially compromised ones…
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 22, 2016
13 …or to support the good we can do rather than deride its distance from the perfect we would enact if everybody magically agreed with us.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 22, 2016
14 There is a stubborn self-defeating strain of anti-politics in too much Dem-left politics, I fear:
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 22, 2016
15 This takes the form especially of a confusion of politics (collective problemsolving, historical reform struggle, stakeholder compromise)
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 22, 2016
16 …with aesthetic perfections, ethical universalism, moral exclusion/evangelism, and the linear implementation of engineering specs.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 22, 2016
Also, They Make Crappy Art
Thursday, December 22, 2016
Trump Resistance Needs To Be More Than "Lulz TrumpVoters Are Such Stoopid Hypocrites" -- For Example:
via The Sacramento Bee:
Two state senators are introducing legislation to require presidential candidates to release their tax returns in order to appear on the California ballot, a direct response to President-elect Donald Trump’s refusal to disclose his tax documents prior to the November election... The bill, which will be co-introduced by Wiener and Sen. Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, in January, is modeled after New York’s TRUMP Act, also known as Senate S8217. Introduced by Sen. Brad Hoylman, the New York bill requires presidential and vice presidential candidates to file five years of tax income returns at least 50 days before the general election.
Bill would force future prez & VP candidates to release tax returns to be on #California ballot#Trump #NotNormal #election https://t.co/iQaCh8w9jr
— shirley jahad (@ShirleyJahad) December 19, 2016
Even if only reliably blue states succeeded in making this a requirement, Trumpish disclosure norm violations would be halted. @ShirleyJahad
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 23, 2016
Nothing could be clearer than that democratic norms we counted on must be made into legal requirements when a major party rejects democracy.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 23, 2016
Tech Destiny!
Silicon Valley wants us to merge our daily lives & activities "ever more seamlessly with informatic machines” https://t.co/hfkBvgnvf7
— Frank Pasquale (@FrankPasquale) December 20, 2016
1 It's important to recognize the extent to which tech "Thought Leaders" accept a host of essentially faith-based narratives @FrankPasquale
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 20, 2016
2 …through which they frame qualified developments & confused aspirations. @FrankPasquale
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 20, 2016
4 Computationism, cybernetic-totalism, digi-utopianism, anti-material/body, individualist cyborg-ruggedization, eugenicisms… @FrankPasquale
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 20, 2016
5 One can criticize the paradoxes and uncertainties in these assumptions, aspirations and frames (after all, there are many) @FrankPasquale
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 20, 2016
6 …and one can criticize the results/goals justified, inspired, and rationalized by them (also many), @FrankPasquale
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 20, 2016
7 …but critics should take care not to deploy futurological frames in assessing this scene and proposing our alternatives. @FrankPasquale
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 20, 2016
8 It matters that the universe is not a simulation, there is no AI, humans are not merging with machines, tech is not accelerating, etc.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 20, 2016
@dalecarrico yes..our Marinetti's "War is beautiful because it initiates dreamed-of metalization of the human body" https://t.co/AvvEDVITek
— Frank Pasquale (@FrankPasquale) December 21, 2016
Tech talkers, like most evangelical con artists, do love their Destiny tall tales: they sell widgets and papers, but they don't tell truths.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 20, 2016
Wednesday, December 21, 2016
Grading Is Done. Debate Surges On. Also, Naturally, Xanadu.
The sooner people realize they BOTH stoked the misplaced White rage and resentment that created this DISASTER, the sooner we fix it. https://t.co/oPmWKmxNFM
— Propane Jane™ (@docrocktex26) December 19, 2016
@docrocktex26 @dalecarrico - Baloney. Don't equate B w/ T. Nowhere near the same. Trump IS the issue. -
— Señor Sanderista (@sidecarhammond) December 19, 2016
@sidecarhammond Recognizing a relation is not positing an equation.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 20, 2016
@Maggyw519 @docrocktex26 @dalecarrico - losing EV but winning PV by ~3,000,000 votes = bad strategy. Dems need to own that. -
— Señor Sanderista (@sidecarhammond) December 20, 2016
@sidecarhammond @Maggyw519 What does "own that" look like? If it looks like rejecting Obama coalition or pretending HRC was anti-WC then no.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 20, 2016
@Maggyw519 @docrocktex26 @dalecarrico - nope, Clinton campaign did more damage to itself than B could ever do. -
— Señor Sanderista (@sidecarhammond) December 20, 2016
@sidecarhammond @Maggyw519 So you concede B did damage? Btw, I cheerfully concede monocausal explanations of the loss are bunk.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 20, 2016
@dalecarrico @Maggyw519 - In my opinion, he made her a better candidate; her campaign did not learn from the primary/adjust for the general. -
— Señor Sanderista (@sidecarhammond) December 20, 2016
@sidecarhammond @Maggyw519 I think she was campaigning from the left before he appeared then he smeared her with insinuations of corruption.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 20, 2016
@sidecarhammond @Maggyw519 But I'm happy to agree to disagree since neither will run again & relitigating primary is stupid self-indulgence.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 20, 2016
@dalecarrico @Maggyw519 - for me this is not about relitigating the primary; it's about assessing what went wrong & learning from mistakes.
— Señor Sanderista (@sidecarhammond) December 20, 2016
@sidecarhammond Needless to say specificity about what you think some mistakes & bad decisions were is required before I can usefully agree.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 20, 2016
@sidecarhammond For example some people propose (foolishly in my view) abandoning diverse coalition politics to shift focus to "WWC" mirage.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 20, 2016
@sidecarhammond Others use "mistakes were made" as preface to distortions of an always progressive campaign eventually with a fine platform.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 20, 2016
@sidecarhammond It's easy to agree there were problems. HRCs high negatives gave us an uphill slog (we can disagree whether BS exacerbated),
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 20, 2016
@sidecarhammond HRC was a self-admitted stiff campaigner, and it is clear many lefties (idiotically) need a charismatic DreamPrez to love.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 20, 2016
@sidecarhammond Campaign underplayed chance to run sequel of successful anti-Romney attack focused as Warren was on Trump greed/corruption.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 20, 2016
@sidecarhammond Campaign too cavalier about the effects of voter disenfranchisement in Republican run states treated as Northern firewalls.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 20, 2016
@sidecarhammond I don't know what campaign was supposed to do about crimes like Comey's letter, hacked Podesta e-mail, or media malfeasance.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 20, 2016
@sidecarhammond As I said before monocausal explanations distort lessons. Given Trump's historic loss of popular vote and unfavorables...
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 20, 2016
@sidecarhammond It's actually tricky and almost certainly wrong to draw overdramatic lessons from the loss, truly dramatic tho its result.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 20, 2016
@sidecarhammond I'm focused on state races in two years, hoping disenfranchisement problems can be addressed thereby,
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 20, 2016
@sidecarhammond and hope a younger candidate who is a good talker who can stealth his wonkery and champions the Obama coalition runs next,
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 20, 2016
@sidecarhammond I'm sorry to say Trump will preside over a heap of wreckage to run against, assuming elections aren't part of the wreckage.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 20, 2016
Aw, fuck it! I won't be defeated. Here's Xanadu, anayway!
Tuesday, December 20, 2016
What Are Democrats To Do? Advice from a Rhetorician
1 Okay. Time to shift gears now.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 19, 2016
2 Exposing Trump hypocrisies is mostly ineffectual. They'll be a torrent keeping us off balance, and too many will celebrate them as punk.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 19, 2016
3 Instead, insist suffering caused by Trump/GOP policies/hate has a FACE.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 19, 2016
Make sure people identify with Trump/GOP victims via narratives.
4 Tie Trump to GOP & never let them go. Make them pay for Trump catastrophes to come. No parachutes for "moderate" "reasonable" Republicans.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 19, 2016
5 There are two parties and two sides. Only two. Pick one.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 19, 2016
The one you piss on isn't the one you picked even if you say otherwise.
6 If you don't like partisan compromises and reform -- do good through movement politics or art or charity instead. All are needed.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 19, 2016
7 But if you eschew party politics don't try to undermine hijack or rewrite partisan politics you disdain in the image of your parochialism.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 19, 2016
8 Criticize, but always only to strengthen.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 19, 2016
Pressure, but always only to ensure we win.
Expose, but always only to facilitate diversity.
9 Beat the GOP! Nothing else matters, the victory of more and better Democrats provides key tools implementing every progressive issue now.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 19, 2016
10 Stop carping in the face of victories, even compromised ones. Give people things to root for. Recognize we build progress on successes.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 19, 2016
11 Stop valuing novelty over focusing on essentials and securing contingent accomplishments.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 19, 2016
12 Stop valuing being "unsurprised" over being correct, sensible, and decent.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 19, 2016
Only privileged people think sarcasm insulates them from evil.
13 Rhetorically, we need pithy, even twitterable, basic talking points with which we crucify Republicans and sell the Democratic worldview.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 19, 2016
14 For example:
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 19, 2016
Never trust Republicans with your money.
Never trust Republicans who disdain good government to do good in government.
15 For example:
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 19, 2016
Individualism requires a lot of social support.
Private wealth depends on a commonwealth of laws, education, infrastructure.
16 For example:
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 19, 2016
Our diversity both demonstrates the reality of our freedom and provides the strength we need to defend it.
17 Every person who suffers isolation, neglect, or fear is a person whose potential and effort is stolen from our shared work of freedom.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 19, 2016
18 I could go on, anybody could. The point is, we mustn't be afraid to be earnest when we're right, or to be repetitive when we must to win.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 19, 2016
Monday, December 19, 2016
DIFFICILE EST SATURAM NON SCRIBERE
Sunday, December 18, 2016
If You Were Wondering...
Time To Read Arendt
Saturday, December 17, 2016
Friday, December 16, 2016
Same
Obama's De-Presser
Abnormality Isn't Exactly The Issue With Trump
My Day (Also, My Night)
Pluralism Against Mischief
Thursday, December 15, 2016
On The DNC Leadershp Contest...
Ellison &Perez are both good progressive labor Dems. I'd miss Ellison in House, think Perez would be as good a Chair so incline Perez a bit.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 15, 2016
Both sides including mine are using this contest to relitigate the primary&I can't think of a more self-defeating waste at a time of crisis.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 15, 2016
Shorten Silly Season... Save Democracy
I wonder if ever-lengthening campaigns aren't demoralizing voter-depressive developments aligning with formal GOP disenfranchisement schemes
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 15, 2016
Month after month after month of gossip and scandal and orchestrated moments without substance plays into cynical GOP anti-governmentality.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 15, 2016
A short sharp campaign with expectations from all to demonstrate grasp of issues and temperamental fitness would benefit Dem ethos overall.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 15, 2016
Social media inattention span & mainstream media need for wringing profit from reality tv model suggests we'll keep going in wrong direction
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 15, 2016
Deep In Final Grading
Wednesday, December 14, 2016
Governor Brown: "California Will Launch Our Own Damn Satellite! We've Got More Sun Than You Have Oil!"
Gov. Jerry Brown, rallying a room of scientists Wednesday with his most heated rhetoric yet on the topic, suggested California would defy the federal government should President-elect Donald Trump impede the state’s efforts to thwart climate change. “We’ve got the scientists, we’ve got the lawyers and we’re ready to fight. We’re ready to defend,” he said to boisterous applause at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco. Brown struck a more forceful tone than he has since the election, suggesting the energy and enthusiasm in the room for him would be needed in the “battles ahead.” “Keep it up,” Brown implored the gathering. “Don’t flag. We got a lot of work to do.” At one point, Brown warned against proposed budget cuts under the new presidential administration that could effectively eliminate earth-observing satellite programs... “And, if Trump turns off the satellites, California will launch it’s own damn satellite,” he added. “We’re going to collect that data.” He said if the federal government “starts messing with” the state’s renowned science facilities, such as Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, “I am the president of the Board of Regents. I am going to say, ‘Keep your hands off. That laboratory is going to pursue good science.” Later, he jabbed at former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who before becoming Trump’s pick for Energy Secretary tried to poach jobs from California. “Rick, I got some news for you,” Brown said. “California is growing a hell of a lot faster than Texas. And we got more sun than you have oil.”California: Alternative, Resistance, Future. Proud of my State! There's nowhere I'd rather be.
Trump Tech Culturefit
Tho' Silicon Valley has a notional affiliation with the Democratic left (based mostly, I daresay, in an utterly unreliable, sentimental, subcultural attachment arising out of proximity to the vestigially-liberal Bay Area, and in a rejection of Republican anti-science and Christianist evangelism that benefits Democrats who declare themselves "fact-based" in response, but who too often take that to endorse reductionist, quantificationist, eugenic, unaccountably technocratic, bourgeois-consumerist, corporate-militarist, and techno-triumphalist "Thought Leadership" qua "fact"), the truth is that Trump & "Tech" are a match made in Hell.
I expect full co-operation in no time at all -- Peter Thiel is not a counter-example but a reductio ad absurdum. Futurology has always been a genre of marketing deception and hyperbole amplified into techno-transcendental religiosity, what better ideological framework to rationalize Trump's otherwise unmoored authoritarian greedhead aggrieved-aggressive masculine impulses?
Tuesday, December 13, 2016
Grading
Monday, December 12, 2016
The greatest enemy is the GOP. Act like it.
Yes, Republicans are the enemy -- No, not the imperfections of Democrats as measured against your philosophical ideals, nor the compromises Democrats bang out among diverse stakeholders that fail to measure up to best policies they actually probably mostly agree with you would be the best policies too if politics weren't about solving shared problems in a world of diverse stakeholders whose interests and perspectives differ from your own...
Republicans are the enemy. Not bankers, the police, hackers, evangelical pastors, or (that's right, even my own personal bugbear) futurological Thought Leaders and VC marketeers -- all of these social and cultural formations are facilitated or frustrated in their worst conduct according to the policies and norms and reform struggles shaped by the Party in power, Democratic or Republican. The worst will do their worst when Republicans encourage them and will be checked when Democrats at their best do their best to reform them.
Republicans, Republicans, Republicans are the enemy. The racist, patriarchal, gun loving, cheating, bullying, privatizing, greedhead, anti-intellectual Republicans of our lifetimes are the enemy. They must be defeated, then marginalized, and then made to change.
The Republican Party is the most dangerous and evil organized force in the world. This is not because Republicans are more evil than other evil people the world over -- but because the Republicans are one of two nationally viable parties in the most resource-rich and militarily powerful nation on earth.
Let me repeat: Republicans are the enemy.
The Democratic Party, to the contrary, is an indispensable tool, perhaps the indispensable tool, Americans have to progress toward sustainable equity-in-diversity. While there are educational, agitational, organizational efforts that contribute to progress apart from the work of reform and governance undertaken by and through the Democratic party, even that work is most effective when it complements and strengthens the work of the Democratic Party. Democracy, equity, diversity, sustainability, civil rights, social justice, progress -- none are ever served by weakening or undermining the Democratic Party tool.
And so, always vote and always vote for Democrats, even imperfect ones. Always support more, and better, Democrats. There are bad Democrats, to be sure, but voting for them when they cannot be supplanted by better Democrats empowers better Democrats in the coalition, while not voting for them empowers a Republican instead: and there are no good Republicans. Always pressure Democrats to reflect the most progressive priorities their constituencies will tolerate. Reward loyalty, competence, and effective communication even from Democratic candidates who do not agree with you in every particular. Never criticize Democrats in ways that undermine our coalition, only do so in ways that strengthen it. Always ask yourself: is my criticism one that will actually give Democrats ammunition to win election and policy campaigns or am I indulging in useless scolding that troubles the Democratic voting coalition to no real purpose? Ask yourself: Am I supporting progress by strengthening Democrats or am indulging in purity cabaret because it feels good to me and makes me feel superior, whatever the consequences? Never criticize Democrats in ways that pander to or suggest false equivalence with Republicans. Never do so because: that. is. a. lie.
Never count on or hire or support or appeal to the decency or patriotism of Republicans. They have none. They will betray you and cheat you if they can (holding out for bipartisan support that never arrived delayed and diminished the ACA and stimulus in ways used by the GOP to undermine Obama from the beginning of his Presidency, James Comey, whose unprecedented deceptive intervention late in the election was a factor delivering the White House to an unfit unqualified infantile imbecilic bigot, was a virtue-signaling bipartisanship hire, the examples can be multiplied endlessly and the next four years will so multiply them). That Republicans are the primary enemy was not always true and it may not be true again some day, but it is true now. Multicultural Democrats won the culture wars and Republicans feel like strangers in a strange land: they experience tolerance and equity as existential threats (that they are deluded in this as in so much else is quite beside the point) and they no longer think that fair play and civil liberties and public investments benefit their cause and constituency. Make no mistake, they are fighting a Civil War to preserve white supremacy and patriarchy and Christianist hegemony by any means necessary.
America is a diversifying, secularizing, planetizing nation. Our diversity in the context of our never-yet-realized always-aspirational equitable laws and norms is an endless resource for pleasure, education, discovery, invention, problem-solving, practical strategies of conviviality. The Democratic Party is the imperfect but best-available and actually-available vehicle through which to support and implement the multicultural mission of this nation and its role in building a sustainable equitable consensual world. The Republican Party is deceived and deceiving, dying off and dealing in death. Republicans are the enemy. Know this, and then act like someone who knows it.
Sunday, December 11, 2016
Saturday, December 10, 2016
Latest Potential Trump Nightmare Cabinet Pick Rex Tillerson, Geo-Engineer
1 Do those saying "at least Rex Tillerson admits climate change is real" know he advocates futurological greenwashing via geo-engineering?
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 10, 2016
For example, if you were wondering:
I mean, at least Rex Tillerson knows that climate change is real. So there's that.
— Christopher Hayes (@chrislhayes) December 10, 2016
2 In 2012, Tillerson declared climate change is merely "an engineering problem" for which here will inevitably be "an engineering solution."
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 10, 2016
3 Tillerson, "The New North American Energy Paradigm: Reshaping the Future," transcript, CFR (2012, June 27).https://t.co/qCkPUFM9iO
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 10, 2016
4 Setting aside the deliberate generational deception of climate change denial Exxon-Mobile participated in for parochial profitability...
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 10, 2016
5 it is crucial to recognize that the displacement onto imaginary engineering of the shared political problems of climate change is in fact
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 10, 2016
6 another form of denialism -- the denial of collective responsibility and agency in climate politics -- a sequel denial not a correction.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 10, 2016
7 Hope it is not necessary to spell out why more profitable industrialism may not be a solution to profitably ruinous industrial extraction?
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 10, 2016
8 But here are places I elaborate the reasons, if you like:
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 10, 2016
1 https://t.co/PUN0KF0aSK
2 https://t.co/L06jAER6vO
3 https://t.co/odKvvsNraD
Friday, December 09, 2016
Are You Not Entertained?
Thursday, December 08, 2016
...
Wednesday, December 07, 2016
Futurological Brickbat
Tomorrow Is Another Day
Perfect
"Donald Trump: Please think about calling Elon Musk," @andrewrsorkin writes https://t.co/DZlED1dreU
— The New York Times (@nytimes) December 6, 2016
Thought leaders pining for the Schlongularity, a Trump meeting with Elon Musk "to save the economy" is just fucking perfection.
Tuesday, December 06, 2016
Satire is a thing.
The Robocultic Marriage of Eugenic-Eliminationism and Digi-Dematerialism
I feel more and more that transhumanism wrecks genuine research into human health and life span because of their insistance on immortality and a variety of other body hating schemes but then again that is why i read this blog so i can see you expose them for the cult they are.I think you make a good point -- people may lose the capacity to assess the costs, risks, benefits of legitimate medical research and qualified results intelligently when all of this gets hyperbolized through techno-transcendental marketing/TrueBeliever narratives of sooper-capacitation, immortalization, hyper-individualization, etc. Mostly, I tend to think this stuff lends itself to gross scams and frauds that reward privileged upward failures and sociopathic CEOs at the expense of the vulnerable.
Lately though -- maybe because I am re-reading Frank Pasquale and David Golumbia in preparation for an upcoming course -- I find myself wondering more and more about how the fetish for quantification in the epoch of ubiquitous but secretive algorithmic mediation may be even more dangerous than the cyborg ruggedization fantasies of transhumanoid gun-nuttery, encryption-fanaticism, sooper-humanization, and techno-immortality I usually go on about here (though uploading discourse is a key hinge connecting these branches of techno-unhingement): the idea that well-being, longevity, social order, the mysteries of the universe are all matters of cranking the calliope and running the numbers.
A whole lot of rather insensitive dullards are being celebrated as geniuses at the moment (especially the ones rolling in dough) who seem to believe every person and even the whole universe is, at its heartless heart, an algorithm -- which is, in my view, at best to say the least, an only very occasionally and very incidentally useful but all in all flabbergastingly inapt and inept metaphor.
The robocultic sects were indeed early adopters of this fatal metaphor -- what Lanier warned people about as the ideology of "cybernetic totalism" and what Hayles explicated in her readings of formative documents of information science -- with their Bayesian envangelism and information-theoretic death and crypto-anarchic fever dreams in the heady days of fin-de-siecle irrational exuberance before the dot.bomb, the illegal lying war, the crash, and the GOP embrace of its authoritarian tendency delivered us into the maw of The Future.
That robocultic discourses are a white-hot collision point for techno-utopian/dystopian eugenic-eliminationism AND digi-dematerialism makes them, as always, a fascinating and symptomatic iceberg tip of the suicidal-genocidal extractive-industrial-consumer-financial corporate-militarist monster of neoliberal/neoconservative planetarity. But, as always, if you really want to see where the action is, it is better still to read the white papers and watch the conference talks of dot-eyed corporate-militarists from the think tanks or watch the desperate peddlars of cremes and chrome on late-nite infomercials... there you find the throbbing catastrophic death-dealing life robocultic futurologal rhetoric condenses and clarifies and reduces to absurdity.
Monday, December 05, 2016
A Deep-Pocketed Outfit Calling Itself "The Immortality Project" Is Feeling A Wee Bit Sensitive
— Immortality Project (@ImmortalityProj) May 16, 2016
Transhumanist boilerplate hasn't changed in 30 years apart from postponements of the techno-transcendence. @ImmortalityProj @washingtonpost— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) May 19, 2016
— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) May 19, 2016
Quite apart from the fact that nobody seems particularly agitated up to this point, and hence the exhortation to "Calm down" seems a bit odd, do take note of the date of this tweet and compare it to the dates of the tweets to which it is responding. Over six months had elapsed, and the tweets were the occasion for a few "likes" and then vanished into the scroll. I take it back, maybe somebody does indeed seem unduly agitated after all. To this unexpectedly latecoming bit of defensiveness I offered up the usual anti-futurological snark:@adamjohnsonNYC @dalecarrico Calm down. Everything we tweet isn't an endorsement. We fund research, but we also post news on immortality.— Immortality Project (@ImmortalityProj) November 30, 2016
@ImmortalityProj @adamjohnsonNYC I've got some news for you to post on that front, dear: You, like everybody else, are going to die.— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) November 30, 2016
Who ever said robot cultists don't know how to party?@dalecarrico Yes, that's absolutely true. But as @taylorswift13 once sang, "Why you gotta be so mean?"— Immortality Project (@ImmortalityProj) December 4, 2016
Why you gotta be so fraud? @ImmortalityProj— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 4, 2016
You gotta love that, "frankly."@dalecarrico Have you actually looked at the research we funded? It's not "fraudulent"; frankly, our researchers' aims are modest at best.— Immortality Project (@ImmortalityProj) December 4, 2016
1 You appear to be a transhumanoid robocultic normalization/academic infiltration effort... @ImmortalityProj— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 4, 2016
2 ...mostly pseudo-science and press release hyperbole with a figleaf of New Age-tinged theology/philosophy for "balance." @ImmortalityProj— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 4, 2016
Given the, er, hip Swiftism earlier on, I do think that last "Oh well" was a missed opportunity for a more on-trend Trumpian, "Sad!"@dalecarrico Neither 1 nor 2 is true. It's clear that you've made up your mind in advance of actually learning about our research. Oh well.— Immortality Project (@ImmortalityProj) December 4, 2016
Longstanding readers of this blog know that it is never really a sound idea for futurologists to assume the reason I am not in the pews with them in their particular sect of robotcultism is because I just haven't familiarized myself yet with their stunning glossy promotional materials. A click on the Superlative Summary will reveal over a decade of close readings of futurological rhetoric on pretty much every topic that preoccupies the attention of our techno-transcendental "Thought Leaders."
In this instance, our intrepid Immortality Project twitterer has categorically denied the truth of my assessment of their little racket. Given that this exchange begins with their link to a self-described primer on transhumanism and then consists of their belated taking of offense that I would declare the piece a stale and unremarkable summary you will forgive me for saying their denial of a connection or interest in transhumanism (the first of my charges, all of which they declare be untrue, recall) is absurd.
Reading their own linked report of "Science Projects" they funded you will immediately encounter a study of reported well-being by Buddhists from a couple of American philosophers, a project in which people who spend time in a virtual reality (presumably loosely defined) including simulated post-death experience report satisfactions comparable to those who report having had near death experiences, another report on near death experiences, a project to find "immortality genes" possibly to prolong human lifespans in Hydra oligactis, and on and on. While your assessment of the worth of such studies may vary from my own, I daresay it is not so very hard to imagine why one might be inclined to describe these projects as a bit robocultic (VR and immortal jellyfish), pseudo-scientific (near death experience testimonials) or "New Age"-tinged (west coast boutique Buddhism).
As for my observation that the Project seems like "a transhumanoid normalization/academic infiltration effort" I will simply draw your attention to the Project's self-description on its own website's splash page: "[Our] questions include: whether and in what form(s) persons survive or could survive bodily death... the present time as an auspicious one to launch a unified, organized, and open-minded project that will (1) stimulate research from across the disciplines in attempt to make progress on these themes (2) disseminate this research to an especially receptive public..."
The reason that phrase is in quotes, by the way, is because it comes yet again from the Project's self-description of its research aims on its splash page. You may recall that these ambitions, like the Project's aforementioned proposals to fund techno-immortalization progress and proselytize the reasonableness and desirability of such priorities to a wider public, were the aims declared "modest" earlier in this exchange. So modest, indeed! And so very scientific!Quite. Do continue your "research" to "advance understanding of immortality and belief in immortality" which doesn't exist. @ImmortalityProj— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) December 4, 2016