What's next, October-December 2022
Substacked topics to finish the year.
Read time: about 4 minutes (a shortie!). This week: Topics for upcoming posts. In December, we’ll cap off the first year of Technocomplex. Next week: Are you sure the Instagrammer you’re following is flesh-and-blood? Does it make any difference?
Give a friend the heads-up of what’s next on Technocomplex. Share this post!
Upcoming posts will mix topics currently discussed in my class on “our complex relationships with technology,” inklings and echoes of my book project that will occupy me in winter and spring, and, for some respite over the holidays, an archived piece from March 2020.
I’m thinking that I’ll be creating groups of posts toward the end of the year, since they have indeed accumulated, and they could stand a little grouping for readers who are interested in specific threads.
Some topics to expect
Glamour’s sinister reflection. This post will appear late in the year, after the semester is finished. It reconsiders the role that glamour played in the development of marketing narrative and, through that representation, influenced the cultural importance of the automobile in American culture. Glamour is pervasive in car advertising, especially between World War II into the 1960s. Glitz doesn’t tell the whole story, though. Much darker imagery of the automobile emerged, or perhaps I should say re-emerged, that was harshly critical of the automobile’s place in society. This dark side uses tropes similar to those familiar in ads typically seen in popular magazines. The “dark art of the automobile” is the flip side of the car’s glamorous depictions.
Beautiful-not-quite people. Leya co-authored an Amazon “best selling” book, even though she’s only been around since January 2020 — it does look like you’ll only read it in German, though. Imma is one of Japan’s “100 Talents to Watch,” and has lived in an Ikea store, more or less, and is engaged in many large public events. Both are “virtual influencers,” and there are many — so realistically portrayed that you wouldn’t know they’re not flesh-and-blood. It’s a technological revamp of an old story, actually. According to one industry ranking, Barbie (yes, my nemesis) counts as one of the “top virtual influencers of 2022” — among which is also a … bee?
The ladies out back turned me into a hoarder. Yes, they did. A humorous story from the early weeks of the pandemic we’ve lived through.
Maybe it’s time to return to sex robots, since their appeal seems as persistent as the silicone they’re made of. The pandemic was lonely. Was it inventive, too?
Janus is the two-faced god. One looks forward and the other backward. At the end of the first year of Technocomplex, it’s time to play Janus — the god of janitors, by the way. I’ll look back at the posts and try to remember what I was actually thinking when I started this thing.
Surveillance system and culture? “Watching” or “supervising” seems to have slipped into “surveillance,” a much more sinister activity. Over the past couple of years I’ve surveyed surveillance, so to speak, and heard students’ thoughts about it. Questions in my mind now are whether surveillance as we have come to fear know it is also a deeply embedded — even “natural” — feature of post-pandemic work and how surveillance practices have developed to repair (or a defend against) larger societal injuries and changes, such as shifts in employees’ sense of employers’ commitment and responsibility and a renewed desire to find meaning outside of professional identity. Surveillance hinges in part on trust, risk, and obligation; technology has made it easier to limit those and enterprises have taken it on.
I’m tempted — though not quite committed — to take a look at the cache of notebooks I’ve accumulated. It may be too much navel gazing for my taste, but fellow Substackers Jillian Hess and Mark Dykeman have made me curious about what lurks in the pages and why whatever lurks is there. They’ve carefully explored notebooks and are active notebookers — far more methodical than I’ve been, I’m sure. I, too, have a notebook that might be worthwhile and easy to peruse. It’s hanging out in my Garage Mahal out back. But I have dozens of others, idly chillin’ on bookshelves and waiting for my hungry biographers after I croak, I’m sure. (I’m afraid I’m like Kant in the biography department. Someone — Hölderlin? — said that no biography of Kant would be written “because he had neither life nor biography.” Alas!)
O Magnum Mysterium. Long time friends and readers will know this one. I have a favorite idea that’s especially relevant to dark times like those long nights of the year. It’s good to remember that dark gives way to light, when the Earth turns again to brighten the northern hemisphere. (I beg pardon from my readers south of the Equator!)
Got comments? Or, how about leads and notions and ideas?
Links, cited and not, some just interesting
These links were distributed to current students in the seminar’s “daily missives”:
Halevy, Alon, Peter Norvig, and Fernando Pereira. “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data.” IEEE Intelligent Systems 24, no. 2 (April 2009): 8–12. https://doi.org/10.1109/MIS.2009.36.
Weinstein, Alexander. “Saying Goodbye to Yang” from “Read an Extract: Children of the New World by Alexander Weinstein.” Text Publishing. Accessed September 2, 2022. https://www.textpublishing.com.au/blog/read-an-extract-children-of-the-new-world-by-alexander-weinstein.
“Who Is Leya Love? @leyalovenature, Explained.” Virtual Humans. Accessed October 18, 2022. https://www.virtualhumans.org/human/leya-love.
And, with apologies to Klara the “AF” …
If the cover of Garage Mahal is any indication, your notes must be fascinating! But I get it. I never want to talk about my own notebooks.
Also -- now you've got me researching Kant's notes. Maybe if I read them I'll do a better job explaining the categorical imperative to my students.
you know I’m looking forward to the surveillance stuff!