Mandy Brown
Writer, editor and executive coach; co-founder and editor of A Book Apart and a former contributing editor at A List Apart.
Mandy Brown did not write this page.
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Their wordsYou get the idea: career pressure in any context drives people to places we would rather they not go.
↗Forcing and detouringaworkinglibrary.com 1st of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsBut I'll go a step further: if one of the outcomes of pyramid-shaped hierarchical systems is a group of losers who may, out of desperation, be recruited into doing harm in order to save face or provide for their family, then maybe that system has to go.
↗Forcing and detouringaworkinglibrary.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsBut is any system that routinely creates winners and losers really equitable?
↗Forcing and detouringaworkinglibrary.com 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 3 weeks earlier
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Our reading
Their wordsKnowledge is not distinct from need, but contingent with it.
↗What person thinks person knowsaworkinglibrary.com 1st of 2 in this piece
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Their wordsLastly, how things are done is at least as important (perhaps more important) that what is done.
↗What person thinks person knowsaworkinglibrary.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 8 days earlier
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Their wordsMeanwhile, all of the potential horrors ascribed to a future AI are in fact real and present today, but have been (are being) enacted by humans.
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Their wordsCasting AI as the monster-to-come obfuscates the monsters already in our midst.
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Our reading
When most people say "technology," they are politically mystifying advanced industrial capitalism.
Their wordsIf you add the monster's location in time (during and after the Industrial Revolution), I think you can see what is being discussed when most people say "technology." They are politically mystifying a much bigger monster: capitalism in its advanced industrial phase.
- 5 months earlier
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Their wordsHere we find we are in some trouble, for the supreme form of speech in our time is not words but money, both in legal doctrine and in fact of order, with our media controlled and manipulated by an obscenely wealthy few who have gobbled up platforms and papers and perverted them to their own aims, aims that seem very much in favor of war, for war has ever been the commander of wealth.
↗It is right that the murder of many peopleaworkinglibrary.com 1st of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsHow can the investor class simultaneously threaten us with no work, and, at the same time, threaten us with too much?
↗It is right that the murder of many peopleaworkinglibrary.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsThe prestige and power that accompany both rank and great wealth-wealth which in our own day has grown so large as to be incomprehensible-also engender an instinct to possession and to the violent and disproportionate defense of that wealth.
↗It is right that the murder of many peopleaworkinglibrary.com 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 11 months earlier
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Their wordsLikewise, in the hysterical gold rush to hoover up whatever money they can, the technocrats have labeled any and all manner of engineering practices as "AI" and riddled their products with sparkle emojis, to the extent that what we mean when we say AI is, from a technology standpoint, no longer meaningful.
↗Even the best weaponaworkinglibrary.com 1st of 2 in this piece
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Our reading
AI functions as an ideology that serves to preserve existing power structures and inequality.
Their wordsWhat AI is is an ideology-a system of ideas that has swept up not only the tech industry but huge parts of government on both sides of the aisle, a supermajority of everyone with assets in the millions and up, and a seemingly growing sector of the journalism class.
↗Even the best weaponaworkinglibrary.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 3 months earlier
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Their wordsAnd yet, as Le Guin reminds us, uncertainty is also the only thing that makes life possible. Without it, we would move like automatons through predetermined paths, unspirited, unaware, unliving.
↗Make life possibleaworkinglibrary.com 1st of 3 in this piece
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Our reading
Technologies and screens are tools used to make the world seem more predictable and less uncertain.
Their wordsThat is, screens and all the technologies that accompany them are tools to make the world seem more predictable and less uncertain: infinite scroll; autoplay; the always-on "live" news cycle; the steady drumbeat of notifications; the apps that summon servants to our doors, hiding all the labor and improvisation and accidents (often involving blood and bone) that go into moving atoms from one place to another.
↗Make life possibleaworkinglibrary.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsMore often than not, that efficiency translates into brittleness and weakness, into systems so fragile they break the moment something unanticipated arises.
↗Make life possibleaworkinglibrary.com 3rd of 3 in this piece