Disruption.

[version]

Someone found him in Egypt the other week.

 

[luka]

My earlier comment about speed, moving ahead of history, introducing intolerable velocities etc was a nod to Baudrillard (who I've read) and Virilio (who I haven't). Baudrillard's fatal strategies are kind of accelerationist gambits, pushing things to the limit to bring about collapse.

Groupname for grapejuice is always telling me to read fatal strategies, specifically calling it proto accelerationism. I own a copy, I even took it to Greece, but I read sci fi novels instead. Sorry everyone

 

[luka]

It starts with Jobs doesn't it? In the modern sense. It must be true. Gates is never a culture icon. The apple adverts with Martin Luther King, Gandhi...

 

[luka]

Here's to the crazy ones


Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.

 

[luka]

Read all the comments under that video.

 

[version]

Read all the comments under that video.

"Martin Lutter king"

 

[version]

There's that weird crossover between the hippies and the tech industry, people like Jobs and John Perry Barlow.

 

[sadmanbarty]

There's that weird crossover between the hippies and the tech industry, people like Jobs and John Perry Barlow.

a uniquely american mentality. rebellion in the states is far more artificial than everywhere else. a superdry advert notion of rebellion.

 

[Mr. Tea]

I'm not sure I can think of a company I hate more than Apple.

Maybe Ben & Jerry's.

 

[DannyL]

There's that weird crossover between the hippies and the tech industry, people like Jobs and John Perry Barlow.

That was in deep though, it's there right from the beginning of tech. You can argue that tech and PCs wouldn't have been as open as they were without the Californian context. People like Jaron Lanier are interesting DNA survivals, that connect these dots.

 

[DannyL]

I've wanted to read What the Dormouse Said mentioned here for years: https://bigthink.com/culture-religion/1960s-counterculture-created-silicon-valley

Burning Man to me seems another survival that's really emblematic of this fusion. Can't imagine that growing out of anywhere else.

 

[baboon2004]

disruption has become and ends in itself.

there's an element of the banon-cummings mythology that there's not particularly an end they're after. it's not 'disrupt the system so as to implement x'. disruption for disruption's-sake.

this fits in to luke's joker vector thing.

Disruption for disruption's sake, but with the specific end of seeing what they're doing drive people utterly crazy through that disruption in their lives and in their certainty. That's what I believe people like Bannon and Cummings ultimately want, even if they're not conscious of it - that kind of power over people's emotions. In order to attempt to 'solve' their own damage in earlier life, which is probably something to do with having felt utterly powerless, I'd suspect.

I totally agree that the 'rational' aspect of all this - disruption to try to produce a particular systemic outcome - is overplayed.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Disruption for disruption's sake, but with the specific end of seeing what they're doing drive people utterly crazy through that disruption in their lives and in their certainty.

http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/n.aspx

 

[Lichen]

Read all the comments under that video.

Someone:

Nobody lost ever lost a dollar underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

 

[luka]

That was in deep though, it's there right from the beginning of tech. You can argue that tech and PCs wouldn't have been as open as they were without the Californian context. People like Jaron Lanier are interesting DNA survivals, that connect these dots.

One of the Adam Curtis documentaries makes this argument doesn't it. Not that he invented it or was first to articulate it.

 

[luka]

Disruption for disruption's sake, but with the specific end of seeing what they're doing drive people utterly crazy through that disruption in their lives and in their certainty. That's what I believe people like Bannon and Cummings ultimately want, even if they're not conscious of it - that kind of power over people's emotions. In order to attempt to 'solve' their own damage in earlier life, which is probably something to do with having felt utterly powerless, I'd suspect.

I totally agree that the 'rational' aspect of all this - disruption to try to produce a particular systemic outcome - is overplayed.

This thread has developed three main strands

The original intent was to examine the concept of disruption as it has arisen in the rhetoric of tech companies and entrepreneurs. This seems to arise directly from Steve Job's own self mythologising, see the Apple advert posted earlier. Break up the existing cartels, the existing ways of doing business, establish a new cartel of your own. Uber, Air B&B, Amazon, Netflix and so on.

Then there is the political dimension, which seems to take its lead from the tech companies, The alt-right takeover of the right, with Bannon et al. Cummings over here. This isn't new, so in a sense saying it is inspired by the tech companies is a bit of a fudge. It's largely at the level of rhetoric and self-justification. As version and Barty were saying, Thatcher is an exemplar of this. And Blair too. Shattering old coalitions to create new ones. It's essential to politics. It's essential to business. It's a fact of reality and history. How change happens. Take down one cartel, assassinate Escobar, it causes chaos, until the elements reform and a new system is established.

Then lastly the archetype of the disruptor, the destroyer/rejuvenator as it occurs in stories.

 

[Corpsey]

It's all allied to the idea of there being progress in history, right? Not "moral" progress, but an unfolding narrative, a need for novelty.

 

[poetix]

The City and the Stars takes place one billion years in the future, in the city of Diaspar. By this time, the Earth is so old that the oceans have gone and humanity has all but left. As far as the people of Diaspar know, theirs is the only city left on the planet. The city of Diaspar is completely enclosed. Nobody has come in or left the city for as long as anybody can remember, and everybody in Diaspar has an instinctive insular conservatism. The story behind this fear of venturing outside the city tells of a race of ruthless invaders which beat humanity back from the stars to Earth, and then made a deal that humanity could live—if they never left the planet.

In Diaspar, the entire city is run by the Central Computer. Not only is the city repaired by machines, but the people themselves are created by the machines as well. The computer creates bodies for the people of Diaspar to live in and stores their minds in its memory at the end of their lives. At any time, only a small number of these people are actually living in Diaspar; the rest are retained in the computer's memory banks.

All the currently existent people of Diaspar have had past "lives" within Diaspar except one person—Alvin, the main character of this story. He is one of only a very small number of "Uniques", different from everybody else in Diaspar, not only because he does not have any past lives to remember, but because instead of fearing the outside, he feels compelled to leave. Alvin has just come to the age where he is considered grown up, and is putting all his energies into trying to find a way out. Eventually, a character called Khedron the Jester helps Alvin use the central computer to find a way out of the city of Diaspar. This involves the discovery that in the remote past, Diaspar was linked to other cities by an underground transport system. This system still exists although its terminal was covered over and sealed with only a secret entrance left.

Here there are two characters working together, the "unique" who represents primordial, unconditioned humanity, and the "jester" who facilitates exit.

 

[luka]

Typically the jester operates as valve which allows the system to "blow off steam" thus protecting itself from overheating and breakdown. A circumscribed truth telling.

 

[luka]

But yeah, you mentioned that book earlier and I thought, I read that, and I loved it, but I can't remember the first thing about it.