The Redirect: Technology after Capitalism
Here are a few thoughts from Public Knowledge’s “The Redirect: Technology after Capitalism” event at SFMOMA with Xiaowei Wang, Andrea Steves, Kim Stanley Robinson, Finn Brunton, and Caitlin Zaloom, which I very much enjoyed. [These notes were shared on Twitter the day after the event, but I am just now piecing them together here with a few corrections.]
That description of late capitalism (finance-driven capitalism, neoliberalism, what have you) keeping us stuck in very short-term thinking reminds me of Stewart Brand’s “pace layering.” We need to zoom in and out. We need to inhabit various orbits.
That notion of the potential of art (in the broadest of terms) as a mechanism for thinking… in a way, it keeps us from doing (making messes, consuming more, etc.) by slowing us down through a process of considering, playing out possibilities and subsequently making less mess, which together with the Fred Jameson quote that came up (“Someone once said that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.”) reminds of Ursula K. Le Guin’s “We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.”
The, again, Fred Jameson (pretty sure, but I could be remembering wrong) thought that Kim Stanley Robinson shared about the need for everyone to be a technocrat/bureaucrat because commons have always been dependent on keepers/minders/custodians enforcing them, even if not visible.
But how to bring back commons if capitalism keeps up racing along and the capitalist always find a way to root out socialism? I think about a Fred Moten quote I saw earlier today:
I don't think that scale is our friend, it's our enemy. how to get together on small scale with patience, ethical regard for one another... maybe this renewal of our habits of assembly happens on a small scale." —Fred Moten #tinylife
… and the notion of pockets (small!) of resistance (some collected quotes and ideas), with a nod to John Berger for language and for the sense of urgency, which has only expanded since he wrote.
And then back to the struggle to imagine a post-capitalist world, to break free from systems we no longer recognize as human inventions nor anything short of laws of physics, even if they aren’t, we need “the third loop” (Open thread, see above and below.)
Essentially I understand the third loop to be the ability to question a system itself and clearly see it’s contours, while 1st and 2nd loops are working within that dominant system
See also notions of (1) “cultural dark matter” and (2) “transcontextualism” and the “double bind.”
So much more to chew on: Xiaowei Wang’s visit to Alibaba towns and the “rural revitalization” initiatives in China, KSR’s re-terraforming and/or terra-harnessing (my feeble attempts at naming) of California’s Central Valley, using existing geology as “French drains,” and Aldo Leopold’s land ethic (more or less, “What’s good is good for the land.”), and “Capitalism is a fear of the other, a prisoner’s dilemma.” And “You get Theranos because there are not enough places for money to go [in capitalism].” Etc, etc. Brain food.
Because it relates to many parts of the thread above (especially the imagining of alternatives to our systems and the practice of art), here is some bell hooks, who of course has said:
The function of art is to do more than tell it like it is. It’s to imagine what is possible.
Update 2: From an exchange with Xiaowei Wang, whose prompts are in quotes, the rest of the words mine:
love this Fred Moten quote: so, so true. sometimes I get really excited about being part of a community/organizing + then get heartsick when we start using same vocabularies that capitalism has taught us since birth."whats the most efficient and productive political strategy" etc
yes! with sprinklings of “value” and “worth” and “human capital” and “achievement” not to mention all the hierarchy and war words… “merit” and “deserve” and “dominate” and “lead” and “win” and and
I am curious, especially wrt the "it's easier to imagine end of world than end of capitalism" quote. if capitalism did end, would our brains be able to handle it? i think of many friends who say if they could stop working, they're not sure what they would do instead!
I am curious too. I think we have so much of our identity wrapped up in our work (“What do yo do?” as one of the first questions we ask people new to us) and most of our education points to work, not life and leisure (largely discouraged beyond vacation, “idle hands…”) that even when people retire, many don’t know what to do with themselves. (If I recall correctly, there is some research about retirees and those without hobbies have greater health consequences.) But I think the answer lies in recreation and creativity. If our education emphasized creativity and recreation as part of a balanced life, then it would be easier to imagine days gardening, birding, walking/hiking, sports playing, making of all sorts (art, carpentry, writing, painting, filmmaking, etc.), care and maintenance (of children, homes, machines, etc.).
… reading, chatting, cooking, sewing, cleaning. But so many of those care and maintenance tasks today are paid poorly (when paid at all) and thus seen as something to aspire to remove from our lives (often with an app!, no less).
PS: Jenny Odell has some good answers to all this notion in How to Do Nothing (the text of a talk, the video of the talk, and the book).
Here’s Jia Tolentino referencing Jenny Odell in “What It Takes to Put Your Phone Away”:
It involves rejecting the sort of progress that centers on isolated striving, and emphasizing, instead, caregiving, maintenance, and the interdependence of things.
She locates the potential for change in individual acts of refusal, which, she argues, make space for others to follow.
