Miraculous Miru
The book “Gone Girl” by Gillian Flynn (and the movie with Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike) is a character study of a girl, Amy, who had been spoiled to such an extent that she developed a very specific psychopathology. Amy was the only child of a couple that derived a dangerously large proportion of their …
Music from every country
I like to discover new music, but I don’t like the algorithmic approach that calculates suggestions and tends to make us listen to whatever most people listen to. Yes, online music listening services tell us that they let us “discover” new music, but I miss something essential. I miss the romantic idea of discovering by coincident. Of course, I can …
The power of corporations
We need to understand power, and specifically the power exercised by the agents of neoliberalism, the corporations. And it really isn’t that hard. Simple dialectics: Power needs something outside itself in order to function. For example, a psychopath who tortures his victims must assume their independent ability to suffer in order to exercise his power. …
The Invisible Hand
I think I’m chewing on the same kind of formula. The “invisible hand” should optimize economic transactions in society. Smith, and later Hayek, understood that an exploited working class doesn’t have the basic liberty to vote with their money, so they suggested basic human needs would be taken care of, and then people can participate …
A Thought on Separation
Money is designed to separate. The separation has made us who we are, and without it, we would almost certainly never have seen the benefits of the technological revolution. But this doesn’t mean it should remain that way. The separation of worker, consumer, and their product means there are no limits to the amount of …
A Thought On Virtual Labor and the Marketplace
The point of civilization has always been concentration. The onset of what we call civilization is the emergence of the first cities, places like Katal Huyuk. This was possible – and became necessary – because agriculture technology had advanced so far that there was more food than farmers’ mouths. The organization of this abundance produced …
Power (sketch)
Power (sketch) A neutral observer looks at human interaction between A and B. In order to understand this interaction, the decisions involved have to be explained. Let’s say agent A is in control of a resource (we will call this “in power”) that agent B wants. If we want to understand this interaction, we need …
The Art of Connecting Us
We often hear that “we are all connected”, but that mostly refers to some spiritual understanding of how we are all equally “connected” to the Creator, rather than directly to each other. I know the cosy feeling of being part of a Bigger Whole, and how we just want to integrate everything and everyone. What …
You think fingers!
When I was a boy, I took violin lessons. I remember playing Vivaldi in a room with a blue carpet and high windows. The teacher listened and made remarks, most of which to the benefit of my musical development. One time however, the teacher, a woman who must have been in her early thirties, noticed …
The Experience Economy
Years ago, our century had just begun, progressive voices heralded the transition from a product economy to an experience economy. Instead of selling cars, car companies told us in their advertisements that they were selling a “driving experience”. Of course, we realized, the experience is everything. We go to restaurants in order to have a …
Monetizing Facebook the Civilized Way
It took me a few weeks after the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the public outcry for theoretical “freedom of speech”, but today I arrived at a fresh idea. It pertains to this world’s largest virtual territory, with more than a billion inhabitants – Facebook. Today, Facebook is a multi-billion dollar marketing machine. The money …
Dialectical Hypocrisy
1. It’s Sunday so I would like to describe the history of our civilization as the dialectical process of overcoming hypocrisy. I don’t believe in interpreting historical development in a Hegelian way as the embodiment of a purely logical principle, and to be honest I lack the intellectual vigor to pursue such an endeavour. But …