Artificial thinking between AnarchIA and EconomIA

Every now and then I re-read my ‘bad teachers’. Uncomfortable characters. Pessimists. Over-the-top types. People who would ruin any innovation conference within the first seven minutes. Perhaps they wouldn’t even turn up. One such figure is Ivan Illich. A philosopher, priest and radical thinker. A man who, back in the 1970s, wrote things that would … Read more

Because the problem is not the All-Seeing Eye. It is the highway that blocks itself. For years we have been reporting on artificial intelligence through the eyes. Big Brother. The Eye of Sauron. Tolkien’s palantír – the seer stone that shows everything, filters everything, subjugates the beholder. Beautiful metaphors. Powerful. Culturally honest. And perhaps already … Read more

McLuhan said: the medium is the message. Postman added: yes! And the message is changing us into something we did not choose to become, it was not pessimism it was diagnosis. In the 1980s he wrote something that seemed exaggerated at the time: we will not be oppressed by technology. we will be entertained until … Read more

McLuhan predicted the global village. The global village has arrived. And in the global village nobody reads it anymore. A lecturer tells his students that men have become selfish. “Yesterday, from the restaurant, I saw a car run over a man. A crowd stopped to watch. Nobody did anything. When we came out… he was … Read more

Nikolai Kondratiev had a problem. Kondratiev, not Houston. Because Houston had a technical problem, solvable, with a crew still alive. Kondratiev had a system problem. The kind of problem you don’t solve – you go through. He had realised something true, and said it out loud. In 1925 he published a study in which he … Read more

(i.e.: the S-curve knows everything except what matters) …Note to those who skipped previous issues. This is the third instalment of a column on my bad teachers – those who saw before the others and whom the mainstream only mentions after the damage is done. Ellul had told us that Technology has become an autonomous … Read more

(i.e.: the ladle tasting itself while the soup remains bland) He who serves a revolution is ploughing into the sea. Simón Bolívar, quoted by Ted Kaczynski The ladle and the pot (story of a misdiagnosis) A man is preparing soup. To taste it, he fills a ladle, takes a sip and realises that it is … Read more

Or: when abundance becomes the curse and the beggar does not know when he can eat salmon You can prohibit water, not thirst.– Eduardo Galeano If I don’t have money, I can’t eat salmon with mayonnaise. If I have money I must not. But then when will I be able to eat salmon with mayonnaise?– … Read more