In het volgende interview met VPRO Tegenlicht vertelt de Duitse filosoof over het begrip vrijheid in onze hedendaagse samenleving. Erg interessant is zijn uitleg rond minuut 7 over hoe mensen zich niet zozeer persoonlijk geraakt voelen door een toename aan staatscontrole. Hij geeft een passend voorbeeld hoe de controle in luchthaven ordinair is geworden en we het accepetern omdat er nu eenmaal bijhoort. Volgens hem is dit voorbeeld passend voor hoe we dagelijks met zulke beperkingen in vrijheid omgaan.
With the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic I have spent most I my time at home, working and away from friends and family. I therefore have had to significantly make use of video chat for work meetings and meeting loved ones. In an article on Vox, Adam Clark Estes writes about the history of this technology and how these changes are shaping our lives and the technology itself:
(…) hosting a party with a video chat component certainly sounds less weird today than it would have six months ago. If it was already evident that videoconferencing had become a mainstay of many offices, that it could be a prominent part of our social lives is a new idea to me. That explains my initial surprise when the folks from Microsoft Teams started telling me how their workplace software had taken on new roles, like social networking, in many users’ lives. In other words, the pandemic has fundamentally changed our relationship with these tools and with digital spaces generally.
The article further delves in the changes made to the technology to make more pleasant to use. Read the full article here.
Matt Alt at The New Yorker wrote a great piece about the Walkman, “the gadget that taught the world to socially distance”:
Hosokawa noted how listeners used the devices to tame the unpredictability of urban spaces, with all of their unexpected intrusions and loud noises. Wearing headphones functioned both as a personal “Do Not Disturb” sign and an alternate soundtrack to the cacophony of the city. This was a new form of human experience, engaged disengagement, a technological shield from the world and an antidote to ennui. Whenever nerves frayed or boredom crept in, one could just hit Play and fast-forward life a little. One of the first Westerners to grasp the import of this new human capacity was the author William Gibson, a pioneer of the genre of science fiction called cyberpunk, who wrote years later that “the Sony Walkman has done more to change human perception than any virtual reality gadget.”
Read the full article here.
Ian Bogost and Alexis C. Madrigal wrote a fantastic piece at The Atlantic, “How Facebook Works for Trump”. In this article they explain how the systems developed by Facebook to optimise advertising campaigns based on machine learning and with little human interaction are effectively exploited by the Trump campaign. They are very right in their conclusion that in this way Facebook systems are taking over some of the work of the campaign.
The following video essay on the “The Late Capitalism of K-Pop” by a Youtube channel called “Cuck Philosophy” gives some interesting historical insights on the development of K-Pop. And links this development with related critiques on consumerism such as the work of Baudrillard.
I discovered this video through a recent podcast from “Pretty Much Pop” on “The Korean Wave”.
The current measures taken to contain the coronavirus pandemic have included the temporary closer of most offices around the world. An unprecedented event, with so many people working from home. It is interesting to think about the long term consequences for office. Catherine Nixey at The Economist 1843 magazine has published an article about the “Death of the office”.
The Tropes vs Women in Video Games project is a fantastic series of video about “sexist patterns associated with female representations in games, and to illuminate how these patterns reinforce and perpetuate harmful attitudes about women in our culture”. I watched part one (embedded below) on “Women as Background Decoration” in games. And part two, which centers more representation of male violence against women in video games.
Via The New Inquiry, “TNI Syllabus: Gaming and Feminism”.
The Washington Post published a video that shows “How Fox News has shifted its coronavirus rhetoric”.
For weeks, some of Fox News’s most popular hosts downplayed the threat of the coronavirus, characterizing it as a conspiracy by media organizations and Democrats to undermine President Trump.
In all, it has been a complicated dance for a network whose hosts are among Trump’s most ardent boosters and defenders — an increasingly challenging position to take as the crisis grew in magnitude. Trump, meanwhile, has long looked to Fox News and its personalities for guidance and approval, a dynamic that may have been pivotal this week after host Tucker Carlson reportedly visited with the president in person to urge him to take the coronavirus seriously.
As a long time ago player of the online role-playing game World of Warcraft I found this video about “5 Ways Classic WoW Has Changed” quite interesting. The game is quite old but has been recently re-released. The maker of this video goes into some of aspects on how even though it is mostly the same game, it is played in a drastically different form. The main difference I understand that there is a lot more knowledge sharing of how the game should be “played optimally”. Which has been made possible through the rise of for example live streaming, Youtube, etc.
With Classic WoW been out for a few months now, the game is played in a very different way than how it was played in the past! In this video I go over some of the ways gameplay has changed over the years!
Two interesting articles from the Economist 1843 magazine: