Periodical 22 — Technological Entitlement
Technological entitlement, knowledge-assumptions, and other things.
Are we entitled to technology?
A quick thought experiment: A new technological advance gives humans the ability to fly. Does it also confer upon us the right to fly? Let’s say this isn’t a Rocketeer situation — not a jetpack — but some kind of body-hugging anti-gravitic field, just to make it look and feel ever so much more magical and irresistible. Would that be worthy of study and experimentation? I’d have to say yes. But would it be a good idea to use it? I’d have to say no.
We’ve learned this lesson already.
Are we entitled to access to anyone, anytime? That’s a tough one; it tugs on ideas of access itself — what that means, and how — as well as ideas of inaccess, like privacy. But let’s just say I’m walking down the street and see a stranger passing by. Is it my right to cross the street to say hello? I would say so. And I can use that right for many purposes, some polite — such as introducing myself — and some not so — like abruptly sharing some personal belief of mine. Fortunately, this stranger has the right to ignore me and continue on their way. And that’s where my rights end, I think. I don’t have the right to follow them shouting.
It turns out that’s what Twitter was. We got the jetpack of interpersonal communication: a technology that gives us the ability to reach anyone anytime. With it came plenty of good things — good kinds of access, a good kind of leveling. A person could speak past, say, some bureaucratic barrier that would have previously kept them silent. But also, it allowed people with the right measure of influence to inundate millions of other people with lies to the point of warping the reality around them and reducing news to rereading and reprinting those lies just because they were said.
Leave something like this in place long enough, and the technology itself becomes an illegitimate proxy for a legitimate right. Free speech, after all, does not equal an unchallenged social media account.
Steeper and slicker is the technological slope from can to should to must.
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Today I learned that before Four Tet, Kieran Hebden was the guitarist for a group called Fridge. I listened to their second album, Semaphore, this morning and it’s a fun mix of noises that feels very connected to the Four Tet I’ve known.
The reason I mention this, though, is that it represents a pretty important principle for us all to remember.
Don’t assume someone knows something!
I’ve been a Four Tet fan ever since a friend included a song from Pause on a mix he made for me back in 2003. Ask me for my top ten records of all time, and I’ll probably include Pause. And yet it was only today, over two decades later, after watching a Four Tet session on YouTube, that I thought to read the Four Tet Wikipedia page.
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Other Things
I’ve been staring at Pavel Ripley’s sketchbooks this week. It has been especially rare for me to find other people who use sketchbooks in the same way I do — as a means and end, not just a means. If you look at his work you’ll see what I mean. Just completely absorbing.
My bud Blagoj, who has excellent taste, sent this Vercel font called Geist my way a while back. It has everything I like in a font — many weights, many glyphs, and all the little details at its edges and corners. USING IT.
These hand-lettered magazine covers are so good.
I’m vibing with these cosmic watercolors by Lou Benesch.
An Oral History of WIRED’s Original Website is worth reading (paywall tho), and especially in an ad-blocking browser (I endorse Vivaldi), because as much as I love them, WIRED’s website has devolved into a truly hostile environment.
“As a middle-aged man, I would’ve saved loads on therapy if I’d read Baby-Sitters Club books as a kid.” SAME.
Richard Scarry and the art of children’s literature.
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Written by Christopher Butler on
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