Being uninspired is often described as your surroundings becoming dead. Nothing speaks to you anymore, nothing enticing you to come closer and inspect it, bringing you deeper into its rich world. I don’t feel that to be true. I find that disillusionment is something very much alive, so much so that I feel it consume me whole, literally, falling into its yawning jaw, pushing me into its digestive tract. Within its body, every line of thought seems to lead to the same place, somewhere that isn’t so nice. Yet, I can’t help but sincerely inspect every place I go, even though I know I’ll end up disappointed, gradually more tired and less patient than I was before.
Normally, I don’t like to share anything while I’m in such a state, because frankly I don’t see the use of throwing out yet another set of polemic observations about technology. Simultaneously, I’m growing tired of waiting for this malaise to pass. Processing these thoughts seems like the only way I can come out on the other side — which brings me to where I am now, reporting from deep inside its belly.
I’ve found it difficult to explain why I feel displeased with much of what I’ve read lately. I feel a deep sense of disillusionment by the state of things. Even writing these words are a struggle because they evoke the same feelings. I wish I could embody the gleefulness of those who observe the same things I do, those who make it into an artistic endeavor.
Every day I scroll through various channels and upon seeing the doom and gloom I roll my eyes at it, grunting disapprovingly. I rarely disagree with their conclusions. I’m not naive enough to ignore the concrete political economical configuration that doesn’t leave much wiggleroom for anything truly different to exist. The idea of technology radically transforming the world doesn’t hold much water when change happens in the image of the current political-economical state of things. The whole field is really bumming me out spiritually, suffocating my ability to think and dream toward something different.
What I’m trying to say is what Evgeny Morozov already said ten years ago (!); namely that tech criticism is in an un-envious position:
That radical critique of technology in America has come to a halt is in no way surprising: it could only be as strong as the emancipatory political vision to which it is attached. No vision, no critique. Lacking any idea of how sensors, algorithms, and databanks could be deployed to serve a non-neoliberal agenda, radical technology critics face an unenviable choice: they can either stick with the empirical project of documenting various sides of American decay (e.g., revealing the power of telecom lobbyists or the data addiction of the NSA) or they can show how the rosy rhetoric of Silicon Valley does not match up with reality (thus continuing to debunk the New Economy bubble). Much of this is helpful, but the practice quickly encounters diminishing returns. After all, the decay is well known, and Silicon Valley’s bullshit empire is impervious to critique.
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In the essay “Emancipation and Exhaustion”, Asad Haider inspects moments where emancipatory (i.e., revolutionary) activities become impossible. Drawing from Congolese philosopher Ernest Wamba-dia-Wamba, Haider argues that political activity happens in sequence. Exhaustion, then, resides in the end of an emancipatory political sequence, becoming the liminal space where “An existing historical mode of politics comes to an end and a new one is not yet apparent”. The historical moment of exhaustion is emblematic by the “impossibility of politics”. Put another way: emancipation cannot happen because the timing isn’t right, and every attempt at social change is effectively neutralized.
The idea of exhaustion can be applied to technology. Thorough critiques such as platform capitalism and the attention economy shattered the rose-colored conception of our technological devices, overcoming the belief of their innocence and neutrality. However, inside this lull that is exhaustion, nothing can be done about what is observed. This is a weird juncture where present technologies have exhausted themselves, but different ones aren’t apparent yet — we are still using and are reliant on technologies that we know are faulty. Similarly, by the looks of it (and I sincerely hope to be wrong here!!), no one has managed to articulate alternatives to these technologies on a purely theoretical level either.
Haider’s essay drove me a little crazy. I read it around the same time Ted Chiang released his New Yorker piece on AI and art, which I had mixed feelings about. I didn’t think he was wrong, but I failed to feel compelled by any of his arguments nonetheless. Chiang’s piece lacked arguments for anything that is impressive by current AI models, as well as articulating what can be impressive for AI to do that we should aspire towards. To neither offer an account of what we can appreciate now nor what we should hope for in the future; no less from a critically acclaimed science fiction writer whom I also personally hold in high regard, seems to me a perfect example of theorizing under exhaustion. How can I expect any of these things from Chiang? In a time of exhaustion, something else, something necessary, isn’t apparent yet.
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Haider doesn’t wish to make prescriptions about what one ought to do in times of exhaustion. I understand his hesitance. At the same time, doing nothing feels wrong to me. Projects that rehearse and experiment in-the-meantime are vital for any future emancipatory politics to take place. Practice makes different, Ruth Wilson Gilmore said recently. So here I am, after being digested by apathy, willing to drag my limp and slimy body to someplace I can begin to dream again.
“I am prepared to grovel. To humiliate myself abjectly, because, in the circumstances, silence would be indefensible. So those of you who are willing: let’s pick our parts, put on these discarded costumes and speak our second-hand lines in this sad second-hand play.”
— Arundhati Roy