My kids went back to school today (hooray!). In the rush of all the last minute back to school stuff that needed to happen yesterday, I had lots of ideas for the things I wanted to do when the house was empty again for a good period of time--the first time in six months. There are shelves to clear out, rooms to paint, things that need repair and maintenance, and general chaos of lock down to be sorted and organized, to say nothing of getting back on a regular writing/art making schedule.
Our walk to school was oddly quiet--we are still not fully open here and most schools are teaching remotely, at least to start the school year. The hustle and bustle of the city is no more, its energy drained by the extended lock down. And there are many places that have shuttered for good; it is hard to know what will replace them if the high-rise offices that largely drive the surrounding commercial corridor do not bring their workers back to the office.
I wrote last week about Matthew B. Crawford's latest book, Why We Drive. I finished the book over the weekend, and there is still much more to write about it, but I have to sort my thoughts first. I read back through some of the pieces I wrote about Crawford's earlier work, out of curiosity, and was struck by one theme that runs through all three books: that of human agency as necessary for human flourishing. What that means is that in order for us to find meaning in our lives, we need to feel that we have some control over what happens to us and the decisions we make about our lives. In practical matters, it is about working through the physical reality of our lives (i.e. fixing things).
Increasingly, Crawford notes, individual human agency is being leeched away in dribs and drabs, and that power locked into a black box of algorithmic technology, unaccountable to anyone except perhaps the gigantic tech corporations who make such boxes. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and giving it over to black boxes (and the faceless corporations who control them) is a sure path to human misery.
There is a lot to unpack there, and I want to keep this brief today, so I'll just leave it there for now.
Our walk to school was oddly quiet--we are still not fully open here and most schools are teaching remotely, at least to start the school year. The hustle and bustle of the city is no more, its energy drained by the extended lock down. And there are many places that have shuttered for good; it is hard to know what will replace them if the high-rise offices that largely drive the surrounding commercial corridor do not bring their workers back to the office.
I wrote last week about Matthew B. Crawford's latest book, Why We Drive. I finished the book over the weekend, and there is still much more to write about it, but I have to sort my thoughts first. I read back through some of the pieces I wrote about Crawford's earlier work, out of curiosity, and was struck by one theme that runs through all three books: that of human agency as necessary for human flourishing. What that means is that in order for us to find meaning in our lives, we need to feel that we have some control over what happens to us and the decisions we make about our lives. In practical matters, it is about working through the physical reality of our lives (i.e. fixing things).
Increasingly, Crawford notes, individual human agency is being leeched away in dribs and drabs, and that power locked into a black box of algorithmic technology, unaccountable to anyone except perhaps the gigantic tech corporations who make such boxes. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and giving it over to black boxes (and the faceless corporations who control them) is a sure path to human misery.
There is a lot to unpack there, and I want to keep this brief today, so I'll just leave it there for now.
So very interesting. I have just picked up Nicholas Carr's "The Glass Cage," and the premise of his first chapter is similar: automation, paradoxically, brings us more misery rather than less, despite supposedly providing us more leisure time.
ReplyDeleteHow wonderful to have a few quiet moments to yourself! I pray all goes well as your children return to in-person schooling.
His first book, The Shallows, set me on the road of thinking more critically about all this stuff. The Glass Cage is good too, but The Shallows was a paradigm shifter.
Delete(Hit reply before finishing my thoughts!) There are many studies that look at human happiness and flourishing, and what factors really contribute, and it isn't leisure time. It is things like meaningful work, reasonable agency over your circumstances, short commute to work, etc. Creative flow (where your abilities are well matched to the work at hand) is another big factor in well being and flourishing.
Delete"The Shallows" was good, yes! It supported with fact many ideas I had already adopted. I found Larchet's "The New Media Epidemic" to be pivotal as well. If you haven't already read it, I highly recommend it!
DeleteThanks! I'll have to keep an eye out for that book. I'm probably going to dive into Soshana Zubrof's Surveillance Capitalism after I finish House of Government. It's a beast of a book. :)
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