Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - Dematerialisation

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May 17, 2024 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

09:56

Dematerialisation

The sinister side of progress. Sign up: https://lotuseaters.com/the-english-dystopia-29-03-24

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	In 2018, Steven Pinker published a book called Enlightenment Now, in which he makes a materialist case for why the Enlightenment is succeeding.
	He correctly notes that over the past 200 years, basic human needs are being consistently met, quality of life has improved, life expectancy has increased dramatically, infant mortality has decreased, society is generally safer, the world is generally more peaceful, etc. etc.
	One pillar of his argument is essentially that the future of the planet isn't so bleak because of an ongoing process which will mitigate much of the damage to the environment that the Industrial Revolution and its consequences have wrought.
	Dematerialization is the term he uses to describe how the march of technology is playing out in such a way as that technology becomes more advanced, it also becomes more versatile, allowing us to do more things with less stuff.
	In turn, this means we need to produce fewer things to achieve the same goals, reducing the amount that it is necessary to manufacture to achieve the same quality of life.
	And this argument is most well articulated in the smartphone.
	It's entirely possible that younger viewers watching this will have no idea what some of these gadgets are for because they were superseded by better technology before they were born.
	But it is entirely true that Apple have been responsible for rendering much of the technology that was exciting and new when I grew up completely redundant and archaic.
	This meme strikes hard to people of my age because we remember when compact discs were the hot new thing and how the anti-skip technology revolutionised how we could listen to music on the go.
	Personally, I don't think it worked very well, but that problem solved itself with the invention of the iPod, eventually the smartphone.
	Pinker's argument has undeniable strength.
	After all, 200 years ago, I would have written this script using a fountain pen and an inkwell.
	100 years ago, I would have used a typewriter.
	30 years ago, I would have used a desktop computer, and today I wrote it on my smartphone itself.
	It's generally assumed that the process of dematerialization is morally neutral, because we weren't really attached to the things that it replaced.
	These things were always gadgets of convenience, and if something more convenient came along, then it was morally uncomplicated to simply upgrade them.
	The technology that was dematerialized was itself a means to an end, and not an end in itself.
	So to replace it with better, more efficient technology was no loss to the human experience.
	Instead, it enhanced it.
	It was the backwardness of the technology that was a hindrance to its purpose, and so upgrades were consistent with the purpose of using the thing in the first place.
	Apple recently released an advert called Crush, in which the logic of dematerialization is simply taken to its inevitable conclusion.
	There was something about this advert that obviously struck a deeply discordant note in the hearts of its viewers, as it was not well received at all.
	The advert itself was simply a retelling of an LG advert from 2008, but I suppose that in its time it wasn't so evident where the march of technology was taking us, or that the general psychic state of the world was less sensitive to such a change.
	This time though, Apple's ad managed to highlight the sinister nature of progress.
	Instead of replacing the tools that were used to create an aesthetic experience, such as the typewriter used to create a great work of fiction, or the camera used to take a beautiful photograph, or the telephone that facilitated a conversation, Apple had put in the industrial press those things that in themselves constituted the aesthetic experience.
	One could of course argue the same for the typewriter, camera, or telephone, but it's clearly not quite the same as when we see musical instruments, paint pots and brushes, arcade machines, gramophones, a statue, a mixing desk, a glass chess set, a stack of books, and various other things to which we would naturally have sentimental attachments because they are a necessary and enjoyable part of the activity itself.
	All of this is put into a giant steel predator that mercilessly crushes them all to atoms until all that is left is paint oozing down the gleaming metal jaws like blood, which parts to reveal the world's thinnest black mirror.
	A perfect and chilling metaphor for the new world of machines utterly crushing the old world of human endeavour, only to be replaced with a lifeless thin slate within which the heart of human creativity is held like a prisoner.
	To say that this was poorly received is a thunderous understatement.
	Various actors and directors all made public statements against it, understanding that there was a line crossed here that somehow violated the dignity of their profession and that it needed to be condemned.
	Apple actually issued a public apology for the ad, which had clearly and dramatically missed the mark.
	And it's easy to see why the destruction of the analogue world of sensory experience filled people with revulsion.
	For what is this being done?
	The thinnest iPad?
	Who asked for that?
	The annihilation of the past for the plastic convenience of the future was presented with a kind of glee that we didn't previously notice in older Apple adverts because the target of the destruction was not previously sentimentally important to us.
	This was a dramatic new step forward in progress.
	Technology will take away your personal skill and digitally recreate the end result without the pleasure or the hardship or the reward of the intermediary steps of actually physically doing the thing you want to do.
	Apple has not created something that adds to the human experience, that makes the process of creating art better, it actually takes things away from it.
	There is no upgrade to the tactile experience of playing a musical instrument, or painting a work of art or sculpting a great sculpture, which is why these things haven't substantively changed in literally thousands of years.
	There is soul in the old wooden guitar or in the lines on the canvas or in the curves of the statue.
	The real things have small distinctions and differences that make each one unique.
	Nobody can really replicate a piece of music played by hand or perfectly recreate the brushstrokes on the Mona Lisa.
	Even if they are the same, they are not identical.
	And in the example of music, it is in the process of playing that the proper aesthetic experience is found, both for the performer and the audience, which is why live music is still as popular as it ever was.
	Ever since the gramophone through to the radio, the cassette tape, the compact disc and the MP3, pre-recorded music will always play second fiddle to the live experience because the proper aesthetic function of music is from one person to another, and pre-recorded music is a simulacrum of that to satisfy an itch we would otherwise only rarely be able to scratch.
	Providing us with a series of high-tech, AI-enhanced digital tools for us to create a series of notes or arranged pixels on a screen in order to skip past the act of creation and the discipline and labour it used to require on the part of the person who accomplished it isn't actually good.
	And people understandably mocked Apple for this, as they had clearly missed the purpose of technology.
	It is meant to enhance our lives and give us access to those things and more of them that we could not have before.
	Not to reduce the incentive to do them all together until they are no longer done.
	Moreover, I think the glee with which Apple presented the destruction of human artistic endeavour was because ultimately they seemed to believe themselves to be serving a purpose beyond humanity.
	You may well recall Apple's embarrassing pro-environmental adverts, in which Tim Cook pledges to Mother Earth that all of Apple's products will eventually be carbon neutral, in what I can only imagine is his attempt to save the world.
	In the pursuit of a higher ideal, we can see that the technology that they will produce will unthinkingly destroy the human good that we sought from it in the first place.
	What Apple has presented to us wasn't a neutral dematerialization which made life more convenient.
	It was the annihilation of the purest expression of the human soul.
	There is a lot more to be said about this subject, but for now, I think it is worth noting how Samsung released an advert in response to the Apple advert that actually hit the right tone.
	Loathed as I am to give mega corporations credit, but Samsung put the technology in its proper place, as an assistant to artistic endeavour, not a replacement for it.
	We are the ones for whom our technology should serve, and not some goal external to us.
	It is ours, we made it, and it should be made for our good, not someone else's or something else's.
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