# The Revolt Against Technology

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhYS1diXZMM

[00:00] On college campuses around the country,
[00:01] there are these new clubs that are
[00:03] forming and they're calling themselves
[00:05] Luddites.
[00:06] One of these clubs is at Temple
[00:07] University and they advertise mostly
[00:09] with flyers. Actually, on one of these
[00:10] flyers they wrote, "Do you desire a
[00:13] healthier relationship with technology,
[00:14] especially social media?
[00:16] The Luddite club welcomes you and your
[00:18] ideas." These students are throwing away
[00:20] their smartphones and getting flip
[00:21] phones instead. Sometimes they're
[00:23] meeting outside so that they can only
[00:25] use natural light and generally they're
[00:27] trying to figure out what our
[00:28] relationship with modern technology
[00:30] should be. This is a new kind of
[00:32] movement, one that I think we're going
[00:33] to see more of because my suspicion is
[00:36] that we are now living in a time of
[00:38] techno-pessimism.
[00:39] Where generally we saw technology as
[00:41] something that only improved our lives.
[00:43] Every new piece of technology was a bit
[00:45] of progress. People are starting to ask
[00:48] difficult questions about technology.
[00:51] They're looking around at the world that
[00:52] we've built with this technology
[00:54] and sometimes they're saying, "No.
[00:57] I don't want that." There's a long
[00:58] history of philosophers writing about,
[01:01] criticizing, and even resisting new
[01:03] technologies. And in fact, it goes all
[01:05] the way back to Plato. Plato wasn't
[01:06] concerned with, you know, smartphones or
[01:08] the internet when he was writing about
[01:09] technology.
[01:11] When Plato writes about technology, he's
[01:13] writing about writing itself. In Plato's
[01:15] Phaedrus, Socrates tells the story of
[01:17] Thoth and Thamus. Thoth is an Egyptian
[01:20] god who is associated with wisdom, with
[01:23] arithmetic, and importantly for this
[01:25] story, with the invention of writing. In
[01:27] this story, Thoth brings Thamus a range
[01:29] of new inventions and he promises that
[01:31] each one is going to make the Egyptians'
[01:33] lives better. Thoth kind of says what
[01:35] all technologists say, that this is
[01:37] going to improve the human condition.
[01:40] And Thamus sees some of them and he
[01:41] approves of some of them and he
[01:42] disapproves of others. But Socrates
[01:44] lingers on the presentation of writing.
[01:47] Thoth promises that writing would make
[01:48] the Egyptians wiser and it would improve
[01:51] their memories. But this is where Thamus
[01:53] says that he's gone too far. Thamus
[01:56] actually compares Thoth's uh perspective
[01:58] to that of a parent who can't see the
[02:00] faults in their own child. And so he
[02:03] he's going to need someone else to take
[02:04] a look at his invention and tell him
[02:06] where things could go wrong. And Thamus
[02:07] says that writing won't improve our
[02:09] memories, in fact, it will increase
[02:11] forgetfulness. He concludes his
[02:13] criticism by saying that the Egyptians
[02:15] will be hearers of many things and will
[02:17] have learned nothing and that they will
[02:20] have the show of wisdom but not the
[02:22] reality. Socrates goes on to compare
[02:24] writing to painting.
[02:26] Uh it was saying that painting takes
[02:27] something that's alive and creates a
[02:29] copy of it, but the copy, unlike the
[02:31] original, is dead. It lacks some of the
[02:34] crucial vital features of the original.
[02:37] And he thinks writing is a lot like this
[02:38] because you can't ask a text a question,
[02:41] you can't, you know, really interrogate
[02:43] it. No matter what you say back to a
[02:44] text, it is always going to be saying
[02:46] the same thing. Speech is alive,
[02:48] Socrates is saying, but writing is dead.
[02:51] As with all of the Platonic dialogues,
[02:52] it can be difficult to figure out,
[02:54] you know, what Socrates' point is or or
[02:57] what Plato intends to teach. It's
[02:59] difficult, if not impossible, to know
[03:01] what the historical Socrates believed.
[03:04] After all, Plato is using him as a
[03:05] character and we shouldn't assume that
[03:07] whatever Socrates says in the dialogues
[03:09] is actually what
[03:11] Socrates, like the historical Socrates,
[03:13] would have believed. And we can't
[03:14] consult any of Socrates' writings
[03:16] because he never wrote anything down.
[03:18] There is a historical document called
[03:19] the Lives of the Eminent Philosophers
[03:20] that gives short biographies of
[03:22] important philosophers, particularly
[03:23] from ancient Greece. And Socrates has an
[03:26] entry there. And it's mentioned that
[03:27] Socrates wrote two things. One of them
[03:30] was a hymn of praise to the gods, but
[03:32] its authenticity was disputed even in
[03:34] the, you know, ancient world. And the
[03:36] other is a fable. Uh there's a mention
[03:39] of a fable in another Platonic dialogue,
[03:41] the Phaedo, where Socrates mentions that
[03:43] in between being sentenced to death and
[03:45] actually being executed, he has spent
[03:48] his time creating a verse based on one
[03:51] of Aesop's fable. And primarily, the
[03:53] Socratic legacy is an oral tradition.
[03:56] Socrates taught many philosophers and
[03:58] they would go on to found schools of
[04:00] philosophy in Greece. Plato, of course,
[04:02] is the most famous example of this.
[04:04] Socrates preferred a dialogical model of
[04:07] doing philosophy. That's what we see
[04:08] throughout the dialogues. He'll be at a
[04:10] party or he'll be in a marketplace or
[04:12] he'll just find someone walking to court
[04:15] and he'll start asking them questions
[04:17] and all of the philosophical inquiry
[04:20] happens in the back and forth. You know,
[04:22] a definition is proposed, he asks a
[04:24] difficult question, and then they see if
[04:26] they can revise the definition. A famous
[04:28] work like The Republic, which is
[04:30] centered on simply one question, you
[04:32] know, why be just or why be moral,
[04:35] is an extended conversation between
[04:37] Socrates and several interlocutors,
[04:39] particularly Glaucon, Thra-
[04:41] Thrasymachus, and Adamantus. And perhaps
[04:44] Socrates believed that by writing down
[04:46] philosophy, you would lose this
[04:47] dialogical character of the act itself.
[04:50] And so he never did. And while his
[04:51] student Plato did go on to write down,
[04:54] you know, some of his philosophy, that's
[04:56] why we have the dialogues, there is a
[04:58] reference in Aristotle to the unwritten
[05:00] teachings of Plato, suggesting perhaps
[05:03] that there were some parts of Platonic
[05:05] philosophy that needed to be passed down
[05:07] orally rather than being written down.
[05:09] So we see this early skepticism about a
[05:11] new technology.
[05:13] Now, something weird is already
[05:14] happening here because you might think
[05:16] it's strange to call writing a
[05:18] technology.
[05:20] It's just part of what human beings do,
[05:22] right? But this is actually a weird fact
[05:24] about technology in general, that
[05:27] technology, as it becomes more enmeshed
[05:29] in our lives, fades into the background
[05:32] and we don't even think of it as
[05:33] technology anymore. But as Walter Ong
[05:36] writes in his book Orality and Literacy,
[05:38] the development of the technology of
[05:40] writing transformed human consciousness.
[05:43] Particularly, it transformed how we
[05:45] thought about reason and memory. Ong is
[05:48] praising writing in that book,
[05:50] particularly because writing allows us
[05:51] to store information so easily, and so
[05:54] we can just retrieve it whenever we need
[05:56] it. It doesn't have to take up much
[05:57] cognitive space. But, he notes that
[06:00] there are downsides. They're the same
[06:02] sort of downsides that are mentioned by
[06:03] Plato and Socrates, namely our
[06:05] relationship to our memory changes. We
[06:07] become more forgetful because we can
[06:10] rely on things like writing and
[06:11] increasingly things like hard drives to
[06:13] store information for us.
[06:15] We didn't practice remembering, and so
[06:17] in some ways we've forgotten how to do
[06:19] it. One way to understand this point is
[06:21] to think that every piece of technology
[06:23] comes with some kind of benefit and some
[06:26] kind of cost.
[06:27] And as we're wondering what our
[06:28] relationship with technology should be,
[06:31] we should compare the cost and the
[06:32] benefits. And we can ask ourselves just
[06:35] this question,
[06:36] is this piece of technology worth the
[06:39] cost? Socrates seemed to think that
[06:40] writing wasn't worth the cost. I think
[06:42] most of us would disagree with Socrates
[06:44] on that point and think that in fact
[06:45] writing was a civilization-building
[06:47] tool, and it transformed human
[06:49] consciousness in such a way that we
[06:51] wouldn't want to go back. But we should
[06:53] still be aware of the fact that it did
[06:55] carry a cost, and every new piece of
[06:57] technology does. The advent of the
[06:59] calculator made us worse at doing, you
[07:01] know, arithmetic in our heads, right?
[07:03] It's an easy example. It's an example
[07:04] everyone likes to bring up because for
[07:06] some of us it happened in our lifetime.
[07:09] As soon as you had a calculator in your
[07:10] pocket at all times, you didn't have to
[07:12] worry about things like basic division
[07:14] and subtraction and multiplication. Neil
[07:16] Postman develops some of these themes in
[07:18] his book Technopoly, where he writes
[07:20] that technology has an ecological
[07:22] impact. It's not only that technology
[07:25] adds something to our lives, it's that
[07:27] it transforms the environment around us.
[07:30] And I don't think it's an exaggeration
[07:32] to say that technology can transform how
[07:34] we see the world. And this can be a good
[07:37] thing, but of course it can also be a
[07:39] bad thing. That's the theme I want to
[07:41] explore in the rest of this video. How
[07:43] does technology shape us? How does
[07:46] technology shape how we see the world?
[07:48] And the new Luddites that we see on
[07:50] college campuses are asking exactly
[07:52] these questions. And that's what I find
[07:53] so interesting about them. But the roots
[07:55] of this movement actually go back pretty
[07:57] far in history. First, we have the
[07:59] original Luddites. Now, if you've
[08:01] encountered the term Luddite before,
[08:04] it's probably been as an insult. We use
[08:06] it as a description of someone who is
[08:08] maybe too stubborn or too stupid to
[08:10] adopt whatever the latest technology is.
[08:13] And it can mean that someone is
[08:14] regressive and that they can't keep up
[08:16] with the times. Though there are some
[08:17] people who would proudly call themselves
[08:20] Luddites. But this idea of someone just
[08:22] being stubborn and regressive, I don't
[08:24] think it's a very good description of
[08:26] the original Luddites. I wanted to look
[08:28] into this a little bit and so I read
[08:30] from Brian Merchant's book Blood in the
[08:32] Machine, which is about in large part
[08:35] the Luddites. The Luddites emerged
[08:36] during the Industrial Revolution in
[08:38] England. And at the center of all of
[08:40] these issues was the wool industry,
[08:43] which made up a huge part of the English
[08:44] economy at the time. And because of new
[08:46] innovations like the power loom and
[08:48] eventually steam power,
[08:51] we saw a huge disruption in the lives of
[08:54] these workers. And they found themselves
[08:56] being automated out of a job. And there
[08:59] were people who were going to get very
[09:00] rich because of this, but they weren't
[09:02] the workers themselves.
[09:03] Around this time we also saw the rise of
[09:05] the factory system. And these factories
[09:08] were seen as highly oppressive places.
[09:10] Orphans were sometimes recruited to come
[09:12] and work in these factories. And they
[09:13] would be promised really nice lives.
[09:15] They would be promised nice, you know,
[09:18] filling meals, a place to sleep.
[09:21] Sometimes they would even be promised
[09:22] that they could ride horses. And then if
[09:24] they worked until they were 21, they
[09:27] would be able to enter into the
[09:28] workforce and work as professionals.
[09:30] That was the promise. In some factories
[09:32] that were in Cromford, they employed
[09:34] about 2,000 workers and nearly 2/3 of
[09:36] those workers were children and some of
[09:39] them were as young as six years old.
[09:41] Merchant describes the experience of
[09:42] these orphans in some length in his
[09:45] book. And one image that was
[09:47] particularly striking to me was the
[09:49] orphans being delivered to the factory
[09:51] in the first place. People would ride
[09:53] around and try to recruit these orphans
[09:55] making these promises to them and then
[09:57] they would put them in basically cages
[10:00] to transport them there. And town people
[10:01] would watch them and you know
[10:04] with looks of sadness on their face
[10:06] because they knew what terrible lives
[10:08] these orphans were going to live. What
[10:09] had previously been a place where, you
[10:11] know, some skilled workers could make
[10:13] decent livings became a place that
[10:16] primarily was hiring orphans and was
[10:18] treating them terribly. And if you were
[10:20] living through it at the time and you're
[10:22] seeing these new technologies arrive
[10:24] like the power loom, like steam power,
[10:26] like the factory system,
[10:28] it's hard to look at that and say, "Yes,
[10:30] this is progress." And it's around this
[10:32] time that the story of Ned Ludd starts
[10:34] to get told. Now, Ned Ludd was a mythic
[10:36] figure. I don't believe there is any
[10:38] historical evidence that he actually
[10:40] existed. He's a bit like Robin Hood in
[10:42] this regard. But the story that was told
[10:44] about Ned Ludd was that he was learning
[10:45] to use a knitting frame and his master
[10:48] told the magistrate that his apprentice
[10:50] was being lazy and so Ludd was actually
[10:53] ordered whipped. After he was whipped,
[10:56] he was so angry that he smashed the
[10:58] knitting frame and then he flees to
[11:00] Sherwood Forest. And workers followed
[11:03] his example of smashing the knitting
[11:04] frames. Sometimes they would destroy,
[11:06] you know, the machines, sometimes they
[11:07] would set fire to the factories and they
[11:10] would band together in these groups and
[11:12] they would write letters explaining why
[11:13] they were doing what they were doing and
[11:15] the leaders would always sign the
[11:17] letters with the name General Ludd.
[11:19] This, as far as I know, was the first
[11:21] kind of big revolt against big tech. We
[11:24] can draw a little bit more on Neil
[11:25] Postman to see what was happening during
[11:28] the Luddite movement. The invention of
[11:30] these automated technologies and
[11:31] factories, I would say
[11:35] encouraged the owners of the factories,
[11:37] the people who controlled the factories,
[11:39] to start viewing their workers like
[11:41] parts in a machine. And the thing about
[11:43] being parts in a machine is that when
[11:46] one of them breaks or doesn't work that
[11:47] well, you just throw it away and you
[11:50] replace it. Well, so one way to
[11:51] understand the Luddites, I would say,
[11:53] were people who were standing up for
[11:54] human dignity in the face of
[11:56] technological innovation. So, we're
[11:58] going out a little bit out on a limb
[12:00] here, but
[12:02] if I'm right, then we wouldn't just say
[12:05] that technology shapes how we view the
[12:07] world around us. Technology can also
[12:09] shape how we view ourselves. Okay, we're
[12:12] not going to linger on the history stuff
[12:15] much longer. In fact, I want to go back
[12:16] into some philosophy to try to go deeper
[12:19] to the heart of the issue. Um and one
[12:21] piece that was really useful for me as I
[12:24] was thinking through these issues was a
[12:26] famous essay from Martin Heidegger
[12:27] called the question concerning
[12:29] technology. Now, I'm going to admit that
[12:31] I am basically an amateur when it comes
[12:34] to reading Heidegger. He is so far out
[12:36] of the tradition that I am used to
[12:37] reading um that I can find it quite
[12:39] difficult. You know, I'll put up a quote
[12:41] here on the screen where I would say, "I
[12:43] don't really know
[12:45] what Heidegger means when he writes
[12:47] something like this."
[12:48] But there's one piece of jargon that
[12:50] comes from this essay that I found quite
[12:52] useful. And this is what Heidegger calls
[12:55] enframing. Heidegger argues that
[12:57] technology conditions us to view the
[12:59] world around us as a kind of standing
[13:01] reserve or a collection of resources
[13:04] that can be extracted and used and
[13:06] exploited. One of his favorite examples
[13:08] is a power plant that is built on the
[13:10] Rhine. So, once the power plant is
[13:12] built, our relationship to the Rhine
[13:15] changes. It is no longer this thing of
[13:17] unimaginable power and beauty. Instead,
[13:20] it is it is a standing reserve which is
[13:23] ready to generate more power for our in
[13:26] mostly industrial uses. Heidegger is
[13:28] going a bit deeper than a typical point
[13:31] that you would make about technology,
[13:32] which is that technology allows us to do
[13:34] more things. That's true, Heidegger
[13:36] would say, but technology doesn't only
[13:38] allow us to do more, it changes our
[13:41] general relationship with the world
[13:42] around us, and we come to view the world
[13:45] differently. I think for Heidegger, he
[13:47] would worry that this cuts us off from
[13:49] more primordial ways of connecting with
[13:53] nature. Um and this might also be a kind
[13:55] of theme that you would see in people
[13:56] like the German Romantics, who really
[13:59] felt like getting in touch with nature
[14:01] was a way of overcoming alienation. And
[14:05] while I can't claim to be an expert in
[14:07] Heidegger, in fact I'm pretty much an
[14:09] amateur, and I really do struggle to
[14:11] understand parts of this essay,
[14:13] I think that this concept of enframing
[14:15] is a useful one.
[14:17] And the question I'm particularly
[14:18] interested in the rest of this video is
[14:20] what happens when we come to view
[14:22] ourselves as a kind of resource that can
[14:24] be extracted. Heidegger's focus really
[14:26] is the land around us, but we have
[14:28] technologies that allow us to track,
[14:30] measure, and extract from ourselves.
[14:34] And so that would mean our relationship
[14:36] to ourselves would also change. So we
[14:39] can ask ourselves this question, when it
[14:40] comes to how we view ourselves as human
[14:42] beings, what does modern technology make
[14:44] easy and what does it make hard? There's
[14:47] an organization called the Friends of
[14:49] Attention, which is a collection of
[14:50] artists and academics and writers who
[14:54] all call themselves attention activists.
[14:56] They recently published a book where
[14:58] they outlined their beliefs, and that's
[14:59] called Attensity. One of the key moves
[15:01] in Attensity is just naming the
[15:03] phenomenon that we are experiencing when
[15:06] we plug ourselves in to modern machines.
[15:09] And the name that the Friends of
[15:10] Attention give it is human fracking.
[15:12] While fracking in the energy sector, you
[15:14] know, destroys woods and waterways, so
[15:16] it does damage to the external
[15:18] environment, human fracking does damage
[15:20] to our interior environment, they say.
[15:23] And the Friends of Attention think that
[15:24] we have to pay just as much, if not
[15:26] more, attention to
[15:30] our interior environment, because if we
[15:31] don't spend any time focusing on our
[15:34] interior environment, and cultivating
[15:35] it, and protecting it, then we can never
[15:37] even get around to really caring or
[15:39] fixing the issues that are out in the
[15:41] exterior world. The Friends of Attention
[15:43] are largely concerned with fixing our
[15:45] attention span, something I've talked
[15:47] about
[15:47] dozens of times on this channel, and
[15:49] we're not going to focus too much on
[15:50] attention spans in this video. But one
[15:53] thing I want to note is that they think
[15:54] of attention in a very different sort of
[15:56] way than you would typically encounter
[15:58] it in something like a video on YouTube.
[16:01] One of the academics that makes up the
[16:02] Friends of Attention is D. Graham
[16:04] Burnett, who is a historian of science.
[16:07] He's written extensively on the history
[16:08] of attention research, and how a very
[16:11] particular research paradigm came to
[16:12] define even what we mean by attention.
[16:16] He argues that attention, as we think of
[16:17] it today, is largely the product of
[16:19] military and industrial research that
[16:21] happened
[16:22] in large part during the Cold War. These
[16:25] researchers were asking very particular
[16:27] kinds of questions, like how long can a
[16:29] subject pay attention to one very
[16:32] mundane task.
[16:34] You could think of them as like standing
[16:36] in front of a radar screen. How long can
[16:39] they pay attention to that radar screen
[16:41] so we can reliably use them to detect
[16:43] if, you know, aircraft are entering into
[16:45] a given territory. Burnett points out
[16:47] that there were two reasons why this
[16:48] would be the dominant research paradigm.
[16:50] Uh one, it's the kind of attention that
[16:52] is very easily studied in a lab. It's
[16:54] basically stimulus-response. Just have
[16:57] them sit there long enough, and see how
[16:58] long they can reliably detect new things
[17:00] on their screens. The second reason is
[17:02] that it's the kind of research that the
[17:04] Department of Defense would be likely to
[17:05] fund.
[17:06] So, it's easy to do in a lab, and it's
[17:08] easy to get money to do it, so it's no
[17:10] surprise that many researchers spend all
[17:13] of their time and their focus on
[17:15] researching that sort of attention. And
[17:17] it's this concept of attention that has
[17:19] then filtered out into the mainstream,
[17:21] where attention becomes a matter of
[17:23] focus and deep work and seeing how long
[17:25] you can be productive. Attention
[17:27] essentially becomes a resource that can
[17:29] be extracted, and now in the case of,
[17:32] you know, social media, it can be easily
[17:34] monetized. And this makes the Friends of
[17:35] Attention and this larger New Luddite
[17:39] movement much more interesting to me.
[17:41] The Friends of Attention will hold
[17:42] workshops where they focus on building
[17:44] sanctuaries of attention, where people
[17:47] can, you know, do art or have
[17:49] face-to-face conversations. The New
[17:51] Luddites have parties and meetings
[17:54] outside, free from the presence of
[17:55] screens. And sure, that does require a
[17:58] kind of attention, but it seems like
[17:59] it's a very different sort of attention
[18:02] than the attention that you need in
[18:03] order to, say,
[18:05] program on a computer for eight hours a
[18:07] day or longer. It's a more contemplative
[18:09] kind of attention. It requires perhaps
[18:11] more interior stillness, and it doesn't
[18:14] have the same kind of strain
[18:16] that we associate with deep work, focus,
[18:19] and attention. That's not even a concept
[18:21] of attention
[18:23] that we think about. Because the
[18:25] technologies and the sort of media
[18:27] discourse around attention have
[18:29] completely shaped how we think about the
[18:31] concept. But focusing on this wider,
[18:33] more nebulous concept of attention might
[18:35] be useful for us because it allows us to
[18:38] think of ourselves as human beings who
[18:40] deserve to flourish and to enjoy the
[18:42] world around us. But attention isn't the
[18:45] only thing that we measure. In fact, we
[18:47] now measure nearly everything. I've
[18:49] talked about, you know, this book a
[18:51] couple of times on the channel, but it's
[18:53] too relevant for this video to not
[18:54] mention. This is The Score by C. T. Win.
[18:58] Win is a professor of philosophy at the
[19:00] University of Utah. And in The Score, he
[19:03] is primarily concerned with the
[19:04] relationship between metrics and values.
[19:08] And Win notes that something odd happens
[19:10] when we start to measure the world, and
[19:12] it's especially odd when we start to
[19:14] measure ourselves. Metrics are designed
[19:16] with a particular purpose in mind. One
[19:18] way to talk about them is to say that
[19:20] they have values baked into them. And
[19:22] when we use those metrics with those
[19:23] values
[19:25] baked into them, they are directing our
[19:27] focus away from the values we had before
[19:30] and instead we start focusing on the
[19:32] values that the designers of those
[19:33] metrics think we should care about.
[19:35] Metrics are also designed to compress
[19:37] information and to allow for easy
[19:39] exporting. Some of the most interesting
[19:41] parts of the score have not been picked
[19:43] up in the wider discussion, but they
[19:45] particularly have to do with the
[19:46] institutional incentives for why we want
[19:49] metrics. Let me just use an example. Um
[19:51] I'm going off script here, but I think
[19:53] this is worthwhile. When talks about
[19:55] grading as a kind of metric. Um why is
[19:58] it a metric? Well, it provides like a
[20:00] linear scale. It provides a way to rank
[20:02] and compare students.
[20:04] And it's useful particularly because it
[20:07] allows you to say how good of a student
[20:09] you are absent almost any other kind of
[20:11] context. If I ask you how good of a
[20:13] student you are and you say, "Oh, I'm a
[20:15] great student. I get straight A's." I
[20:17] understand exactly what that means.
[20:20] And that's because that metric doesn't
[20:21] require a lot of background information
[20:23] or context to understand. But maybe if I
[20:26] asked one of your teachers or fellow
[20:27] students like, you know, are is that
[20:29] person a good student? They would say,
[20:30] "Oh yeah, he's he's very thoughtful. He
[20:32] engages with the text in an interesting
[20:34] way or he always sees the way to solve
[20:37] this mathematical equation in a way that
[20:39] nobody else sees."
[20:41] That's a richer description and actually
[20:43] tells me more about you, but it requires
[20:46] that I understand the context in which
[20:48] the evaluation is being done.
[20:50] And big institutions largely don't want
[20:53] to have that kind of context. They want
[20:55] to compress the information down into a
[20:57] way where it can be exported, where it
[20:59] can be shared across context and people
[21:02] can kind of sort of understand it. But
[21:04] When says that when we start measuring
[21:06] ourselves in this way, we miss out on
[21:08] the fluidity of human beings and the
[21:10] sort of rich and subtle nature of our
[21:12] values. And he gives a name for this
[21:14] process. He calls it value capture. I've
[21:16] mentioned value capture explicitly in a
[21:18] previous video, but since I mentioned it
[21:20] here, I should you know, I should read
[21:22] you the definition. Okay, here's the
[21:23] definition of value capture. So, it's a
[21:25] three-step process where one, your
[21:28] values are rich and subtle or developing
[21:30] that way. Two, you enter some social,
[21:32] typically institutional, setting that
[21:34] offers you simplified, often quantified,
[21:37] renditions of your values, and then
[21:39] three, the simplified version takes
[21:41] over.
[21:42] When gives all sorts of examples of how
[21:45] our values can shift in the presence of
[21:47] these metrics throughout the book.
[21:48] Things like IQ scores, grades, credit
[21:51] scores, law school rankings, even
[21:53] scoring systems in sports like
[21:55] skateboarding.
[21:56] It's a really rich book in that way and
[21:59] the examples are very fun to think
[22:00] through. And what happens typically is
[22:02] that we come to value whatever the
[22:04] metric tells us to value, and then we
[22:05] change our practices in order to conform
[22:08] with that metric, and in fact, we find
[22:10] ourselves only caring about the metric
[22:12] and not, you know, the value that we
[22:15] valued at the very beginning. And it
[22:16] seems to happen as a kind of bait and
[22:18] switch or there's a slight of hand.
[22:20] Sometimes it happens to us before we
[22:22] even notice. Things like productivity
[22:24] culture are, I think, largely the
[22:26] product of the metrification of human
[22:28] life. Instead of asking yourself a
[22:30] question like, "Did I do any worthwhile
[22:32] work today?", which would require, you
[22:34] know, reflection and questions about
[22:37] your values like what you consider
[22:38] worthwhile, we ask, "Was I productive
[22:42] today?"
[22:43] And when you ask that question, you're
[22:45] already asking the question in a way
[22:47] that is primed to be answered in terms
[22:49] of a metric. "Oh yeah, I was productive
[22:51] today. I focused for 8 hours. I even
[22:53] timed myself." Where we started by
[22:55] asking a question about quality, we
[22:57] suddenly shifted to answering a question
[22:59] about quantity. Metrics, When says,
[23:03] make it easy to think in a certain way,
[23:05] which is a theme that we've been seeing
[23:06] throughout this video, that technologies
[23:09] make some things easy. And remember that
[23:11] I said technologies make some things
[23:13] easy and they make some things hard.
[23:15] Well, metrics, according to Winn, make
[23:18] thinking in a certain way very easy. It
[23:21] gives you sort of a toolkit to assess
[23:23] things by thinking in terms of the
[23:24] metrics, but it makes it hard to think
[23:26] about your values outside of a
[23:29] metric-fied Is that a word? system. At
[23:32] the beginning of this video, I said that
[23:34] I thought we were living in a time of
[23:35] emerging tech pessimism. You could also
[23:38] call it tech skepticism if you wanted.
[23:40] But there are two questions that I think
[23:42] we still need to ask. One of them is,
[23:43] you know, why now? Why do we see the
[23:46] emergence of tech skepticism now? And
[23:48] the second question is, what do we do
[23:50] about it? And I don't mean how do we
[23:52] solve tech skepticism? There might be
[23:54] good reasons. In fact, I'm I'm inclined
[23:55] to think that we should all be more
[23:56] skeptical of modern technology.
[23:59] But the question is, how do we move
[24:00] forward? What do we do with our own
[24:01] lives? And here's what I think is the
[24:03] explanation for why we've seen this
[24:05] emerging tech skepticism. People feel
[24:07] like they were promised a certain kind
[24:10] of future and that future never arrived.
[24:13] So, I'm a I'm a big science fiction fan.
[24:15] I'm going to want to use some examples
[24:16] here to
[24:18] just try to illustrate my point.
[24:21] One of the things I think is so
[24:21] fascinating about the genre of science
[24:23] fiction is that early on uh there was a
[24:27] significant amount of optimism
[24:29] in many writers' stories. It was never
[24:32] an entirely optimistic genre, that is a
[24:34] caricature not worth taking seriously,
[24:36] but you saw a lot of kind of hopefulness
[24:38] about the future.
[24:41] And it was thought that maybe if we were
[24:42] all more rational, more scientific, more
[24:45] technologically, you know, inclined,
[24:47] then we would be able to solve some of
[24:49] the major problems of humanity. Kind of
[24:51] going back to that old idea, I think a
[24:53] lot of early science fiction writers saw
[24:54] technology as a tool for improving the
[24:57] human condition. So, take The Martian
[24:58] Chronicles by Ray Bradbury as an
[25:00] example. So, Bradbury wrote that story
[25:03] in 1950
[25:05] and it opens with a story that was, I
[25:07] believe, originally set in 1990. Though,
[25:10] in every subsequent edition, they've
[25:12] moved the date back. I think in a modern
[25:14] edition of The Martian Chronicles, that
[25:16] new story takes place in a 2030.
[25:19] Um there's a reason for this.
[25:21] The future that Bradbury was imagining
[25:24] uh never arrived.
[25:26] Didn't happen.
[25:27] And that's because he's imagining a
[25:28] world where people live amongst the
[25:30] stars. We live on Mars. Um and while
[25:32] there are some dark stories in The
[25:33] Martian Chronicles, human problems will
[25:35] follow us wherever we go, there is a
[25:37] kind of sense of hope or wonder or
[25:39] adventure in The Martian Chronicles. The
[25:41] very first chapter of that book is
[25:43] called Rocket Summer and it's just the
[25:45] story of a rocket launch taking place in
[25:47] Ohio melting the winter snow away. I
[25:50] mean, I'll put it up on the screen so
[25:51] you can see it for yourself. But, you
[25:53] know, the the imagery here I think just
[25:55] speaks for itself. The heat of the
[25:57] rocket sweeps across the town. It melts
[25:59] the snow and the children take off their
[26:01] winter clothes and people open their
[26:02] windows for the first time in a month or
[26:04] two
[26:05] and they can just enjoy the day and it's
[26:06] like this new technology is sort of
[26:09] bringing a better world to us. Maybe not
[26:12] permanently, but there's a better world.
[26:15] We were looking toward the future and we
[26:16] were, you know, excited about it.
[26:17] Science fiction is not a particularly
[26:19] good genre at predicting the future. I
[26:22] think it's better to think of science
[26:23] fiction as trying to capture the spirit
[26:25] of the age in which it's written. It
[26:27] tells you more about how people felt
[26:28] about technology
[26:30] during the time of writing than it
[26:32] really tells you about what the future
[26:33] is going to be like. And that makes it
[26:35] interesting to contrast The Martian
[26:36] Chronicles with another book by Ray
[26:38] Bradbury which came out just a few years
[26:40] later, Fahrenheit 451. Bradbury wrote
[26:43] that during the McCarthy era. That book
[26:45] is famous for its images of book
[26:46] burnings because it's set in a world
[26:48] where it's actually illegal to own
[26:49] books. Instead of reading, people prefer
[26:52] to watch the equivalent of, you know, TV
[26:55] and movies all day. And in some parts of
[26:56] the book, we read about the protagonist,
[26:59] Guy Montag's wife, wearing these things
[27:01] called, um, let me check. Yeah, seashell
[27:03] ear thimbles, which are essentially a
[27:05] form of in-ear headphones. I mean,
[27:08] Bradbury did predict something here,
[27:09] right? Like he predicted AirPods. And
[27:11] these uh seashell ear thimbles allow her
[27:14] to be constantly entertained. She never
[27:16] doesn't have to listen to anything. As a
[27:18] consequence, Montag's wife, you know,
[27:20] grow very distant. There's really no
[27:22] kind of like loving relationship between
[27:23] the two of them. You see You see just in
[27:25] these two words from Bradbury a kind of
[27:27] fork in the road. Down one path, there
[27:29] was a future that was full of
[27:30] exploration with a scope of human
[27:32] possibility was expanded. And the other
[27:35] is where we regressed, you know,
[27:36] communities deteriorate, uh
[27:38] authoritarian governments rise, and
[27:40] people give themselves over to endless
[27:43] entertainment. You know, so it's not
[27:44] like we got exactly Fahrenheit 451, but
[27:46] we certainly didn't get The Martian
[27:47] Chronicles, right? And so, people look
[27:50] at the modern world, I think, with a
[27:51] sense of disappointment. And it makes it
[27:53] easy to overlook some of the real
[27:55] improvements that technology has made in
[27:57] our lives, too. And I mean, the fact
[27:58] that we eradicated smallpox in the 20th
[28:00] century, or that we were able to connect
[28:03] the entire globe into a web of
[28:05] communication, or that, you know, mass
[28:08] refrigeration became possible. I mean,
[28:10] these sorts of technologies, uh we kind
[28:12] of take them for granted. And I think in
[28:14] general, we feel this sense of maybe
[28:15] bitterness and disappointment about the
[28:17] future that we actually got. And
[28:18] increasingly, we saw this future as a
[28:20] world where people weren't asking the
[28:21] question,
[28:23] "How do I make, you know, the human
[28:24] condition better? How do I make our
[28:26] lives better?" Instead, the question
[28:27] that everybody ask is, you know, "How do
[28:29] I get rich quick with this new
[28:31] technology?" Think about every story
[28:32] that's ever been told about something
[28:33] like AI and about the way that AI might
[28:35] totally, you know, save humanity. Think
[28:37] about Iain Banks's The Culture novels,
[28:39] which, you know, have plenty of darkness
[28:40] in them, but there's essentially a kind
[28:42] of
[28:43] pseudo-utopian society that's run by
[28:45] super-intelligent AI. So, human beings
[28:48] or something close enough can just like
[28:49] live lives of pleasure and creativity.
[28:52] Uh instead,
[28:53] we have AI companies that largely um
[28:56] threaten creative work in general. You
[28:58] know, what's that joke? Uh I thought we
[29:00] were going to get, you know, AI to do
[29:01] like all the spreadsheet work so I can
[29:02] make art. Turns out, we just have AI to
[29:04] make all the art. Now I have to go work
[29:06] on spreadsheets.
[29:07] That's the future that we feel that we
[29:08] got. Time, attention, basically anything
[29:11] you can imagine became monetized and
[29:13] commodified. It doesn't feel like those
[29:15] innovations are actively making our
[29:16] lives better. And when people no longer
[29:18] feel like that technology is actively
[29:20] making our lives better, they're going
[29:22] to start asking difficult questions, and
[29:24] they're going to even wonder if we
[29:26] should go back to some earlier, simpler
[29:28] time in history. But we're still with
[29:31] left with a question of, you know, what
[29:33] should we do? And there's this new
[29:34] Luddite path, which is, you know, throw
[29:36] away some of your modern technology, um
[29:39] but be moderate in, you know,
[29:40] application. Try to build a better
[29:42] world. But there are more radical
[29:45] thinkers out there, and I want to in
[29:46] this video by talking about one of them.
[29:49] Uh because the best example of this kind
[29:51] of radical anti-tech skepticism that I
[29:54] have found so far is a recent book from
[29:56] Paul Kingsnorth called Against the
[29:58] Machine. Paul Kingsnorth is maybe the
[29:59] most pessimistic techno-skeptic
[30:03] that you can find in the mainstream. I
[30:05] mean, his book made it to the New York
[30:06] Times list when it came out last year.
[30:08] Kingsnorth himself, I believe, used to
[30:09] live in London. He has now moved to
[30:11] Ireland and works on a small farm with
[30:13] his with his family. So, he might really
[30:16] be the most authentic Luddite we've
[30:17] talked about so far. And in the last,
[30:19] you know, couple of months,
[30:21] I've gotten more requests for me to talk
[30:22] about this book either here or over on
[30:25] my newsletter um
[30:27] than any other book. And mostly from
[30:29] people who said that they really loved
[30:31] it. Um so, I read this book, um
[30:34] but I have to say, I walked away
[30:35] disappointed. So, Kingsnorth focuses in
[30:37] this book on what he calls the machine,
[30:40] which is unfortunately a very nebulous
[30:41] concept throughout the book. Uh there
[30:43] are a few places where he gives
[30:44] something that looks like a definition,
[30:47] but we never just get a definition of
[30:49] the machine, you know, with a capital M.
[30:51] So I I wrote a few of these down. So on
[30:53] page 18, he calls it a crisis of mass
[30:55] uprooting, which is cultural,
[30:57] ecological, and spiritual. He also calls
[30:59] this process modernity, but he prefers
[31:01] the imagery of the machine.
[31:03] Um on page 26, he links the machine to
[31:06] what he calls the Faustian idea. Uh he
[31:08] took that outline from Oswald Spengler,
[31:11] and he says that the Faustian idea is
[31:13] expansion, curiosity, and endless
[31:15] forward drive.
[31:16] This characterization of um his ideas I
[31:19] would admit set off some alarm bells. So
[31:21] it's a very kind of like
[31:21] anti-rationality, anti-progress
[31:24] kind of view of modernity. And
[31:27] Kingsnorth spends very little time, you
[31:28] know, if any really in the book,
[31:30] discussing Spengler's role in like the
[31:31] rise of German nationalism in the Weimar
[31:33] Republic. Um it set off some alarm
[31:37] bells. And then much later in the book,
[31:39] he writes that the contemporary Western
[31:41] gaze is the gaze of the machine, of
[31:44] enlightenment man, of cosmopolis, of
[31:47] reason, and of money.
[31:49] So the the machine is kind of like a way
[31:52] of seeing the world. And this is very
[31:54] resonant with what I have been saying so
[31:55] far in this video, that technology, you
[31:57] know, shapes how we see the world. To
[31:59] illustrate that last point, Kingsnorth
[32:01] actually appeals to the ideas of Iain
[32:02] McGilchrist. Now, I do not know much
[32:04] about Iain McGilchrist. Um
[32:06] I'm not going to try to
[32:08] discuss, synthesize, or criticize any of
[32:10] McGilchrist's views in this video. I
[32:12] simply don't know anything. Um but this
[32:14] is how, following McGilchrist,
[32:16] Kingsnorth characterizes the Western
[32:18] mind. He writes, "To McGilchrist, the
[32:20] Western way of seeing, a way of seeing
[32:22] that was always going to give birth to
[32:24] something like the machine, is rooted in
[32:26] the brain itself, and our very
[32:27] particular way of relating to the world
[32:30] can be seen from some angles as almost a
[32:32] form of mental illness." Okay, I want to
[32:35] make two quick points about this before
[32:36] we get into the larger themes of
[32:38] Kingsnorth's book. One, I I don't know
[32:40] if there is such a thing as the Western
[32:42] way of seeing.
[32:44] Um
[32:45] whatever is meant by the West, you know,
[32:46] and there are competing definitions of
[32:48] the West,
[32:49] it is a pretty massive and
[32:52] rather, you know,
[32:53] heterogeneous group.
[32:56] And so, I I'm just very skeptical of
[32:58] anything that speaks in such highly
[32:59] general terms. Though, Kingsnorth seems
[33:01] to suggest that what we need is less
[33:03] rationality and less reason and a more
[33:05] mythic, symbolic relationship to the
[33:08] world. Just spitballing, it's like a
[33:10] little similar to perhaps Heidegger's
[33:12] discussion of that primordial way of
[33:14] seeing. But, the second point I want to
[33:16] make about that passage here is that the
[33:18] sentence uses the phrase "can be seen
[33:20] from some angles as almost a form of
[33:22] mental illness." I don't want to sound
[33:24] like I'm just being overly stubborn
[33:25] here, but when you hedge three times in
[33:27] one sentence, "it can be seen," so can,
[33:30] not is,
[33:32] "from some angles," so not from every
[33:34] angles, "and as almost a form of," so
[33:38] not a form of, um
[33:40] I don't know what actually Kingsnorth
[33:42] really believes, and
[33:44] I don't know if that's actually
[33:45] McGilchrist's view, either. There are
[33:47] many other things that we could say
[33:48] about Kingsnorth's book.
[33:50] At one point, I thought I would just
[33:51] make a video about Paul Kingsnorth's
[33:53] book, but
[33:54] [sighs and gasps]
[33:55] I lost interest. Uh late in the book,
[33:57] when discussing AI, um Kingsnorth seems
[34:00] to imply that AI might be a way for the
[34:02] the supernatural entities to break into
[34:04] the world. He does not outright say it,
[34:07] but he does say that he wants to
[34:08] understand technology in spiritual
[34:10] rather than material terms, and he
[34:12] compares uh the internet, and I'm going
[34:13] to read this cuz I'm quoting here, as
[34:15] the inevitable result of eating the
[34:17] fruit of the tree of good and evil, and
[34:19] then he describes technological pro-
[34:21] progress as the Faust-like summoning of
[34:24] something we are not really big enough
[34:25] to be playing with. I mean, Faust-like
[34:27] here, right, referencing Faust, like
[34:29] from Marlowe or Goethe,
[34:32] where
[34:33] a man makes a deal with the devil. I
[34:34] don't know if he would actually say
[34:36] there are demons in the AI, uh
[34:38] but it seemed to be like heavily
[34:39] implied. That was one of my frustrations
[34:41] with the book, by the way. It seemed to
[34:43] heavily imply a lot of conclusions that
[34:45] Kingsnorth would not just come out and
[34:47] say. And so, in short, I would say that
[34:49] um I wasn't convinced by Kingsnorth's
[34:51] book. I was not convinced or all that
[34:53] compelled by his vision of the future.
[34:55] And I think on some readings, which I
[34:57] don't know which one, you know, is
[35:00] the right one because of how Kingsnorth
[35:01] writes, I've called this book quite
[35:03] dangerous. And I think we can see some
[35:05] of that danger here when we discuss near
[35:08] the end the two paths forward that
[35:10] Kingsnorth describes.
[35:12] One of them is this moderate path, which
[35:14] might look more like the new Luddites
[35:16] that we've discussed throughout the
[35:17] video.
[35:18] He doesn't spend much time on this, but
[35:19] you know, this path would be a careful
[35:22] drawing of lines between us and modern
[35:24] technology, setting important boundaries
[35:28] that we're not willing to cross. Uh the
[35:30] second one is a much more radical. He
[35:32] talks about, you know,
[35:34] teaching your kids that blue light is
[35:35] like as dangerous as like nuclear power
[35:37] or something. That example might be
[35:40] slightly wrong.
[35:41] Um he also uses the phrase, I mean, just
[35:43] casually mentions bombing the data
[35:45] centers.
[35:46] And I think he means this as a stand-in
[35:48] for like the wholesale rejection of
[35:50] modern technology.
[35:52] Uh the radical path, you know, he's
[35:54] talking about here
[35:56] is
[35:59] I I mean, the radical path seems like
[36:01] it's retreating to some point in the
[36:02] past. Um I had a much longer part about
[36:05] this in an earlier version of this
[36:06] video. Um
[36:08] but I think, you know, we can say it
[36:09] because Kingsnorth describes himself as
[36:11] a reactionary radical. Reactionary being
[36:13] someone who wants to go back to the way
[36:16] things used to be. But I have to ask
[36:17] like, how far back do you want to go?
[36:20] And are you willing to take the good
[36:22] with the bad? Here's a personal example
[36:25] to sort of make this issue a live and
[36:27] real one. I have a friend who has a
[36:29] congenital heart condition. So, he
[36:31] relies on this complex technology to
[36:33] even stay alive. And
[36:36] in order for that technology to stay
[36:37] functional, we need networks of
[36:39] hospitals and factories and institutions
[36:42] and research facilities for it to keep
[36:44] going and for maybe one day a real cure
[36:46] to be found for his heart condition. And
[36:48] it seems like
[36:50] big factories and hospitals and research
[36:53] institutions are the kinds of things
[36:55] that Kingsnorth would call the machine.
[36:58] And so, if we were treated to some point
[36:59] in the past, you know, that didn't have
[37:01] the machine, though if he thinks it's a
[37:03] consequence of just like the pride of
[37:06] man that I don't know if we could ever
[37:07] retreat to the past, you know, far
[37:09] enough where people wouldn't be prideful
[37:11] and want to innovate and control others.
[37:13] But, you know, if we retreat too far
[37:15] back in the past, right, my friend would
[37:17] die.
[37:19] And I don't mean this is like a cheap
[37:20] shot. I'm just saying that's a real
[37:22] consequence. And that's what was so
[37:23] frustrating about reading Kingsnorth's
[37:25] book. He doesn't even address that sort
[37:27] of issue. I mean, I I looked, right? I I
[37:30] don't think it's addressed anywhere. It
[37:31] is left completely absent from his
[37:33] discussion. And I don't think it's
[37:35] unfair to ask him to consider the wider
[37:38] scope of these issues when he's making a
[37:40] proposal for basically all of humanity.
[37:42] So, Kingsnorth does not answer the
[37:44] question of what should we do? At least
[37:46] for me,
[37:47] I would not want to take Kingsnorth's
[37:49] answers.
[37:50] But, in my research for this video, I
[37:52] found another document that that
[37:53] actually helped me make a little bit of
[37:55] progress on answering it for myself.
[37:57] This was from Chellis Glendinning. It
[37:59] was written in 1990 and it's notes
[38:01] towards a neo-Luddite manifesto.
[38:03] Glendinning makes two key points. The
[38:05] first one is that neo-Luddites do not
[38:07] have to be anti-technology. It's Human
[38:10] beings have been using technology since
[38:12] our earliest days. I mean, the glasses,
[38:14] you know, that I wear,
[38:16] Okay, I got to put these back on cuz I
[38:17] can't see anything. The glasses that I
[38:19] wear are technology. Any kind of
[38:21] Ludditism that rejected the
[38:24] infrastructure that made it possible for
[38:25] me to have glasses
[38:27] is a Luddism that I wouldn't want to be
[38:28] involved with. And Glendinning says that
[38:30] technology is actually intrinsic to
[38:32] human creativity and culture. So, we're
[38:34] not going to live in an in a completely
[38:36] anti-tech world. Just isn't going to
[38:38] happen because we're human beings. What
[38:40] Glendinning's neo-Luddites are opposed
[38:41] to is a technology that is destructive
[38:44] to human lives and communities.
[38:47] Glendinning also notes that all
[38:48] technology is political. So, technology
[38:51] is built in a particular system and it
[38:53] often exists to perpetuate that kind of
[38:55] system.
[38:56] Being critical about the kinds of
[38:58] technologies that we allow into our
[38:59] lives, I guess you could say is
[39:02] part of this larger question of asking
[39:03] what kind of world we want to live in.
[39:04] What kind of future that we want to
[39:06] build together. So, we can ask this key
[39:08] question, you know, what technologies
[39:10] allow us to build a better future. In
[39:12] the spirit of Glendinning, I I came up
[39:14] with my own list of questions that I
[39:17] want to ask myself when I'm considering
[39:19] which technologies to use in my own
[39:21] life.
[39:22] So, one, does this technology expand or
[39:25] contract the realm of human freedom?
[39:27] Because I only want to use technologies
[39:28] that help us live freer lives.
[39:31] Two, does this technology contribute to
[39:34] human flourishing? Three,
[39:36] does it make it easier for me to pursue
[39:37] projects and live in accordance with my
[39:40] values?
[39:41] And four, is this piece of technology
[39:43] primarily a way for other people to get
[39:45] rich or powerful off my attention? And
[39:48] if I can say yes to the first three
[39:49] questions and no to that last one, then
[39:52] it seems like it's a piece of technology
[39:53] that is worth using in my own life. It
[39:56] might come with a cost. All technology
[39:58] comes with some form of a cost. You
[40:00] know, but if a piece of technology
[40:02] gives me all of that, maybe that cost is
[40:04] worth paying. And what are those things
[40:05] that, you know, matter to me that I
[40:06] talked about? Well, you know, be things
[40:08] like my my family, my community, the
[40:10] well-being of, you know, my fellow
[40:11] creatures in this world.
[40:13] And my own sort of
[40:16] interior environment, the stability and
[40:18] its depth, my ability to, you know,
[40:20] think. These are the kinds of things
[40:22] that I value most, and I want technology
[40:24] to preserve that rather than disrupt it.
[40:27] Maybe you have a different set of
[40:28] questions that you would want to ask.
[40:29] Actually, if you've made it this far,
[40:31] first of all, thank you.
[40:32] Um I would love to hear what kind of
[40:33] questions you would want to ask about
[40:35] new technologies before you allow them
[40:37] into your lives.
[40:38] But I think the very first step we have
[40:39] to take is to just start asking the
[40:41] question.
[40:42] Because for too long, we've allowed
[40:44] technology into our lives with no
[40:46] thought. And it's that thoughtlessness
[40:48] that we have to overcome first. Right?
[40:50] I've been exploring uh these issues
[40:51] actually all year long over in my
[40:53] newsletter. I've been running a
[40:54] philosophical book club. It's free to
[40:56] join, but you can also pay to support my
[40:58] work. It's over on Substack. There's a
[41:00] link down below. And we are going to be
[41:02] reading books about the philosophy of
[41:03] technology for the rest of the year as
[41:05] well. If you're interested in supporting
[41:06] my work, you could go check that out. I
[41:08] also put my videos up early on Patreon.
[41:11] There's a link to that down below, too.
[41:12] I don't take sponsorships on this
[41:13] channel anymore. Um so, I do rely on
[41:16] some amount of community support. All
[41:18] right, folks.
[41:19] I'll see you in the next one.