Hebdo, Piketty, Smart Houses, Surveillance
January 14, 2015 7:19 AM Subscribe
The Well's State of the World 2015: here's the annual summary of trends and speculations from Bruce Sterling, Jon Lebkowski, and Cory Doctorow.
Something I've always wondered; why does the Well still use monospace fonts?
posted by leotrotsky at 7:24 AM on January 14, 2015
posted by leotrotsky at 7:24 AM on January 14, 2015
First, climate change, which has to be the central issue in any sane
discussion of the changing state of the world. It's tedious to
repeat this every year, but last year was very hot. Next year will
be hotter. It's a shame that this has become a denialist
theological matter, but it's like telling a rich right-wing
alcoholic that his liver is decaying. No doubt he'll simply claim
that's a culture-Marxist power grab by the over-educated medical
profession. But the crisis is there, and it's getting worse, and
it's written all over the patient's face. Next.
posted by The Whelk at 7:29 AM on January 14, 2015 [10 favorites]
doctorow. wut.
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 7:33 AM on January 14, 2015
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 7:33 AM on January 14, 2015
why does the Well still use monospace fonts?
They're pretending that the web front end to their BBS isn't the real WELL.
posted by Obscure Reference at 7:39 AM on January 14, 2015 [4 favorites]
They're pretending that the web front end to their BBS isn't the real WELL.
posted by Obscure Reference at 7:39 AM on January 14, 2015 [4 favorites]
why does the Well still use monospace fonts?
They're pretending that the web front end to their BBS isn't the real WELL.
Do they also expect people to telnet in?
as an aside, but on the topic of old web communities, does anyone remember the chat room thespacebar.com? It had a little astronaut with a martini glass as the logo.
posted by leotrotsky at 7:49 AM on January 14, 2015
They're pretending that the web front end to their BBS isn't the real WELL.
Do they also expect people to telnet in?
as an aside, but on the topic of old web communities, does anyone remember the chat room thespacebar.com? It had a little astronaut with a martini glass as the logo.
posted by leotrotsky at 7:49 AM on January 14, 2015
In case you were wondering what some white mens is thinking about...
posted by allthinky at 7:53 AM on January 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by allthinky at 7:53 AM on January 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
I've been posting in this topic via picospan, sshing in. It's the only way that feels right.
This quote from Bruce seemed particularly resonating:
I’ll be a little less arch here, and state that the Internet-of-Things won’t destroy everything. It won’t have the time, it’s too temporary. Nuclear weapons and carbon pollution and nano tech and GMO and gray goo and robots, that’s stuff of the caliber that can destroy everything. The IoT is a fad. You’ll outlive it — just like you outlived the WELL as a Bulletin Board System.
posted by jeffkramer at 7:54 AM on January 14, 2015 [3 favorites]
This quote from Bruce seemed particularly resonating:
I’ll be a little less arch here, and state that the Internet-of-Things won’t destroy everything. It won’t have the time, it’s too temporary. Nuclear weapons and carbon pollution and nano tech and GMO and gray goo and robots, that’s stuff of the caliber that can destroy everything. The IoT is a fad. You’ll outlive it — just like you outlived the WELL as a Bulletin Board System.
posted by jeffkramer at 7:54 AM on January 14, 2015 [3 favorites]
Metafilter: the WELL that people who aren't 20-year WELL subscribers might know and care about.
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:00 AM on January 14, 2015 [6 favorites]
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:00 AM on January 14, 2015 [6 favorites]
In case you were wondering what some white mens is thinking about...
posted by allthinky
This seems needlessly toxic to me (and emblematic of why progressive causes seem to so consistently keep shooting themselves in the foot in the broader war for hearts and minds of voters). Sure this is a few scifi writer nerds talking about stuff, and maybe that's not for everyone, but the issues they raise can hardly be dismissed as #lolwhitepeopleproblems.
The first issue raised is climate change, which by any sane measure is an urgent global issue that will have implications on everything. Do your own political preferences prioritize the rights of the developing world? Climate Change is poised to disproportionately harm those countries (pdf), even as the wealthy first world benefits from the carbon-intensive economy that is accelerating global climate change.
Do you prioritize women's rights? Climate change is poised to disproportionately affect women as well. Another source (pdf).
It should go without saying that income inequality likewise intersects with climate change.
I'll refrain from a long analysis of every other issue raised in the discussion on The Well. Certainly the concerns of these privileged geeks might not exactly mirror your own priorities, but that's no reason to sarcastically dismiss them out of hand. Doctorow's articulation of his fears surrounding ubiquitous digital surveillance might not exactly match that of, for example, one of the women targeted for relentless harassment by gamergate but there are areas where their concerns overlap (say, the relative ease with which personal information can be exposed to other parties) and where common ground to search for solutions might be found.
The inverse of this reflexive dismissal is also certainly as much or likely even more of a problem; privileged white men dismissing the concerns of others because "that's a woman's issue- we need to solve global warming or whatever issue personally bothers me more." So I'm not at all saying this is a one-sided thing. But I find it incredibly frustrating that the authoritarians seem to have such an easy time whipping the mob into line to go burn the evolutionists or whatever and yet those who should theoretically all be on the same side of equality and reasonable political action so often spend more time fighting each other than making progress on their shared policy preferences.
posted by Wretch729 at 8:20 AM on January 14, 2015 [23 favorites]
posted by allthinky
This seems needlessly toxic to me (and emblematic of why progressive causes seem to so consistently keep shooting themselves in the foot in the broader war for hearts and minds of voters). Sure this is a few scifi writer nerds talking about stuff, and maybe that's not for everyone, but the issues they raise can hardly be dismissed as #lolwhitepeopleproblems.
The first issue raised is climate change, which by any sane measure is an urgent global issue that will have implications on everything. Do your own political preferences prioritize the rights of the developing world? Climate Change is poised to disproportionately harm those countries (pdf), even as the wealthy first world benefits from the carbon-intensive economy that is accelerating global climate change.
Do you prioritize women's rights? Climate change is poised to disproportionately affect women as well. Another source (pdf).
It should go without saying that income inequality likewise intersects with climate change.
I'll refrain from a long analysis of every other issue raised in the discussion on The Well. Certainly the concerns of these privileged geeks might not exactly mirror your own priorities, but that's no reason to sarcastically dismiss them out of hand. Doctorow's articulation of his fears surrounding ubiquitous digital surveillance might not exactly match that of, for example, one of the women targeted for relentless harassment by gamergate but there are areas where their concerns overlap (say, the relative ease with which personal information can be exposed to other parties) and where common ground to search for solutions might be found.
The inverse of this reflexive dismissal is also certainly as much or likely even more of a problem; privileged white men dismissing the concerns of others because "that's a woman's issue- we need to solve global warming or whatever issue personally bothers me more." So I'm not at all saying this is a one-sided thing. But I find it incredibly frustrating that the authoritarians seem to have such an easy time whipping the mob into line to go burn the evolutionists or whatever and yet those who should theoretically all be on the same side of equality and reasonable political action so often spend more time fighting each other than making progress on their shared policy preferences.
posted by Wretch729 at 8:20 AM on January 14, 2015 [23 favorites]
...how does one distinguish the state of the big wide world from your own personalit's almost as if... but then no, no awareness. it's corydoctorows all the way down.
mental state? There's always so much wishful thinking and
psychological projection there -- no matter who tries it.
posted by ennui.bz at 8:20 AM on January 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
Define this "world" which you refer to?
Cyberworld? Our shared global zeitgeist in the clouds? Podunk, NJ?
posted by infini at 8:37 AM on January 14, 2015
Cyberworld? Our shared global zeitgeist in the clouds? Podunk, NJ?
posted by infini at 8:37 AM on January 14, 2015
In case you were wondering what some white mens is thinking about...
I was, thanks!
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 8:41 AM on January 14, 2015
I was, thanks!
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 8:41 AM on January 14, 2015
Sorry, didn't mean to be toxic; of course climate change is a problem, and harms most those with the least power. All of what they talked about certainly is ... something that can be talked about.
I don't have the time or brain cells to make the comment I want to make, but there's something about what enters their various fields of vision and floats to the top that's bothersome to me. At a far remove from where the blood and tears really are.
Never mind. Carry on.
posted by allthinky at 8:44 AM on January 14, 2015
I don't have the time or brain cells to make the comment I want to make, but there's something about what enters their various fields of vision and floats to the top that's bothersome to me. At a far remove from where the blood and tears really are.
Never mind. Carry on.
posted by allthinky at 8:44 AM on January 14, 2015
We've got "glocal" as a portmanteau word for global yet also localBurn the world down.
posted by Kadin2048 at 8:44 AM on January 14, 2015 [2 favorites]
The Well hasn't supported telnet in years. You have to SSH in.
And yeah, old timers do, I think, still mostly use the console interface. I don't like the web version.
posted by uberchet at 8:49 AM on January 14, 2015
And yeah, old timers do, I think, still mostly use the console interface. I don't like the web version.
posted by uberchet at 8:49 AM on January 14, 2015
I think I know what you mean, allthinky. There is always a certain self-important out-of-touchness to the States of the World. They're better read as, "Bruce Sterling & Friends Have a Chat" (which is probably closer to what they're intended to be) than, "Leading Thoughts On Bleeding Edge Subjects." A lot of events and speculation that get lots of attention in these aren't really the things I put at the forefront of my conversations about the future; but I'm not Bruce Sterling & Friends.
posted by byanyothername at 8:57 AM on January 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by byanyothername at 8:57 AM on January 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
Wretch729, I agree that rank dismissal of "privileged white men" is a problem, but it can't be solved by blaming irritable women or minorities or LGBT people. Like it or not, minorities are suffering from systemic discrimination. Like it or not, women are suffering from systemic discrimination. Like it or not LGBT people are suffering from systemic discrimination. As long as this is true, irritable responses to calls for unity along traditional left-wing axes of political action will be inevitable. If a movement can't meet the needs of its coalition members in the present, then those members will not trust the movement in return, even if they may gain more from cooperating. America doesn't listen to minorities, it doesn't listen to women, and it doesn't listen to LGBT people, and they cannot ignore it any longer. If they could, they would.
posted by IShouldBeStudyingRightNow at 8:59 AM on January 14, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by IShouldBeStudyingRightNow at 8:59 AM on January 14, 2015 [4 favorites]
Jon Lebkowsky's analysis is the one that has me concerned:
posted by anthill at 9:17 AM on January 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
"there's a kind of simple equation where the more disparity grows, the more of the capital of the rich needs to be spent maintaining coercive force and propaganda to keep the guillotines in storage. At a certain point, you're spending more on stability than you're retaining in wealth, and that's when it makes sense to deign to pay some taxes, allow some labor and tenants' laws, etc.The flaw in the argument might be that the technology that reduces the costs of surveillance & coercion has beneficial side effects, whether as the cognitive overhead of leak-proofing anti-public-interest activities, or the (naiive IMO) "Twitter awareness will mobilize mass movements". Seems like the Chinese example has disproven that one.
In the last part of the 20th century, automation made suasion much cheaper: the rise of mass media made it vastly cheaper for the rich and powerful to convey their message to everyone else (Monroe Doctrine to Fox News).
In this century, automation has made coercion much cheaper, too. It's not just the militarization of the police ... it's the automation of surveillance and control through our connected devices.... the cost of surveillance has dropped through the floor: indeed, in many cases, there are NO marginal costs for surveillance. Once Prism is in Google's data-center, the cost of surveilling a new Gmail user is zero.
This means that it is now practical to expand wealth disparity to heretofore unheard-of levels. The curves of social-instability-versus-cost-of-coercion-and-control have a new intersection.
posted by anthill at 9:17 AM on January 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
Man, allthinky, your comment sank this thread fast. It was really dismissive and unnecessary.
posted by Sangermaine at 9:19 AM on January 14, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by Sangermaine at 9:19 AM on January 14, 2015 [4 favorites]
Man, allthinky, your comment sank this thread fast. It was really dismissive and unnecessary.
I think that it's a necessary point that needs to be made with regards to these sorts of round tables. It's worth noting when people opine about the future which futures are getting opined about.
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:31 AM on January 14, 2015 [5 favorites]
I think that it's a necessary point that needs to be made with regards to these sorts of round tables. It's worth noting when people opine about the future which futures are getting opined about.
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:31 AM on January 14, 2015 [5 favorites]
America doesn't listen to minorities, it doesn't listen to women, and it doesn't listen to LGBT people, and they cannot ignore it any longer. If they could, they would.
posted by IShouldBeStudyingRightNow
Agreed, though I would qualify that absolute to "doesn't listen enough," and I also appreciate the point allthinky made in her response above. Certainly blowing off steam on metafilter isn't going to sink the progressive movement. It does feel like a vicious chicken and egg problem: if "the left" ignores the most pressing concerns of important parts of its coalition those groups lack incentive to support the broader movement. You see this most clearly in the recurring liberal angst in the US about whether voting for a "lesser of two evils" Democrat is a good idea or not.
I've thought about this without having a good answer, though in the United States I do think Lawrence Lessig might be on to something with his argument that until the financial corruption and de facto regulatory capture in Washington is addressed meaningful progress on almost any issue is near impossible. In a magical unicorn universe I'd love to see reform of the US's first past the post voting system too but I don't know if that's realistic.
posted by Wretch729 at 9:42 AM on January 14, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by IShouldBeStudyingRightNow
Agreed, though I would qualify that absolute to "doesn't listen enough," and I also appreciate the point allthinky made in her response above. Certainly blowing off steam on metafilter isn't going to sink the progressive movement. It does feel like a vicious chicken and egg problem: if "the left" ignores the most pressing concerns of important parts of its coalition those groups lack incentive to support the broader movement. You see this most clearly in the recurring liberal angst in the US about whether voting for a "lesser of two evils" Democrat is a good idea or not.
I've thought about this without having a good answer, though in the United States I do think Lawrence Lessig might be on to something with his argument that until the financial corruption and de facto regulatory capture in Washington is addressed meaningful progress on almost any issue is near impossible. In a magical unicorn universe I'd love to see reform of the US's first past the post voting system too but I don't know if that's realistic.
posted by Wretch729 at 9:42 AM on January 14, 2015 [2 favorites]
Metafilter: the WELL that people who aren't 20-year WELL subscribers might know and care about.
This is hilarious. I did some contracting for them during the Rockport shoe guy reign of terror in the 90s, and had no idea it had been repurchased by long-time members. It's like the longest episode of Restaurant Impossible ever.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 9:48 AM on January 14, 2015
This is hilarious. I did some contracting for them during the Rockport shoe guy reign of terror in the 90s, and had no idea it had been repurchased by long-time members. It's like the longest episode of Restaurant Impossible ever.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 9:48 AM on January 14, 2015
Sangermaine, we'll just have to agree to disagree over what should be considered "necessary".
One point Doctorow raised that absolutely deserves more attention is the new focus of capitalism. It's not just that plutocracy's focus is neoliberal or "hypercapitalist", it's that American capitalism now sees the financial quarter and fiscal year as omnipotent. That is to say, our society is less and less capable of seeing beyond 3-month and 12 month units of time. So much of the Krugman/Brad de Long/Mark Thoma/Elizabeth Warren/Warren Buffet/Piketty consensus can be understood less as "capitalism vs. alternatives to capitalism" and "short-term capitalism vs. long term capitalism".
If I could wave a magic wand and force the culture of global finance to work in 30 year (length of one human generation) increments, many things would change. While I'm sure many problems would arise from that, at the very least problems like climate change, chronic health problems, inequality would be easier for Fortune 500 companies to notice and respond to.
posted by IShouldBeStudyingRightNow at 9:53 AM on January 14, 2015 [5 favorites]
One point Doctorow raised that absolutely deserves more attention is the new focus of capitalism. It's not just that plutocracy's focus is neoliberal or "hypercapitalist", it's that American capitalism now sees the financial quarter and fiscal year as omnipotent. That is to say, our society is less and less capable of seeing beyond 3-month and 12 month units of time. So much of the Krugman/Brad de Long/Mark Thoma/Elizabeth Warren/Warren Buffet/Piketty consensus can be understood less as "capitalism vs. alternatives to capitalism" and "short-term capitalism vs. long term capitalism".
If I could wave a magic wand and force the culture of global finance to work in 30 year (length of one human generation) increments, many things would change. While I'm sure many problems would arise from that, at the very least problems like climate change, chronic health problems, inequality would be easier for Fortune 500 companies to notice and respond to.
posted by IShouldBeStudyingRightNow at 9:53 AM on January 14, 2015 [5 favorites]
The flaw in the argument might be that the technology that reduces the costs of surveillance & coercion has beneficial side effects, whether as the cognitive overhead of leak-proofing anti-public-interest activities, or the (naiive IMO) "Twitter awareness will mobilize mass movements". Seems like the Chinese example has disproven that one.
Generally speaking, the benefits of technology usually accrue to those in power, rather than those who are not; there are some exceptions, but they are exceptions. It seems like naive techno-utopianism to assume that the Internet is going to be one of those exceptions and not follow the general rule of empowering and entrenching the current order.
People like to compare the Internet to the printing press, presumably because of some belief that the printing press was disruptive (which, to some extent, it was, but not in the way that I think casual observers believe it was); there is every reason to believe that the Internet is going to be more like the telegraph: employed largely by the military-industrial-governmental bureaucracy to make itself more efficient.
Twitter-based clicktivism hasn't really demonstrated any increased effectiveness at threatening the power structure vs. traditional organizing strategies, and WikiLeaks exists mainly to feed information to traditional print journalism to have any effect — neither are, to my eye, particularly groundbreaking, or confer much of an advantage to those not in power that didn't exist previously.
Eventually, there ought to exist some sort of tipping point where it's no longer possible with available technology to keep the let's-not-call-it-a-proletariat at bay, but I don't think we are particularly close, at least in the West. Things are not so bad yet; most people haven't lost sight of the fact that they have quite a bit to lose if the wheels really come off the system. One of the preconditions for a revolution is that you need a lot of people who are really honestly willing to burn things down because they can't believe it can get any worse (and they are almost always wrong, based on who ends up dead in revolutions, but the belief—false or not—is required).
My guess is that the highest potential for mass uprisings against the entrenched power structures isn't in the West at all; it's in China, and only if there's an economic collapse that imperils the 'order for prosperity' implicit deal that the government has with the population. We are at least a generation away from that here in the West.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:10 AM on January 14, 2015 [5 favorites]
Generally speaking, the benefits of technology usually accrue to those in power, rather than those who are not; there are some exceptions, but they are exceptions. It seems like naive techno-utopianism to assume that the Internet is going to be one of those exceptions and not follow the general rule of empowering and entrenching the current order.
People like to compare the Internet to the printing press, presumably because of some belief that the printing press was disruptive (which, to some extent, it was, but not in the way that I think casual observers believe it was); there is every reason to believe that the Internet is going to be more like the telegraph: employed largely by the military-industrial-governmental bureaucracy to make itself more efficient.
Twitter-based clicktivism hasn't really demonstrated any increased effectiveness at threatening the power structure vs. traditional organizing strategies, and WikiLeaks exists mainly to feed information to traditional print journalism to have any effect — neither are, to my eye, particularly groundbreaking, or confer much of an advantage to those not in power that didn't exist previously.
Eventually, there ought to exist some sort of tipping point where it's no longer possible with available technology to keep the let's-not-call-it-a-proletariat at bay, but I don't think we are particularly close, at least in the West. Things are not so bad yet; most people haven't lost sight of the fact that they have quite a bit to lose if the wheels really come off the system. One of the preconditions for a revolution is that you need a lot of people who are really honestly willing to burn things down because they can't believe it can get any worse (and they are almost always wrong, based on who ends up dead in revolutions, but the belief—false or not—is required).
My guess is that the highest potential for mass uprisings against the entrenched power structures isn't in the West at all; it's in China, and only if there's an economic collapse that imperils the 'order for prosperity' implicit deal that the government has with the population. We are at least a generation away from that here in the West.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:10 AM on January 14, 2015 [5 favorites]
it's like that Peter Watts nightmare where humanity has evolved to eliminate consciousness. It's still a planet of talking apes but there's nothing going on inside our furry little skulls just stimulus/response. I think it would sound a lot like this:
It's just one example, 'cause there's lots networkposted by ennui.bz at 10:17 AM on January 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
politics in 2015 are radically "personalitical." It's all about
snarling baboon-troops of witch-hunt zealots uniting online to
harass the living daylights out of stray foot-soldiers from the
enemy camp. That's personalized politics under the existent
network-society condition. It's the 'human flesh search engine,' as
the Chinese used to call it, because the Chinese were great online
pioneers of weaponized scolding and dox-attacks.
One of the preconditions for a revolution is that you need a lot of people who are really honestly willing to burn things down because they can't believe it can get any worse (and they are almost always wrong, based on who ends up dead in revolutions, but the belief—false or not—is required).
Doesn't the French Revolution counter this argument? It was the aristocracy who were guillotined by teh mobs who couldn't find cake or bread iirc.
posted by infini at 10:30 AM on January 14, 2015
Doesn't the French Revolution counter this argument? It was the aristocracy who were guillotined by teh mobs who couldn't find cake or bread iirc.
posted by infini at 10:30 AM on January 14, 2015
Wretch729, I definitely agree that regulatory capture and corruption are huge problems. I would also agree that there's a "chicken and egg" element to the problem of outreach
I also think disparities in voter turnout is a problem, though I'm not sure how you'd solve that other than through compulsory voting which of course has it's own drawbacks.
To me, the main problem is cultural. All throughout the Western world, but especially in the U.S. you have white people who regardless of ideology, see themselves as left wingers supporting equality over self-interest or right wingers supporting self-interest over equality. Some, but not nearly enough people see self-interest and equality as two parts of the same whole. Take wages. The wages for white men have remained the same for more than forty years adjusting for inflation. When forced to respond to that kind of injustice, they literally cannot believe that other groups out there are suffering more, or that they have anything to gain by cooperating with them. It's not about acknowledging race, it's about learning to want to live with and around nonwhite people. It's about acknowledging that they have more to gain by communal opposition to authority than by blind defense of the status quo. Too few of us accept that capitalism is supposed to mean an entire life of uncomfortable change when done equally across the board.
By the logic of much of the social sciences, part of our goal should be for the average U.S. predominantly white neighborhood to have at least a quarter of non white people there. Not because of a quota, but because you would expect something like that in a unified American polity.
posted by IShouldBeStudyingRightNow at 10:36 AM on January 14, 2015 [3 favorites]
I also think disparities in voter turnout is a problem, though I'm not sure how you'd solve that other than through compulsory voting which of course has it's own drawbacks.
To me, the main problem is cultural. All throughout the Western world, but especially in the U.S. you have white people who regardless of ideology, see themselves as left wingers supporting equality over self-interest or right wingers supporting self-interest over equality. Some, but not nearly enough people see self-interest and equality as two parts of the same whole. Take wages. The wages for white men have remained the same for more than forty years adjusting for inflation. When forced to respond to that kind of injustice, they literally cannot believe that other groups out there are suffering more, or that they have anything to gain by cooperating with them. It's not about acknowledging race, it's about learning to want to live with and around nonwhite people. It's about acknowledging that they have more to gain by communal opposition to authority than by blind defense of the status quo. Too few of us accept that capitalism is supposed to mean an entire life of uncomfortable change when done equally across the board.
By the logic of much of the social sciences, part of our goal should be for the average U.S. predominantly white neighborhood to have at least a quarter of non white people there. Not because of a quota, but because you would expect something like that in a unified American polity.
posted by IShouldBeStudyingRightNow at 10:36 AM on January 14, 2015 [3 favorites]
infini that's a pretty blinkered view of the French Revolution. The saying "the Revolution devours its children" wasn't just Mallet du Pan feeling crochety one day. Even without getting into the collateral casualties of events like The Terror, plunging France into two decades of war certainly contributed to the body count of ordinary French citizens.
posted by Wretch729 at 10:44 AM on January 14, 2015
posted by Wretch729 at 10:44 AM on January 14, 2015
ennui.bz, I can't tell if you think Sterling is describing that world or exemplifying it ... in any case, the Watts story is fascinating, so, thanks!
posted by allthinky at 10:54 AM on January 14, 2015
posted by allthinky at 10:54 AM on January 14, 2015
Doesn't the French Revolution counter this argument? It was the aristocracy who were guillotined by teh mobs who couldn't find cake or bread iirc.
The vast majority of people executed during the French Revolution weren't aristocrats. (Many of whom had fled in advance of the Terror anyway.) Although the image of Marie Antoinette going to the guillotine is how many think of that period—and it would probably please old Max Robespierre to know that's the case—tens of thousands of peasants were executed, most not by guillotine but rather firing squad, by paramilitary forces in the countryside during the fall and winter of 1793. The typical charge was for violating price controls, hoarding food, or dodging the general draft.
If you include the War in the Vendée, which may have claimed the lives of as many as 160,000 people across both republican and royalist sides—many if not most civilians who happened to have the misfortune of living in the wrong part of France at the time—it becomes only more apparent that the cost of popular revolution is often borne by those in whose name it is fought.
Generally speaking, the more violent the revolution, the higher the toll on the lower classes of society. And the revolutions which seem to be the most violent are the ones fought against local government with broad aims. Revolutions with more limited goals, such as the exit of a foreign colonial power / supremacy of home rule (e.g. American Revolution, many other anti-colonial movements), or the deposition of a single leader (e.g. Bulldozer Revolution, Rose Revolution, etc.) and—maybe most importantly—which don't attempt to fundamentally alter the day-to-day bureaucracy, seem much less likely to lead to widespread death and suffering.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:18 PM on January 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
The vast majority of people executed during the French Revolution weren't aristocrats. (Many of whom had fled in advance of the Terror anyway.) Although the image of Marie Antoinette going to the guillotine is how many think of that period—and it would probably please old Max Robespierre to know that's the case—tens of thousands of peasants were executed, most not by guillotine but rather firing squad, by paramilitary forces in the countryside during the fall and winter of 1793. The typical charge was for violating price controls, hoarding food, or dodging the general draft.
If you include the War in the Vendée, which may have claimed the lives of as many as 160,000 people across both republican and royalist sides—many if not most civilians who happened to have the misfortune of living in the wrong part of France at the time—it becomes only more apparent that the cost of popular revolution is often borne by those in whose name it is fought.
Generally speaking, the more violent the revolution, the higher the toll on the lower classes of society. And the revolutions which seem to be the most violent are the ones fought against local government with broad aims. Revolutions with more limited goals, such as the exit of a foreign colonial power / supremacy of home rule (e.g. American Revolution, many other anti-colonial movements), or the deposition of a single leader (e.g. Bulldozer Revolution, Rose Revolution, etc.) and—maybe most importantly—which don't attempt to fundamentally alter the day-to-day bureaucracy, seem much less likely to lead to widespread death and suffering.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:18 PM on January 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
It's interesting to me that Sterling et. al. chose Piketty as their point of entry for economics. Given the "cutting edge" spirit that Wired has cultivated for the last 20 years, I'm surprised that they aren't digging deeper into the Post-Keynesian and/or Marxian traditions. It seems like they're reading/read Marx, given the discussion of "siphoning off" surplus capital. But I don't see any indication that they are familiar with, say, Steve Keen's or Yannis Varroufakis' work, on debt deflation and the Euro crisis, respectively. Keen's insight on debt deflation (via the tradition of Irving Fisher and Hyman Minsky) does a lot to explain the relationship between private debt and inequality. Varroufakis (who self describes as an erratic Marxist) has done a lot of work on the euro and it's failure as a surplus recycling mechanism, driving the crisis in Europe that Sterling dismisses with his flippant comment about the French Left. I'm mystified as to why Sterling and his Wired/Well colleagues are so unaware of the scholarship in this area, frankly.
posted by wuwei at 6:54 PM on January 14, 2015
posted by wuwei at 6:54 PM on January 14, 2015
I hadn't seen Doctorow's review of Piketty's book before. It is one of the best I have seen. Link.
posted by bukvich at 12:33 PM on January 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by bukvich at 12:33 PM on January 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
I hadn't seen Doctorow's review of Piketty's book before. It is one of the best I have seen. Link.
posted by bukvich 9 hours ago [+]
Very good read, thank you.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 9:51 PM on January 16, 2015
posted by bukvich 9 hours ago [+]
Very good read, thank you.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 9:51 PM on January 16, 2015
I think that it's a necessary point that needs to be made with regards to these sorts of round tables. It's worth noting when people opine about the future which futures are getting opined about.
maybe it's also worth mentioning that this was discussed in the thread? if you didn't get that far :P
from _the forest unseen_: "April 2nd — Chainsaw"
posted by kliuless at 7:21 AM on January 21, 2015
maybe it's also worth mentioning that this was discussed in the thread? if you didn't get that far :P
i'm a fan of these annual bruce-and-jon fests, and it's really nice to see cory around these parts, too. but here and elsewhere on the WELL, there are some voices wondering why women's voices and concerns aren't represented here. i have to admit, when i first saw the lineup and told my husband about it (he's a big fan of bruce's futurism-ish writing), i breezily set it up with the caveat, "It's the usual sort of thing, you know, the experts are all white guys..." not even as a criticism, just as a way of introducing the conversation. i like these guys. i've known them personally in some ways, in some situations, over the course of decades. i don't fault them for being white or privileged or male or smart or this or that. but i think it does merit conversation and *acknowledgement*, the fact that we are culturally programmed to set up certain people to be our experts, and we then give them forums in which to show their knowledge and spread their ideas. (next year, maybe ask Genevieve Bell to sit in for a spell?)If I could wave a magic wand and force the culture of global finance to work in 30 year (length of one human generation) increments, many things would change. While I'm sure many problems would arise from that, at the very least problems like climate change, chronic health problems, inequality would be easier for Fortune 500 companies to notice and respond to.
so, i appreciate that women have tried to be heard in this conversation, like fom, evy, and loris. i also appreciate jon's post #64, in which he acknowledges that he doesn't have the answers to everything and may have misinterpreted evy's original question/critique. and i would still like to see a much more thoughtful answer to paulina's questions about the larger environmental effects of our continued, inevitable march toward progress.
from _the forest unseen_: "April 2nd — Chainsaw"
First, to unravel life’s cloth is to scorn a gift. Worse, it is to destroy a gift that even hardheaded science tells us is immeasurably valuable. We discard the gift in favor of a self-created world that we know is incoherent and cannot be sustained. Second, the attempt to turn a forest into an industrial process is improvident, profoundly so. Even the apologists for the chemical ice age will admit that we are running down nature’s capital, mining the soil, then discarding spent land. This rash ingratitude, justified by the economic “necessity” created by our ballooning consumption of inexpensive wood, seems to be an outward mark of inner arrogance and confusion.cheers!
Wood and wood products such as paper are not the problem. Wood provides us with shelter, paper with nourishment for the mind and spirit—unarguably wholesome outcomes. Wood products can also be much more sustainable than the alternatives such as steel, computers, and plastic, all of which use large quantities of energy and nonrenewable natural products. The problem with our modern forest economy lies in the unbalanced way that we extract wood from the land. Our laws and economic rules place short-term extractive gain over all other values. It does not have to be this way. We can find our way back to thoughtful management for the long-term well-being of both humans and forests. But finding this way will require some quiet and humility. Oases of contemplation can call us out of disorder, restoring a semblance of clarity to our moral vision.
posted by kliuless at 7:21 AM on January 21, 2015
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posted by Artw at 7:23 AM on January 14, 2015