James Bridle (1) (1980–)

I think this is a 2.5 for me. Maybe I'd read this at another time and get more from it. It has a lot of interesting information. There are great references to other books I'd like to read, but for some reason the big picture was lost. There are a lot of details, a lot stories personal as well as historical, political, societal. There's exploration and deliberation. I just can't see the intended thesis.
Humans should look beyond their own experiences for determining what it means "to be". With the realization that there are other ways of being, we need other ways of thinking about other life forms. This includes animal rights, environmental protections, etc. This would mean a difference in the way we do business, and business means everything from business, to tech development, to social interaction, etc. How this is to be accomplished is not discussed. One thread that I did not get, for example, was how animals are political. Should we be political in the same way, for the benefit of the group? Animal politics, however, don't involve greed, individual egos, fear of an imagined future, all of the things that drive human politics. So where does the bee's waggle dance come in?
There are so many different things through into this book, but I don't think the author clearly tied all of it together.… (meer)

Un libro del 2018 che parla dell'impatto della tecnologia nelle nostre vite rischia, se letto già solo a 4 anni di distanza dalla pubblicazione (come io ho fatto), di risultare datato. Così non è, al netto delle conseguenze della pandemia, che hanno sicuramente acuito alcuni dei fenomeni qui descritti. Si tratta di un libro "serio" in cui, mi tocca dirlo, l'impronta di un intellettuale europeo rende questo libro molto diverso da come sarebbe stato se scritto da un americano. È un lavoro denso, viene da dire "completo" che descrive come "era oscura" (con riferimento a Virginia Woolf) l'epoca che viviamo e all'interno della quale dobbiamo imparare a stare navigando nella complessità ed evitando le derive riduzioniste che purtroppo questo nuovo "mondo degli algoritmi" favorisce. Tanti spunti utili per mantenere alta la guardia e l'attenzione.… (meer)

This book is very descriptive, with Bridle offering a survey of what he considers to be eminent problems, and where they originated. Descriptive because there are points where Bridle attempts to be prescriptive, but it never really goes beyond a plea to "think more." He wants us to do a lot of thinking. I don't think this is wrong, but asking humans to think and act collectively is usually a bold strategy. And while I wasn't expecting a chapter of highly prescriptive, economically informed advice for how exactly to navigate these crises, ending it with "we just need to think" is very weak, and seems almost like a punchline given everything the book just explored in detail.

Technology, especially powerful and expansive technology, is usually assimilated into government agencies and programs before it sees a consumer market. Or technology develops in the confines of somewhere like Silicon Valley, where Google campuses are about as confidential as government agencies. While it'd be nice if every time a novel or innovative technology emerged on the market (GPS, image recognition, deepfakes, etc.), the public was allowed to chew on its societal & political consequences before giving it the greenlight, that just doesn't happen. The most influential technologies are developed, released and integrated without any consumer consent. Data warehouses are built all the time, I have no idea where or when. Fiber-optic cables are constructed all the time, I have no idea where or when. I have next to no influence on this infrastructure, just like I have next to no influence on whether apps track my data (which could be my face, my voice, my location, my habits, etc.).

Bridle's main argument is that the integration of these various technologies have yielded a unique form of thinking: "computational thinking." It's the cousin of solutionism; however, where solutionism believes there is a (frequently market-based) solution to every problem, computational thinking believes every problem is computable. If the problem is apparent but the solution unknown, computational thinking presumes gathering immense data on the problem will naturally reveal its solution. There is one reassuring portion of this constant data harvest: while the NSA does track almost every predictable datum of my life, there's almost nothing substantial to be done with it. Like Synecdoche, New York, where the playwright seeks to reflect every minute aspect of life & struggle, the performance becomes so maximalist as to be impossible to watch. There's so much concurrent information, one would need to be a god to truly witness and make use of it. So while the NSA collects inconceivably large amounts of data, there is no human interpreting and acting on it. Most of our data are likely never even seen except by a machine. However, this is where it becomes scary again. If ever we decide to leverage a machine to interpret these data, we allow the human faculties for ambiguity, uncertainty and nuance to be shoved aside in favor of "efficient" and "unbiased" computational justice.

This is one solution Bridle offers that has more material basis in reality. He uses the Google Optometrist as a paragon for how we can use computers to process prodigious data, while retaining our role as the arbiter for its application. Essentially, there is an AI known as the Optometrist, because it processes multiple reactions and combinations of data, then presents the outcomes to a human viewer, who can decide on its validity or utility. Like an eye doctor, "Which looks better? One, or two?" The doctor does not tyrannically decide for you, and send you scurrying out the door with a bad prescription. While the consumer will maybe never have an opportunity to play arbiter, those working in technology can, and this is partially what Bridle means when he claims we must think more.

Without cataclysmic collapse, we are well beyond the point of Luddite solutions, where we joyously throw our phones into a fire and live off the land in utopian communes. Technology is so intrinsic to our most quotidian functions, its collapse would entail disaster. Banks would cease to function, GPS units would fail, contact in the event of these failures would prove incredibly difficult. This forces us into a position where we must learn to think with machines, as opposed to letting machines think and do for us.

It's very difficult to not imagine a scenario, however, where novel technology isn't swiped by hedge funds and governments to pry economic and societal schisms further and further, intentionally or not. How much liberty do lay folks have over technology beyond their comprehension, and hidden from their scrutiny?… (meer)

Cuanto más aumenta la complejidad del mundo tecnológico, más disminuye nuestra comprensión de la realidad: la información que recibimos a diario está plagada de datos no contrastados, de posverdad, de teorías conspirativas...

Todo esto nos convierte, cada vez más, en náufragos perdidos en un mar de especulación. James Bridle, el mediático tecnólogo y autor de estas páginas, nos advierte ante un futuro en el que la promesa contemporánea de un conocimiento brindado por la tecnología puede traernos justo lo contrario: una era de incertidumbre, algoritmos predictivos y minuciosos sistemas de vigilancia.

Un libro magistral y aterrador que nos adentra en la inquietante tormenta que acecha el debate de las maravillas del mundo digital.… (meer)