There is also a sense in which no one is in control. Technologies and actions always have the possibility of unintended effects, unexpected consequences and so on. It is also likely that hard attempts at control will eventually be undermined by the disorders that the attempts generate.
Even if someone pulled the plug because it was unprofitable they can't guarantee the exact results of this action. Sure they would not be profiting anymore or loosing money on that investment, but what will happen is uncertain. Will alternates be set up, will improvements be made elsewhere, will the 'owning company' collapse because they no longer have investor confidence, or people boycott them? Even if the people (whoever they are) manage to articulate a collective will (whatever that is) then they still won't be able to control things completely. Maybe the God you mention designed the world so it was unpredictable.... jon ________________________________________ From: [email protected] <[email protected]> on behalf of Felix Stalder <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, 17 January 2018 10:45 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: <nettime> social media critique: next steps? On 2018-01-17 03:22, Morlock Elloi wrote: > The future of humanity is the struggle between humans that control > machines and machines that control humans. Machines are never in control. Even if you believe that the liberal CEO FB has somewhat lost control of his creation, it still does what it's supposed to do ever since the first angel (Peter Thiel) touched it: make investors rich. The moment it would stop doing this, the plug would be pulled, no matter how much each of us depends on it. Therefore, I would phrase the dilemma differently. The struggle is whether an oligarchy controls the mass of people through machines, and the mass of people using the machines to articulate and enact their collective will. In may ways, machines -- deep-learning, big data -- are god. The seat of knowledge on a scale that mere mortals cannot comprehend it and the source of action that, for all its arbitrary surface appearance, can always claim an underlying justification that remains hidden to all but a few. A combination of ancient egypt and feudal europe. Felix -- ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| http://felix.openflows.com |OPEN PGP: https://pgp.mit.edu/pks/lookup?search=0x0C9FF2AC UTS CRICOS Provider Code: 00099F DISCLAIMER: This email message and any accompanying attachments may contain confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, do not read, use, disseminate, distribute or copy this message or attachments. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete this message. Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where the sender expressly, and with authority, states them to be the views of the University of Technology Sydney. Before opening any attachments, please check them for viruses and defects. Think. Green. Do. Please consider the environment before printing this email. # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [email protected] # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
