Querido Diário

Em faculdade alheia neste início de ano.

Grupos de praxistas nos portões, à entrada do bar, da biblioteca, da casa-de-banho, olham-me inquisidores, mas sem perguntar.

Penso: Meninos, há 18 anos que não sou caloira.

... is watching you

In the open air, fake news can be debated and exposed; on Facebook, if you aren’t a member of the community being served the lies, you’re quite likely never to know that they are in circulation. It’s crucial to this that Facebook has no financial interest in telling the truth. No company better exemplifies the internet-age dictum that if the product is free, you are the product. 

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What this means is that even more than it is in the advertising business, Facebook is in the surveillance business. Facebook, in fact, is the biggest surveillance-based enterprise in the history of mankind. It knows far, far more about you than the most intrusive government has ever known about its citizens. It’s amazing that people haven’t really understood this about the company. I’ve spent time thinking about Facebook, and the thing I keep coming back to is that its users don’t realise what it is the company does. What Facebook does is watch you, and then use what it knows about you and your behaviour to sell ads.

John Lanchester, You Are the Product.

Real life

Just as factory designs came to dominate entire cities, we’re now seeing the principles of the edufactory envelop the entire knowledge industry, reshaping cities to accommodate life-long learner-freelancers. In terms of abstract architecture, this sort of smart city manifests itself not necessarily as a mesh of interconnected “internet of things” devices but rather in the form of  university campuses, startup villages, and co-working spaces where large, flowing halls connect academic departments, dorms, recreational facilities, shops, and cafeterias, thereby collapsing traditional boundaries between work and leisure, studying and networking, production and consumption, research and entrepreneurship, designer and end-user, public and private life.

This kind of space, Aureli suggests, “reflects the state of precariousness” of the “dislocated researcher whose self-promotion is the result of the lack of economic support and social security.” On the surface, their “openness and self-organization” seemingly promote “‘progressive’ tendencies, but in fact enact capitalism’s total exploitation.” This suggests that our existence and self-promotion on social media networks like Facebook has nothing to do with narcissism but rather with insecurity. Just as wheat and abstract architecture domesticated humans, so has social media. Our lives become subjected to the demands of our profiles.

 Hanna Hurr, Panic City.

On the power of love

Safo, Fragmento 16, recuperado numa verdadeira odisseia.

Monday mood (7)

Henri Fantin-Latour. Retrato de Sónia, 1890

Beyond humans

In Ex Machina, the programmer Caleb is taken to the remote retreat of his boss, the reclusive genius and tech billionaire Nathan. He is initially told he is to be the human component in a Turing Test, with Ava as the subject. After his first meeting with Ava, Caleb remarks to Nathan that in a real Turing Test the subject should be hidden from the tester, whereas Caleb knows from the outset that Ava is a robot. Nathan retorts that: ‘The real test is to show you she is a robot. Then see if you still feel she has consciousness.’ (We might call this the ‘Garland Test’.) As the film progresses and Caleb has more opportunities to observe and interact with Ava, he ceases to see her as a ‘mere machine’. He begins to sympathise with her plight, imprisoned by Nathan and faced with the possibility of ‘termination’ if she fails his test. It’s clear by the end of the film that Caleb’s attitude towards Ava has evolved into the sort we normally reserve for a fellow conscious creature. 

The arc of Ava and Caleb’s story illustrates the Wittgenstein-inspired approach to consciousness. Caleb arrives at this attitude not by carrying out a scientific investigation of the internal workings of Ava’s brain but by watching her and talking to her. His stance goes deeper than any mere opinion. In the end, he acts decisively on her behalf and at great risk to himself. I do not wish to imply that scientific investigation should not influence the way we come to see another being, especially in more exotic cases. The point is that the study of a mechanism can only complement observation and interaction, not substitute for it. How else could we truly come to see another conscious being as such, other than by inhabiting its world and encountering it for ourselves?

Murray Shanahan, Conscious exotica.

Monday mood (6)

Lorenzo Costa, Lesende Maria, século XVI.