Digifesto

Tag: freedom

October 11, 2015

notes towards “Freedom in the Machine”

I have reconceptualized my dissertation because it would be nice to graduate.

In this reconceptualization, much of the writing from this blog can be reused as a kind of philosophical prelude.

I wanted to title this prelude “Freedom and the Machine” so I Googled that phrase. I found three interesting items I had never heard of before:

  • A song: “Freedom and Machine Guns” by Lori McTear
  • A lecture by Ranulph Glanville, titled “Freedom and the Machine”. Dr. Glanville passed away recently after a fascinating career.
  • A book: Software-Agents and Liberal Order: An Inquiry Along the Borderline Between Economics and Computer Science, by Dirk Nicholas Wagner. A dissertation, perhaps.

With the exception of the song, this material feels very remote and European. Nevertheless the objectively correct Google search algorithm has determined that this is the most relevant material on this subject.

I’ve been told I should respond to Frank Pasquale’s Black Box Society, as this nicely captures contemporary discomfort with the role of machines and algorithmic determination in society. I am a bit trapped in literature from the mid-20th century, which mostly expresses the same spirit.

It is strange to think that a counterpoint to these anxieties, a defense of the role of machines in society, is necessary–since most people seem happy to have given the management of their lives over to machines anyway. But then again, no dissertation is necessary. I have to remember that writing such a thing is a formality and that pretensions of making intellectual contributions with such work are precisely that: pretensions. If there is value in the work, it won’t be in the philosophical prelude! (However much fun it may be to write.) Rather, it will be in the empirical work.

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July 27, 2015

the state and the household in Chinese antiquity

It’s worthwhile in comparison with Arendt’s discussion of Athenian democracy to consider the ancient Chinese alternative. In Alfred Huang’s commentary on the I Ching, we find this passage:

The ancient sages always applied the principle of managing a household to governing a country. In their view, a country was simply a big household. With the spirit of sincerity and mutual love, one is able to create a harmonious situation anywhere, in any circumstance. In his Analects, Confucius says,

From the loving example of one household,
A whole state becomes loving.
From the courteous manner of one household,
A whole state becomes courteous.

Comparing the history of Europe and the rise of capitalistic bureaucracy with the history of China, where bureaucracy is much older, is interesting. I have comparatively little knowledge of the latter, but it is often said that China does not have the same emphasis on individualism that you find in the West. Security is considered much more important than Freedom.

The reminder that the democratic values proposed by Arendt and Horkheimer are culturally situated is an important one, especially as Horkheimer claims that free burghers are capable of producing art that expresses universal needs.

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