naomi on shock doctrine
naomi on shock doctrine
via michel fb share (may 2020 guardian article):
Naomi Klein on the Screen New Deal as pandemic ‘shock doctrine’: “It has taken some time to gel, but something resembling a coherent pandemic shock doctrine is beginning to emerge. Call it the Screen New Deal. Far more hi-tech than anything we have seen during previous disasters, the future that is being rushed into being as the bodies still pile up treats our past weeks of physical isolation not as a painful necessity to save lives, but as a living laboratory for a permanent – and highly profitable – no-touch future.
cuomo on schmidt (telehealth, remote learning, broadband) and gates (ed) redoing new york
a future that claims to be run on “artificial intelligence”, but is actually held together by tens of millions of anonymous workers tucked away.. t.. in warehouses, data centres, content-moderation mills, electronic sweatshops, lithium mines, industrial farms, meat-processing plants and prisons, where they are left unprotected from disease and hyper-exploitation. It’s a future in which our every move, our every word, our every relationship is trackable, traceable and data-mineable by unprecedented collaborations between government and tech giants.
ai humanity/earth needs: augmenting interconnectedness
for everyone.. what world needs most is the energy of 8b alive people
then we won’t have oppressed people (which includes the inspectors) being tracked (and/or tracking) for ill
Now, against a harrowing backdrop of mass death, it is being sold to us on the dubious promise that these technologies are the only possible way to pandemic-proof our lives, the indispensable keys to keeping ourselves and our loved ones safe.
(schmidt at center) This is notable because Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has been pushing this precise vision through its Sidewalk Labs division, choosing a large portion of Toronto’s waterfront as its “smart city” prototype. But the Toronto project was just shut downafter two years of ceaseless controversy relating to the enormous amounts of personal data that Alphabet would collect, a lack of privacy protections, and questionable benefits for the city as a whole.
The goal of this experiment, he said, was “trying to find out: how do kids learn remotely? And with that data we should be able to build better remote and distance learning tools which, when combined with the teacher … will help kids learn better.” During this same video call, hosted by the Economic Club of New York, Schmidt also called for more telehealth, more 5G, more digital commerce and the rest of the preexisting wish list. All in the name of fighting the virus.
same is true for leaping.. all in name of fighting the climate change
we’re missing the center of the problem (and an incredible opp).. to get to the roots of healing (planet, people, all living things)
His most telling comment, however, was this: “The benefit of these corporations, which we love to malign, in terms of the ability to communicate, the ability to deal with health, the ability to get information, is profound. Think about what your life would be like in America without Amazon.” He added that people should “be a little bit grateful that these companies got the capital, did the investment, built the tools that we’re using now, and have really helped us out”.
In short, democracy – inconvenient public engagement in the designing of critical institutions and public spaces – was turning out to be the single greatest obstacle to the vision Schmidt was advancing, first from his perch at the top of Google and Alphabet, and then as chair of two powerful boards advising US Congress and the Department of Defense.
need to go deeper than ‘democracy’.. it’s also a shock doctrine.. doesn’t really matter how ugly/pretty the drive.. if we fall back on our broken feedback loop..
ie: has it worked yet? ever? for everyone?
To be clear, technology is most certainly a key part of how we must protect public health in the coming months and years. The question is: will that technology be subject to the disciplines of democracy and public oversight, or will it be rolled out in state-of-exception frenzy, without asking critical questions that will shape our lives for decades to come?
i hope neither..
what we need is to listen & connect to undo our hierarchical listening ie: 2 convers as infra
perhaps we really can have tech w/o judgment (surveillance) ie: tech as it could be
Schmidt is right that overcrowded classrooms present a health risk, at least until we have a vaccine. So how about hiring double the number of teachers and cutting class size in half? How about making sure that every school has a nurse?.. That would create much-needed jobs in a depression-level unemployment crisis, and give everyone in the learning environment more elbow room. If buildings are too crowded, how about dividing the day into shifts, and having more outdoor education, drawing on the plentiful research that shows that time in nature enhances children’s capacity to learn?
wow..
we need to go so much deeper.. what happened to leaping?
in the city.. as the day.. all of us
there is no technological solution to the problem of learning in a home environment that is overcrowded and/or abusive.
well there is.. we just can’t seem to let go enough to try it.. to get to the root of the problem
The issue is not whether schools must change in the face of a highly contagious virus for which we have neither cure nor inoculation. Like every institution where humans gather in groups, they will change. The trouble, as always in these moments of collective shock, is the absence of public debate about what those changes should look like, and who they should benefit – private tech companies or students?..t
the deeper problem .. public debates aren’t deep/quiet enough.. public consensus always oppresses someone(s)
we won’t get to the root of the problem until conversations (or whatever.. living free) .. involves everyone.. which begs we focus on undoing our hierarchical listening ie: 2 convers as infra
The same questions need to be asked about health. Avoiding doctor’s offices and hospitals during a pandemic makes good sense. But telehealth misses a huge amount. So we need to have an evidence-based debate about the pros and cons of spending scarce public resources on telehealth – rather than on more trained nurses, equipped with all the necessary protective equipment, who are able to make house calls to diagnose and treat patients in their homes. And, *perhaps most urgently, we need to get the balance right between virus tracking apps, which, with the proper privacy protection
*more urgently.. we need to get to the roots of healing.. for (blank)’s sake
In each case, we face real and hard choices between investing in humans and investing in technology. Because the brutal truth is that, as it stands, we are very unlikely to do both.. t
i’m thinking that is the ridiculous and shock doctrine ish statement
much less ridiculous to do both.. ie: tech as it could be.. (we’re just not quiet enough to hear it)
mufleh humanity law: we have seen advances in every aspect of our lives except our humanity– Luma Mufleh
1\ undisturbed ecosystem (common\ing) can happen
2\ if we create a way to ground the chaos of 8b free people
The refusal to transfer anything like the needed resources to states and cities in successive federal bailouts means that the coronavirus health crisis is now slamming headlong into a manufactured austerity crisis. Public schools, universities, hospitals and transit are facing *existential questions about their futures.
*that’s good.. and why this is a great opp to legit leap
humanity needs a leap.. to get back/to simultaneous spontaneity.. simultaneous fittingness.. everyone in sync..
If tech companies win their ferocious lobbying campaign for remote learning, telehealth, 5G and driverless vehicles – their Screen New Deal – there simply won’t be any money left over for urgent public priorities, never mind the Green New Deal that our planet urgently needs. On the contrary: the price tag for all the shiny gadgets will be mass teacher layoffs and hospital closures.
green new deal isn’t deep enough..
what planet urgently needs: the energy of 8b alive people
Tech provides us with powerful tools, but not every solution is technological. And the trouble with outsourcing key decisions about how to “reimagine” our states and cities to men such as Bill Gates and Schmidt is that they have spent their lives demonstrating the belief that there is no problem that technology cannot fix.
same too.. for people believing that focusing on climate will fix things
we all need to go/listen deeper..
something we’ve not yet tried
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be you. 