The Infrastructure of Living
04 \\ Curations for October 2023
It’s actual felt fall here in the South. Tis the season for pumpkins, sweaters, and spooky stuff. My fave.
This issue runs a bit longer than usual, so let’s just jump in, mm-kay?
The Infrastructure of Community, How to Talk to People (podcast)
What is this about?
Julie Beck interviews Eric Klinenberg, professor of sociology, about the ways in which the physical design of public spaces can both encourage and discourage interpersonal connection in contemporary society. She also spoke with Kellie Carter Jackson, historian and professor, about how spaces such as churches reinforce shared values, which help support our intentions of connecting with others.
Klinenberg’s conversation on social infrastructure is really interesting. In discussing how physical design choices facilitate social interactions, he brought out a point often forgotten or ignored: the production of these spaces are all intentional choices that we make, in architecture, in landscaping and highways, in use, access, and maintenance. Spaces such as libraries, playgrounds, parks don’t just spring out of the ground overnight - they reflect conversation, compromise, values, and power as much as anything else we create. Even such “third spaces” as cafés or restaurants don’t really allow for any protracted experience of encounter; they exist first to make money.
Beck and Klinenberg point out that the American emphasis on efficiency (think drive-thrus, self-checkout lanes, chatbots, etc.) mitigates against social interaction and genuine connection. To foster the possibility of relationship requires allowing ourselves the time to linger, attend to and respond to the Other in our sphere.
What can we learn?
Once, years ago, I asked a salesclerk in a bookstore for help in locating an item. After she aided me, I thought no more about it, until a while later, when I looked up and saw her standing there. She must have just finished her shift, and she seemed really nervous. I can’t remember her exact words, but I do remember that she asked if I’d ever want to meet up and get to know each other.
I still think about this moment. At the time, and even now, it seemed as though she deeply wanted to discover if there was any opportunity to make a new friend. I was so surprised by the encounter that I completely flubbed it. I didn’t give my name, or exchange contact information, and so she left. And that was that.
I thought then, and still think, about what tremendous courage it took that woman to extend an invitation to connect, and what a lost opportunity I had to not respond in kind.
And it seems to me that such invitations to genuine interaction are, these days, fraught with worry, fear, or even hostility. We have fewer and fewer IRL social networks of shared knowledge or reputation to aid us in risking new connections, and so, such opportunities to do so seem to exist within a vacuum.
What does this mean?
I think I am still so formed by a “hermeneutic of suspicion” when it comes to meeting new people that it’s going to take some work to figure out how to hold a posture of welcome and openness to such encounters. If there’s any realm in which we so desperately need to recover and repair our humanness, I think it’s this one of encounter, connection, and relationship.
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From Tech Critique to Ways of Living, Alan Jacobs (essay)
What is this about?
In this fascinating essay, Alan Jacobs explores how we can move beyond the “Anthropocene technopoly” in contemporary Western society. Jacobs holds an interesting, wide-ranging conversation with Daoist thought as a “comprehensive and positive account of the world and one’s place in it that makes a different approach to technology more plausible and compelling.”
Jacobs begins by reviewing such thinkers as Jacques Ellul, Ivan Illich, and Albert Borgmann, specifically focusing on what they have to say about technology in contemporary life. (The names are useful, but not terribly relevant to the rest of the article. Stick a pin in it, hmm?) Jacobs uses the term “technopoly,” coined by Neil Postman, to describe Western societies dominated and reshaped by powerful technologies. As he observes, these ruling (rather than serving) technologies inculcate a “culture of compliance.”
Jacobs references several trends that take place within global capitalism, which allow the nearly boundary-less movement of raw materials and final products around the world. Due to this web of trade, production, sales, and acquisition, we live in an environment that encourages us to accept the totalizing nature of contemporary technologies on how we think, see, and connect in the world, rather than incorporate such technologies in ways that fit within human-scale relations and ecologies.
Jacobs observes that there have also occurred shifts in the relationship of human beings to the natural world: we treat it as something to be extracted, exploited, or otherwise used. We have become less concerned with preservation and continuity, and more concerned with how quickly we can get it now. But rather than disavow technology altogether (we do like using knives and forks, after all), Jacobs wants to explore how we can move beyond this totalizing, utilitarian paradigm. To do so, he turns to the Chinese philosophy of Daoism and contemporary Chinese philospher Yuk Hui.
Yuk Hui introduces us to the term “cosmotechnics,” the “unification of the cosmos and the moral through technical activities, whether through craft-making or art-making.” It is the point “at which a way of life is realized through making.” Hui suggests that there is no universal “technology,” but rather that technologies always occur within a given metanarrative or cosmology (i.e., a worldview or a culture). Hui wants us to consider that, just because we currently experience one particular kind of cosmotechnics, it doesn’t mean we can’t imagine (and work toward) any number of different “technological futures.”
Hui draws from Eastern thought, observing that, while Western thought tends to focus on being/substance, Eastern thought focuses on relation. What is the connection between things in the world? What is the point of meeting between the soul and the machine? Between living and making? To approach technologies in this way—to speak of a “cosmotechnics” that is neither totalizing nor instrumental—is to recognize that their use in a given time and location depends on our capacity to see materials and making as occurring within the web of relations between human beings, the natural world, and sufficiency (rather than exploitation).
Oy. I have already gone on way too long in my attempts to effectively present an essay that loops in Ellul, Borgmann, Heidegger, Daoism, and even Ursula LeGuin. Do try to read it if you can.
What can we learn?
I find myself fascinated by this introduction to Daoist philosophy, and by Jacobs’ suggestion that it can, in some areas, overlap with Christian thought and practice. I am lately trying to practice listening, awareness, attention, and stillness. And it seems that one of the key features of instantiating any kind of alternative cosmotechnics involves cultivating and caring for what exists in your web of relationships, which necessarily requires getting away from the bloody smartphone all the time.
But it’s more than that, isn’t it?
Our current technologies of hardware, software, and media foster a deep sense of dissatisfaction: with our devices, our relationships, our options. In one section of the essay, Jacobs explores a Daoist approach to technologies, one in which people “choose the tools that will guide them in the path of contentment and joy: utensils to cook food, devices to make clothes.” Living with our devices in such a way that encourages contentment with what we have, with what is sufficient for well-being and flourishing: well, that sounds really attractive.
What does this mean?
By way of considering how this all translates into meaningful action, allow me to share a story. Recently, I decided to buy a new iPhone. (That they just released the 15 may have influenced my decision a tad.) My old phone was turning five, and it was starting to Not Do Things very well.
As the Apple associate walked me through the purchase options, he suggested that I buy the package that allowed me to upgrade my phone NEXT YEAR. I know that planned obsolescence is built into these devices, but a year?! I found myself thinking, “Why would I pay more for the option to get a new device in 12 months? I won’t have this one paid off!”
Or consider this: a few weeks ago, I added an extension to my web browser that essentially blocks everything on YouTube’s webpages except for the actual video I want to see. I can watch subscribed channels, or videos that I search for, but the recommended videos, comments, ads, etc…all blocked. I love it.
However.
A couple of days ago, I started getting a pop-up on every video, saying that YouTube detects an ad blocker. Which is not allowed.
I find myself really stuck on this. A choice that I’ve made to exercise a measure of control over my experience is not allowed because YouTube must have advertisements in order to keep its lights on. YouTube has imagined a “technological future” that relies on forcing ads on its viewers, regardless of what any given viewer wants. And because we (or, at least, I) have gotten used to the monetarily free nature of the platform, I don’t want to pay for the premium, ad-free option.
And this is how we are constantly encouraged to reinforce the rule of technopoly: by accepting the idea that our devices can’t serve us unless they’re brand new every few months. By getting sucked into “free” and accepting the trade-off of advertising, until we realize that we no longer want to.
I chose the Apple payment option that fit within my budget and lets me pay off and eventually own a perfectly serviceable phone in a couple of years. I’ve removed the extension from my browser and will find another way of shaping my YouTube experiences. Will these actions stop the global juggernaut of harvesting and advertising? Not even a little bit. But it does help me make choices toward the “path of contentment and joy.”
So that’s my hope and challenge for you: sometime in the next few days, pause and consider your options the next time you have to make a choice. Imagine a different “technological future” for yourself, so that you can take meaningful action that guides you toward contentment and joy.
Reflecting on this podcast and essay together, I’m struck by two things: intention and connection. Making and relationship. To make intentional decisions, to forge living connections: these take a lot of time. The process is messy, inefficient, and personal. It asks us to take real risks of vulnerability, trust, and patience, which our current technopoly emphatically discourages. It ain’t easy. It ain’t comfortable. But I suspect the rewards are worth it.
Would love to hear what you think about these ideas!
Let’s be hopeful, creative, and wise—together.
Shalom,
Visit me on the web at R21.5 Coaching or connect on LinkedIn.
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