We have this process of automating informal formations from data – aka information technologies.
In some ways, we can consider info-techs as giving formal manifestations for stuff that was informal. These manifestations show themselves in various ways – from the increasing ease of sharing stuff from private spheres, bank accounts, selfies, streaming from home, texts about whatever-comes-to-mind, and so on; though to making money – profiteering – out of what used to be InFormal stuff: human networks, human relationships, human attention, and so on.
(I think that informality comes reflected through different kinds of ways, like music with singers that whisper, and contemporary political icons that address humans as if on a personal call from their bathroom. These thoughts ofcourse might influence somehow the techo-oriented ones..)
Back to tech.
Data-about-other-than-data, aka information, clues and traces about the forms as they may appear, require ever more of itself. Like a hungry creature, no data to chew on – there’s no life for information technology without increasing range of what kind of information to digest.
A question: what comes out of that digestion process? what kind of stuff the information eating – processing – makes?
What’s the excrement from info processing?
Energy apart, from a human interaction perspective – what appears is the the disappearance of human informality.
let’s put this in a fairly stark way. when we move in the streets, when we humans simply walk and go about moving our bodies un aided from a to b – from home to a shop and back.
when we do these kind of activities, we may do all sorts of informal stuff. stuff that can come worthwhile for information technology.
for example, you might look at a building with an approving or otherwise manner. you might walk past a group of people saying something to one another that makes you – lord forbid – smile.
now, all these are bits of information that, if i was a creature living of data pieces, i’d probably like to digest. moreover,
with programmable money in mind (something that’s with us), how far are we from an info technology that may respond to your smile and consider whether the subject may or may not warrant restricting what can be done with your money?
there are a few reactions to thoughts of this spectrum, from how to deal with technology that may interfere with certain things a few humans would not like the tech to go into.
reactions that that go from phobia through to “improvement” of the said technologies, and ideas to do with legislation.
for me, all these are fair enough, however not radical. for me, perhaps wrongly and mistakenly, the catastrophes, the tragedies and conflicts between info-tech and humans, offer possibilities into other kind of life.
for example, life beyond the techne, life where techne itself moves beyond information technologies – perhaps bio-wet technologies? Perhaps how technology itself, as a child from human tendents, will have it’s own children to attend techne’s own ranges.
(i wonder if this is a kind of elsism approach – don’t fix what’s not broken, but do something else.)