If you haven’t read it already, The Expulsion of the Other by Byung Chul Han discusses the terrorism of sameness and also the ‘smoothification’ (my term not his haha) of the world. He gets less into the mechanisms, but I thought your explanation of market research was very interesting and reifying. At the beginning of the piece I more so found myself thinking of ‘depth scaffolding’s’ occurring in interpersonal relationships. Sometimes it can be nice to not have someone too ‘figured out’ (not that that is truly possible). Great piece :)
Brilliant exegesis on the cultural landscapes that you have been exploring over the recent months and years. Thanks for taking the time and sharing your ideas with us all. Hear, hear to the Suboptimal Revolution!
Hurrah. Well said. Thank you. The ‘problem’ with democracy is just that. Democracy applied to equal justice for all under the law and right to vote? Sure. Great. Democracy applied to cultural life - books kids can read in school, abortion, standardized-testing-über-alles? Nyet, nein, not ok.
What you’ve described I’ve heard Tik Tokers call the “Grayification” or the “Gray Era” referring to the prevalence of gray in Ikea-like interior design which has become popular, but expanding broadly to the averaging and dulling of everything. The flattening.
Great piece. Also loved your use of the word “Hedgefundification.” And “Happy Hippy Hope Stuff.”
Nice one. Most of this resonates a lot with how I feel and my own experiences. It made me think while reading that the algorithms have not only contributed to the apathy of discovering through experience but they have also perpetuated this thing that I myself you use to do when I was younger.. which is bullshit in order to not feel "out of the loop" - it happens a lot with books. When someone asks another if they've read a certain book, if that person who is being asked has even heard of the book they might say they've read it. Same with a movie or album.. even though they haven't. The homogenization of art is allowing for this to be actually ok because the nuisances are being erased from creativity. The ease in which you describe of how technology is tricking human's into thinking that life is easier if you just download this app.. etc.
I do think however, that optimal as an idea for certain things is to be leaned into. For instance, I have been diving deep into the audiophile world over the last few years and I've been trying to break this fratty, pretentious bullshit wide open. For too long, the way people talk about how sound is communicated has been alienating those that just want to listen to music in a way that sounds good. Therefore I describe music delivery systems as ether optimal or not optimal. Not optimal would be things like ear buds or most car stereos and even many of the bluetooth speaker systems you can listen to music from. Optimal would be the other systems that allow for the listener to hear the music being communicated in as close a way as the creator intended. I avoid using words such as best or greatest when describing sound systems because that includes a layer of salesmanship that to be is meant more for personal preference.
Optimal in regards to being efficient in order to achieve a desired outcome is also something not to be made scared of.. at time ; )
Nice idea. I like to think as this self-same uniformity in a ambivalent manner tough, I think that there can be unity - as in being one with the mother in the womb - later in life without it being something like inertia or symbolic death, but in the aspect of Love, in the sense of a union by keeping integrity of the individual, of course its a paradox, how can two be one, and one be two, but nevertheless. As Kierkegaard says "the thinker without a paradox is like a lover without feeling". And in this idea you presented I think there is a fair bit of it, like how can something that has the connotation of optimality can be detrimental to life and its inherent dynamicity.
In this context, optimization sounds like optimization for mass markets, hence commodification.
By Hotelling's Law, we can appreciate how things often need to be smoothed out in order to scale, i.e. to be commodious to the mass market.
And, regrettably (thankfully?), 'the average of persons' is not the same thing as an 'average person', so there is a kind of tragedy of the commons when it comes to mass media taste.
Question: is there is a folly in wanting both popularity and depth? As an artist, you feel this tension, no?
i wouldn't call market research democratization of the process of production. (i agree that the methods of market research and a lot of other psychological research recreate self-feeding loops and realize their own starting premises, but this aside) what it seems you're referrring to as the democratic aspect of the process is that you're gathering data ("opinions", "evaluations", etc) from large numbers of people. however, the ones who own, use and manage the data (as a resource) are always companies - not the people. so there is no democratization of the process of production in my opinion.
also, i think difference should be valued as a collective resource, not in itself. so, if someone has a "unique" (whatever this might mean) skill, idea, knowledge - this is only valuable if there is a way to make it a resource for others. in this sense, (technological) artefacts are objectivizations of new processes, ideas, skills and means that -democratize- them, render them potentially accessible to others. this is society, civilization.
i don't think technology homogenizes, or renders things less deep because it's easier to produce something that previously took more effort to make. it only takes the creative operations to another level of complexity. e.g. now that you don't need to draw something yourself, you are possibliy working on a more abstract level, you address different creative questions simply. for instance memes are very complex units of meaning - they use both text and image AND a symbollic/semantic layer (they mobilize a context everyone understands). which is substantially more complex then a simple sign, like a letter or a word (which is an arbitrary physical pattern that becomes symbol through use in social interaction) - memes are already signs that become still newEr signs.
i think trends exist in a moment in time, it's the first period of collective learning/generalization of a new tool. and i don't think it prohibits innovation -as trends do change over time.
but i do agree that new technology changes who we are, and in fact with most of your points because you talk about the entertainment industry and everything is shaped by fishing for algorithms that yield most profit at a given time, so you end up producing movies or music or whatever like you would ketchup. but the object is a bit different there, from small scale artistic work (although art isnt unaffected). sorry for the long reply and if i may have misunderstood your points. and thanks, i enjoy reading 🪸
Another example of this is the flattening of beauty by plastic surgery and insta filters. It reshapes every woman’s face to become the one face that is the altered face, they all look pretty but they all look alike. It’s the face. I love seeing a woman who hasn’t succumbed to this, her quirks and imperfections elevate her, I feel like I can see her better than the girls with the face.
speaking of suboptimal, do typois counrt? found several in the text, now fixed... see, its a compulsion.
If you haven’t read it already, The Expulsion of the Other by Byung Chul Han discusses the terrorism of sameness and also the ‘smoothification’ (my term not his haha) of the world. He gets less into the mechanisms, but I thought your explanation of market research was very interesting and reifying. At the beginning of the piece I more so found myself thinking of ‘depth scaffolding’s’ occurring in interpersonal relationships. Sometimes it can be nice to not have someone too ‘figured out’ (not that that is truly possible). Great piece :)
Brilliant exegesis on the cultural landscapes that you have been exploring over the recent months and years. Thanks for taking the time and sharing your ideas with us all. Hear, hear to the Suboptimal Revolution!
Hurrah. Well said. Thank you. The ‘problem’ with democracy is just that. Democracy applied to equal justice for all under the law and right to vote? Sure. Great. Democracy applied to cultural life - books kids can read in school, abortion, standardized-testing-über-alles? Nyet, nein, not ok.
What you’ve described I’ve heard Tik Tokers call the “Grayification” or the “Gray Era” referring to the prevalence of gray in Ikea-like interior design which has become popular, but expanding broadly to the averaging and dulling of everything. The flattening.
Great piece. Also loved your use of the word “Hedgefundification.” And “Happy Hippy Hope Stuff.”
Nice one. Most of this resonates a lot with how I feel and my own experiences. It made me think while reading that the algorithms have not only contributed to the apathy of discovering through experience but they have also perpetuated this thing that I myself you use to do when I was younger.. which is bullshit in order to not feel "out of the loop" - it happens a lot with books. When someone asks another if they've read a certain book, if that person who is being asked has even heard of the book they might say they've read it. Same with a movie or album.. even though they haven't. The homogenization of art is allowing for this to be actually ok because the nuisances are being erased from creativity. The ease in which you describe of how technology is tricking human's into thinking that life is easier if you just download this app.. etc.
I do think however, that optimal as an idea for certain things is to be leaned into. For instance, I have been diving deep into the audiophile world over the last few years and I've been trying to break this fratty, pretentious bullshit wide open. For too long, the way people talk about how sound is communicated has been alienating those that just want to listen to music in a way that sounds good. Therefore I describe music delivery systems as ether optimal or not optimal. Not optimal would be things like ear buds or most car stereos and even many of the bluetooth speaker systems you can listen to music from. Optimal would be the other systems that allow for the listener to hear the music being communicated in as close a way as the creator intended. I avoid using words such as best or greatest when describing sound systems because that includes a layer of salesmanship that to be is meant more for personal preference.
Optimal in regards to being efficient in order to achieve a desired outcome is also something not to be made scared of.. at time ; )
Thank you for this Alex
Nice idea. I like to think as this self-same uniformity in a ambivalent manner tough, I think that there can be unity - as in being one with the mother in the womb - later in life without it being something like inertia or symbolic death, but in the aspect of Love, in the sense of a union by keeping integrity of the individual, of course its a paradox, how can two be one, and one be two, but nevertheless. As Kierkegaard says "the thinker without a paradox is like a lover without feeling". And in this idea you presented I think there is a fair bit of it, like how can something that has the connotation of optimality can be detrimental to life and its inherent dynamicity.
In this context, optimization sounds like optimization for mass markets, hence commodification.
By Hotelling's Law, we can appreciate how things often need to be smoothed out in order to scale, i.e. to be commodious to the mass market.
And, regrettably (thankfully?), 'the average of persons' is not the same thing as an 'average person', so there is a kind of tragedy of the commons when it comes to mass media taste.
Question: is there is a folly in wanting both popularity and depth? As an artist, you feel this tension, no?
i wouldn't call market research democratization of the process of production. (i agree that the methods of market research and a lot of other psychological research recreate self-feeding loops and realize their own starting premises, but this aside) what it seems you're referrring to as the democratic aspect of the process is that you're gathering data ("opinions", "evaluations", etc) from large numbers of people. however, the ones who own, use and manage the data (as a resource) are always companies - not the people. so there is no democratization of the process of production in my opinion.
also, i think difference should be valued as a collective resource, not in itself. so, if someone has a "unique" (whatever this might mean) skill, idea, knowledge - this is only valuable if there is a way to make it a resource for others. in this sense, (technological) artefacts are objectivizations of new processes, ideas, skills and means that -democratize- them, render them potentially accessible to others. this is society, civilization.
i don't think technology homogenizes, or renders things less deep because it's easier to produce something that previously took more effort to make. it only takes the creative operations to another level of complexity. e.g. now that you don't need to draw something yourself, you are possibliy working on a more abstract level, you address different creative questions simply. for instance memes are very complex units of meaning - they use both text and image AND a symbollic/semantic layer (they mobilize a context everyone understands). which is substantially more complex then a simple sign, like a letter or a word (which is an arbitrary physical pattern that becomes symbol through use in social interaction) - memes are already signs that become still newEr signs.
i think trends exist in a moment in time, it's the first period of collective learning/generalization of a new tool. and i don't think it prohibits innovation -as trends do change over time.
but i do agree that new technology changes who we are, and in fact with most of your points because you talk about the entertainment industry and everything is shaped by fishing for algorithms that yield most profit at a given time, so you end up producing movies or music or whatever like you would ketchup. but the object is a bit different there, from small scale artistic work (although art isnt unaffected). sorry for the long reply and if i may have misunderstood your points. and thanks, i enjoy reading 🪸
Another example of this is the flattening of beauty by plastic surgery and insta filters. It reshapes every woman’s face to become the one face that is the altered face, they all look pretty but they all look alike. It’s the face. I love seeing a woman who hasn’t succumbed to this, her quirks and imperfections elevate her, I feel like I can see her better than the girls with the face.
You’re welcome