A recent conversation got me thinking again about whether uncanny UIs could help us to “see the face” of the divine technologies (powerful, pervasive, mysterious) that usually invisible conduits for other things like social media posts and shopping. The paradigm example is the Déjà vu scene of a glitch in The Matrix (which inspired r/Glitch_in_the_Matrix).
The movie trailer for “The Boys in the Boat” brings to light a unique aspect of some Olympic sports in countries like the US. In sports such as curling and certain rowing classes, the national bodies select teams as cohesive units rather than assembling national teams from individual top athletes (source: StackExchange). Although these are special instances, they underscore that ogregore behavior emerges from both individual and collective agency.
OpenAI now offers a speech interface to GPT. I’m told it feels like normal conversation. One is talking to a text corpus, bluring the line between “dead” texts and “live” conversation. It prompts me to wonder about Plato’s objections to writing and preference for dialogue in works like the Phaedrus, particularly in the story of Thamus & Theuth and subsequent discussion.
Arthur C. Clarke’s famous third law states that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic (Wikipedia). There's a corollary: any sufficiently adopted technology loses its magic.
Tom Gauld's delightful cartoon "Department of Machine Poetry Research" shows a room full of robots at rows of desks. Two people are looking in from a door at the back, with one saying to the other, "The poetry is absolutely dreadful, but anything that distracts them from rising up and enslaving us has to be a good thing." It beautifully captures both our fear of automation and our inclination to over-attribute agency to machines rather than the organizations in which they're embedded.
I’ve begun to notice origin myths embedded in philosophical and political theories, thanks to re-reading Dreyfus & Spinosa’s “Further Reflections on Heidegger, Technology, and the Everyday” (2003) alongside Segal’s “The Modern Study of Myth and Its Relation to Science” (2015). Adopting a mythical perspective has tempered my skepticism about the historical accuracy of such accounts. I now view them more as moral exhortations than accurate narratives.
Rereading Mark Stavish’s Egregores prompted me to read the Book of Enoch (aka 1 Enoch) where the term Watcher (egregoros in Greek) is used to describe angels. I was struck that one of the terrible sins of the fallen angels described in Enoch was to teach humans technology. (The other was to have intercourse with women; angels are supposed to be spiritual beings and not be subject to lust.)
Philosopher John Haugeland says that one of the most fundamental differences between human beings and machines is that machines, and AIs in particular, don't give a damn. Things matter to us but not to machines. It’s quite plausible that AIs don’t give a damn, at least not yet. But is that just something that humans can do?
Meg Wright alerted me to the way brands are trying to build parasocial relationships with customers using anthropomorphism. The way RyanAir's TikTok is putting googly eyes on photos of its planes is the most explicit corporate anthropomorphism I’ve seen.
Heidegger’s essay “Die Frage nach der Technik” (usually translated as “The Question Concerning Technology”) posits Ge-Stell (variously translated at “enframing,” “pos-ure,” or “positionality”) as the essence of Technik (translated as “technology” or “technicity”; see endnote). Heidegger’s (or his translators’?) pervasive use the passive voice sidesteps the question of whether technicity has agency. I believe this text implies that he believes it does, and that he’s not just using figures of speech.
I read Dan Neil's columns because I love his writing not because I'm interested in cars. This week's review of the 2024 Dodge Hornet R/T: An Italian Stallion, Made for America (WSJ, 29 Jun 2023) has a lovely passage that suggests that car companies have distinct characters—evidence, perhaps, that they're ogregores.
A recent YouTube video discussed what NATO could learn from Sweden's use of the Saab Gripen fighter. The aircraft was specifically designed for austere and dispersed operations, reflecting Sweden's country-specific military doctrine of highly decentralized defensive operations. However, due to this inherent association with Sweden's doctrine, it is unlikely that the Gripen could be easily adapted for NATO operations. This is an example of an organization developing a character and repertoire that is a synthesis of its individual members, tools, and protocols.
My recent post, Bud Light Blunders: An Ogregore Story, delved into a controversy surrounding personalized cans of beer sent to a transgender influencer. Bud Light's behavior resembled that of an ogregore. But was its antagonist also an ogregore?
I’m trying to understand how ogregores (greater-than-human techno-social entities that affect our lives) behave. The recent controversy involving Bud Light and a transgender Instagram influencer clearly demonstrates a pattern: when companies perform well, their leaders take the credit, but when they falter, blame falls on lower-level employees and the overall corporate structure. Given that successes often garner more media attention than failures, the role of leadership in corporate actions tends to be overstated. To understand the collective roots of corporate action, one must delve deeper.
