When narratives aren't stories: Narratives of the Future Narratives Lab

The title of Daniel Stanley’s essay “The hidden power in the stories Big Tech sells us” promises narrative, but it’s really about ideology and rhetoric. (Stanley’s own ideology was more conspicuous than the narratives he ascribed to Big Tech.) It’s an excellent example of when stories aren’t stories but statements of belief.

Wrangling gods

We’re surrounded by (and permeated by) gods, defined as non-human forces that profoundly affect people. How should we manage them? Perhaps religious traditions dealing with gods can help us regulate technologies, the greater-than-human force I’m currently looking at.

Mosco and Myth

I’ve been reading Chapter 4 of Vincent Mosco’s 2017 book Becoming Digital: Toward a Post-Internet Society. I’ve been strongly influenced by his work, starting with The Digital Sublime: Myth, Power, and Cyberspace (2004). This piece made me wonder whether or how myths different from beliefs, and why so many tech myths are either utopian or apocalyptic.

Gartner’s Hype Cycle as myth

Most people in business know about Gartner’s hype cycle, many of them believe it, and some act on it, for example through corporate investment decisions and buying Gartner’s services. It’s a story (more accurately, a trope) that meets my know/believe/act criterion for myth. 

Dionysus on Wall Street

The GameStop saga was a big story in February 2021. It’s often told as David against Goliath, but I think there’s a deeper pattern that reflects the role of technology.

Research Questions for the Tech & Mythology Project

 My February project snapshot listed some of the questions the Tech & Mythology project is asking. S. V., a researcher I met through the ATLAS Institute, challenged me to document my research questions. After peeling several layers off the onion, here’s what I came up with.

Cyber-doom stories

Tobias Burgers alerted me to Sean Lawson’s 2013 paper “Beyond Cyber-Doom: Assessing the Limits of Hypothetical Scenarios in the Framing of Cyber-Threats” (DOI). Lawson’s article helped me further understand the servant/master narrative that seems to be a tropes of technology stories.

Tech & Mythology Project Snapshot – Feb 2021

 Here’s another update to the Tech & Mythology project outline. See previous snapshots from October and July 2020 for background.

Two 5G Stories

There are at least two 5G myths (that is, stories a community knows, most believe, and many act on): the industry hype, which I’ll call the 5G Vision, and the belief that 5G damages health, which I’ll call 5G EMF/Coronavirus. Technology is the protagonist in both – the hero in one, and the villain in the other. 

"Know, Believe, Act" Stories

Since “myth” has negative connotations for most of us (“stupid, false things other people believe”), I’ve started talking about socially significant stories instead – that is, stories that everyone in a group knows; that many believe; and that some act upon.

What Americans Fear

Technology is awesome – in the 16th century sense of arousing or inspiring awe, something that fills someone with reverential fear, wonder, or respect (OED). As I’ve argued in an earlier post, digital tech is powerful, pervasive and mysterious. So why aren’t people more afraid of it? Before trying to answer that question, here is some survey data about what Americans say they’re afraid of.

Celebrity, human & divine

In a recent episode of the Allusionist podcast, Greg Jenner gave a 5-point definition of celebrity that resonates with what I said about it in a recent blog post, and supports the argument that tech celebrities can help one think about technology itself.

Myth, Knowledge, Belief

“Myth” means erroneous belief to most people, and I often hear a contrast between science (associated with truth) and religion (associated with myth). That got me thinking about knowledge, and particularly Plato’s definition of it as justified true belief. 

Gods talking past each other

I’ve been analyzing the recent GAFA hearing in Congress (Online Platforms and Market Power, Part 6: Examining the Dominance of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google), hoping to find evidence for my theory that one can treat technologies and other social forces mythologically.

Tech/Myth Project Snapshot – October 2020

I gave a snapshot summary of the Tech/Myth project back in July. Here’s an update; it outlines the current assumptions and activities of the project, and provides some background to the current effort of analyzing tech in terms of character.