#humanlabour — Public Fediverse posts

Because I was recently asked which kind of Frankfurt School Dinosaur I was, to which I answered: "A Marcusesaurus", here is a small Herbert Marcuse moment for the age of AIshittification:

First things first, Herbert Marcuse was a German-American philosopher and social theorist, one of the thinkers associated with the Frankfurt School. He wrote extensively about capitalism, technology, consumer society, and the rather inconvenient possibility that modern societies can make domination feel like freedom.

That last bit feels remarkably contemporary.

Marcuse’s point was not that technology is inherently evil. It was that technology does not exist in a vacuum. The question is who designs it, for what purpose, and within which economic and social structures.

And so, when we are told that AI will make everything faster, cheaper and more efficient, Marcuse gives us a useful little philosophical eyebrow raise.

Faster for whom?

Cheaper for whom?

Efficient towards what end?

Because there is a peculiar kind of technological progress in which everything becomes more efficient except the lives of the people actually doing the work.

Translation without translators. Writing without writers. Art without artists. Customer service without humans. And somehow the promised liberation repeatedly turns into more surveillance, more extraction, more precarious work and more things being optimised that nobody particularly wanted optimised in the first place.

That is where Marcuse meets enshittification.

A service begins by serving human needs. Then it becomes infrastructure. Then it becomes indispensable. And eventually the machine is reorganised around extraction, monetisation and control, while we are politely informed that this is all being done for our convenience.

Marcuse would probably have had some questions.

Not simply:

“What can this technology do?”

But:

“What kind of society does this technology help create?”

And perhaps most importantly:

“What does it make us become?”

That is a much nastier question.

Which is precisely why I like it.

#HerbertMarcuse #FrankfurtSchool #CriticalTheory #AI #AIshittification #Technology #Capitalism #DigitalCapitalism #HumanLabour #Philosophy

Because I was recently asked which kind of Frankfurt School Dinosaur I was, to which I answered: "A Marcusesaurus", here is a small Herbert Marcuse moment for the age of AIshittification:

First things first, Herbert Marcuse was a German-American philosopher and social theorist, one of the thinkers associated with the Frankfurt School. He wrote extensively about capitalism, technology, consumer society, and the rather inconvenient possibility that modern societies can make domination feel like freedom.

That last bit feels remarkably contemporary.

Marcuse’s point was not that technology is inherently evil. It was that technology does not exist in a vacuum. The question is who designs it, for what purpose, and within which economic and social structures.

And so, when we are told that AI will make everything faster, cheaper and more efficient, Marcuse gives us a useful little philosophical eyebrow raise.

Faster for whom?

Cheaper for whom?

Efficient towards what end?

Because there is a peculiar kind of technological progress in which everything becomes more efficient except the lives of the people actually doing the work.

Translation without translators. Writing without writers. Art without artists. Customer service without humans. And somehow the promised liberation repeatedly turns into more surveillance, more extraction, more precarious work and more things being optimised that nobody particularly wanted optimised in the first place.

That is where Marcuse meets enshittification.

A service begins by serving human needs. Then it becomes infrastructure. Then it becomes indispensable. And eventually the machine is reorganised around extraction, monetisation and control, while we are politely informed that this is all being done for our convenience.

Marcuse would probably have had some questions.

Not simply:

“What can this technology do?”

But:

“What kind of society does this technology help create?”

And perhaps most importantly:

“What does it make us become?”

That is a much nastier question.

Which is precisely why I like it.

#HerbertMarcuse #FrankfurtSchool #CriticalTheory #AI #AIshittification #Technology #Capitalism #DigitalCapitalism #HumanLabour #Philosophy

Because I was recently asked which kind of Frankfurt School Dinosaur I was, to which I answered: "A Marcusesaurus", here is a small Herbert Marcuse moment for the age of AIshittification:

First things first, Herbert Marcuse was a German-American philosopher and social theorist, one of the thinkers associated with the Frankfurt School. He wrote extensively about capitalism, technology, consumer society, and the rather inconvenient possibility that modern societies can make domination feel like freedom.

That last bit feels remarkably contemporary.

Marcuse’s point was not that technology is inherently evil. It was that technology does not exist in a vacuum. The question is who designs it, for what purpose, and within which economic and social structures.

And so, when we are told that AI will make everything faster, cheaper and more efficient, Marcuse gives us a useful little philosophical eyebrow raise.

Faster for whom?

Cheaper for whom?

Efficient towards what end?

Because there is a peculiar kind of technological progress in which everything becomes more efficient except the lives of the people actually doing the work.

Translation without translators. Writing without writers. Art without artists. Customer service without humans. And somehow the promised liberation repeatedly turns into more surveillance, more extraction, more precarious work and more things being optimised that nobody particularly wanted optimised in the first place.

That is where Marcuse meets enshittification.

A service begins by serving human needs. Then it becomes infrastructure. Then it becomes indispensable. And eventually the machine is reorganised around extraction, monetisation and control, while we are politely informed that this is all being done for our convenience.

Marcuse would probably have had some questions.

Not simply:

“What can this technology do?”

But:

“What kind of society does this technology help create?”

And perhaps most importantly:

“What does it make us become?”

That is a much nastier question.

Which is precisely why I like it.

#HerbertMarcuse #FrankfurtSchool #CriticalTheory #AI #AIshittification #Technology #Capitalism #DigitalCapitalism #HumanLabour #Philosophy

Because I was recently asked which kind of Frankfurt School Dinosaur I was, to which I answered: "A Marcusesaurus", here is a small Herbert Marcuse moment for the age of AIshittification:

First things first, Herbert Marcuse was a German-American philosopher and social theorist, one of the thinkers associated with the Frankfurt School. He wrote extensively about capitalism, technology, consumer society, and the rather inconvenient possibility that modern societies can make domination feel like freedom.

That last bit feels remarkably contemporary.

Marcuse’s point was not that technology is inherently evil. It was that technology does not exist in a vacuum. The question is who designs it, for what purpose, and within which economic and social structures.

And so, when we are told that AI will make everything faster, cheaper and more efficient, Marcuse gives us a useful little philosophical eyebrow raise.

Faster for whom?

Cheaper for whom?

Efficient towards what end?

Because there is a peculiar kind of technological progress in which everything becomes more efficient except the lives of the people actually doing the work.

Translation without translators. Writing without writers. Art without artists. Customer service without humans. And somehow the promised liberation repeatedly turns into more surveillance, more extraction, more precarious work and more things being optimised that nobody particularly wanted optimised in the first place.

That is where Marcuse meets enshittification.

A service begins by serving human needs. Then it becomes infrastructure. Then it becomes indispensable. And eventually the machine is reorganised around extraction, monetisation and control, while we are politely informed that this is all being done for our convenience.

Marcuse would probably have had some questions.

Not simply:

“What can this technology do?”

But:

“What kind of society does this technology help create?”

And perhaps most importantly:

“What does it make us become?”

That is a much nastier question.

Which is precisely why I like it.

#HerbertMarcuse #FrankfurtSchool #CriticalTheory #AI #AIshittification #Technology #Capitalism #DigitalCapitalism #HumanLabour #Philosophy