conceding to the tech overlords

or; why i’m going to be even less forgiving at the insistence that i concede

everywhere I look, another part of my existence is given over to a tech giant’s dream. teaching? we have to route everything through an lms to even organize a course. the classroom experience is a series of bright screens with expectant gazes looking forward not to the instructor but to another screen where prepared slides are supposed to tell them everything they need to know. forget libraries. books are supposed to be uploaded and please make sure the links work. every teaching motion is mechanized. and even outside of class everyone expects teams and zoom to give them unfettered access to your free time. a typical week is as much crowded by actual obligations as it is with requests beckoning your free time and availability because zoom now makes it possible that most hours of the day are now on the table for time vampires to engorge themselves.

when will there be time for thinking and creativity? the overlords’ response is you should be thanking us because we have figured that out too:

✨ai✨

no matter the eugenicist assumptions here. no matter the environmental impact. no matter the fact that ai-produced slop is ugly as fuck and the writing is formulaic as hell. no matter that llms have given people instructions for killing themselves and others.

many of us have still conceded. it’s here, we whine. get on board, say the people who had no imagination in the first place.

the same capitalism that made our ancestors suffer has all the answers now apparently. but but but you used ai when you used this app, goes the feeble cry of those who have decided that resistance is futile. an interesting conclusion given the simultaneous fascist present we endure. and the climate catastrophe we are just meant to endure. it’s here, get on board with your own death.

it is as if we all wanted social media to become what it was. or as if any of the other ai applications were made with our consent. and say, one truly decided to fully and permanently withdraw. imagine the resulting faux pity and whispers and probably worse that would lead to everyone around them assuming they are the ones that are lost.

and not those who resisted the ones that have tried and are trying to warn us that this is not normal. conceding our worlds to these people is not normal. and even normal wasn’t normal.

no, their conclusion is that we are the ones who are naive, difficult, helpless and mindless luddites who are against the inevitable progress initiated by our friends in silicon valley.

and as empire—the best metaphor for this technological present— consolidates itself with so many us increasingly seeing it as our salvation what is so very depressing is that so few of us are willing to ask what the actual fuck are we doing…