Techne vs High Tech, and Browsing Bookshelfs
The following was my speech at Joy Wang's Teck Whye Convention (5th Edition).
It concerns two topics:
- Our misidentification of technological progress with high technology as opposed to the broad adoption of techne or technique.
- How to assemble a browsing bookshelf to repel surveillance capitalism
I want to take this occasion to give a fully written talk. I think this subject and this venue is far too important for speaking extemporaneously.
Our story begins by a talk that Joy gave at the fifth birthday party of Feelers. She spoke about the joy of lenticular print - that is these cards that have a 3D effect as you move them - and other such joyful "old" technologies that have been forgotten but have so much potential. She challenged the audience to relook at old technologies, and not always to run to the latest flashiest thing- VR, Generative AI, etc.
Reflecting on this, I think the very concept of technology has been robbed and put to capitalist ends. Concepts like smart cities, technology in education, cloud computing, or the latest new gadgets are in part driven by strong corporate incentives to win large contracts all at once or to keep selling. Then there's the incentive of locking people into a platform, a subscription, a software maintenance contract, or worst of all a deliberate power relationship as in the form of surveillance capitalism.
Surveillance capitalism is the term for the flavour of capitalism that we find ourselves in, because of digital media platforms. Companies create and use a behavioural surplus, to make and sell Behavioral futures Surplus: the excess data collected about you that is not required for product or service improvement but is instead repurposed for other commercial goals. Futures: refers to the anticipated human actions forecasted using behavioural surplus and sold to advertisers. This doesn't happen by accident, this is not an interpretation of what they do, they explicitly find ways to hack your psychology, much like how Big Food spends millions of dollars to assemble the perfect combination of taste enhancers to hack your tongue and keep you eating Mcdonalds.
When I say the concept of technology has been robbed, I refer to at least two effects. Firstly, the obsession with technology. I know this best of all as someone working in quantum computing. Those words together (quantum, computing) make an incantation that immediately makes an Asian parent proud, a government scared, an investor frothy, a peer impressed and it attracts potential mates. Yet none of them would have any understanding of what it is, or what it would mean for their lives. Technology has come to mean "high technology". The kind of thing that will drive the next phase of economic growth just like automobiles, aerospace, advanced materials like semiconductors, the internet, new media, cloud computing or artificial intelligence. Or the kind of thing that will wipe away our societal issues as if by magic: renewable energy, advanced drug design, robots to look after the elderly, self driving cars, you pick. The essence of "modern technology" is generally to create standing reserves. To turn the abundant world into a scarcity of resources that fit a particular end. It is to turn the riverfront into real estate, people into a list of linkedIn profiles, the earth into a source for sand to make a new coastline somewhere else. It is dangerous, it is unsustainable, it is not "inevitable" and it is inherently political.
In the face of all this the second issue is that the original sense of technology has been forgotten and devalued. Technology is the reproducible application of knowledge to achieve practical goals. techne in Greek, means something more like "craft" or "art" Technique, means "way of doing", and can be applied to "arts" that don't use tools such as playing football, organising gatherings, or reading. In this sense the rise of AI, that makes us lose essential skills because we offload cognition to the tools, is the exact opposite of technology. It certainly is high technology, since conceptual ideas from machine learning and software engineering are combined to make a very cool product. But it is disempowering, because it leaves you less able to do things. Think about the collective effect that Google maps has had on navigation skills. We all get where we need to go a lot better, but we have a worse understanding of where everything is.
So technology could mean technique/techne and lead to a more equitable world. But it has come to mean high technology and it centralises power and leaves many people behind.
To come to my point now... One way that you have cognitively offloaded, is to a recommendation algorithm, that tells you what media to consume. Today I would like to talk about reclaiming your media literacy, specifically by assembling a bookshelf, and spending more time reading from print media rather than scrolling.
But maybe that suggestion is disappointing to you: After all the philosophy, I'm just going to preach about reading? Perhaps you think: I already know that I should read, or that reading is important. But that is the essence of technique/techne. We need to talk about it because we need to exchange our little tips and tricks, and those little tips and tricks turn into embodied skills that change our manner of living.
I will begin with the strongest points I have to offer.
Firstly, invest in browsing books. Browsing is closer to scrolling than reading is. Reading a linear book is more cognitively demanding. There's more to keep track of, and you have to push through when its a drag. Browsing is just as lighthearted as scrolling, you follow your curiosities, you can stop whenever, start whenever, change your mind a 100 times.
(Then I pointed out some browsing books I had laid out on the coffee table)
Notice how this is a technique, a way of doing things, that you need to internalise and practice to get the benefit of.
Let me pause here to say more about why I think this is worth doing. The quality of what someone has bothered to print and publish, and what you have bothered to purchase or leave your house to acquire is just higher on average than something made in a day and fed to you by an algorithm. The care and quality of thought is better. It is more likely to be relevant or interesting to you since you bought it. We also need to protect our eyes. We have long lives to live and lots of screens to look at. Next, Paper offers a bigger screen size. And, Paper offers privacy. These are goals we chase in a futile way on our devices. Reading is like vinyls. The magic is in cutting out the noise and focussing. You spend more time absorbing than filtering. Reading engages more senses - paper has feel, smell, and theres tactile feedback. Reading just leaves me feeling happier and smarter than scrolling. The words on a page are still, they are forgiving, they are not rushing somewhere, they will be there when you come back. They say things that are not relevant just to the moment but things that have longevity to them. The stability of a book is stabilising of life itself.
Now for this to stay interesting you are going to need a large and evolving bookshelf. Some tips. One approach is to freely buy books - and thats not a terrible idea. When you are done with them you can do a book swap if you know a book swap shelf, or you can book swap with me or Joy, or anyone here. You can Buy books for cheaper by buying them second hand, or buying in Malaysia or India. You can Borrow books from the library Everyone is digitalising and throwing away books, You can look out for free book giveaways. Sometimes people distribute very interesting things for free like maps, market reports, scientific papers etc. , You can take them You can print out things and get them bound like books, things like open access academic papers, or a collection of blogposts. Eventually I hope we will all write our own pamphlets and collections of essays and distribute them to each other. You can Subscribe to the newspaper. This will give you lots of print media daily to consume. And I think It's really cheap. Sometimes spending 1.20 to not scroll for 10 minutes is a good expense. 10 minutes is one percent of your waking day. And together with your browsing books you can keep physical photo albums, rubiks cubes, board games, gundams, whatever you like.
This can feel like a lot of extra work, but I would reframe that time spent deciding what to read is part of the process of reading. Time spent looking at books on shelves, understanding genres, movements, authors. Time spent asking yourself what kind of media you want to consume, what your priorities are. Time spent talking about books with others, discussing recommendations. Time spent giving away your books, the ritual of recycling a stack of newspapers, the careful folding, the cutting out of an interesting article to be read later. These things, these "frictions" are the dietary fibre of the mind. And these are practices we must create space for if we want technique and not high technology.
Which brings me to the idea of actively seeking out books. Recently I had to read about marriage, for a friend. And between google, goodreads and chatgpt, I searched very narrowly for books on marriage in Singapore - and I found really cool ones! A collection of essays on the legal framework of marriage in Singapore, and a collection of interviews specifically of Indian-Chinese couples! Start with what you are curious about, imagine your dream book and find the closest real thing that has been printed. Once in a while get something totally random as well! I call this the "goodreads" life because now when we go to a bookstore, Joy and I methodically go through all the books to see which ones might be interesting and add them to our goodreads.
Ok so now lets take a few minutes to reflect on what your ideal bookshelf could look like. I hope you will write down some ideas on paper or in your phone. And I have these books laid out in front of me, let me explain some of them to give you ideas.