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The algorithm (like “the market”) is supposed to objectively reveal to us what our contribution to society means or is worth; it is where we must submit our sociality to have it be made “real,” to have it authenticated. (Hence the obsession with authenticity in this milieu.) The degree to which “the algorithm” enters our thought and practice is the degree to which our social being has been reworked along the lines required by industrially organized social media.
Fake Totalities
Rob Horning
Understood in its totality, the spectacle is both the result and the project of the present mode of production. It is not a mere supplement or decoration added to the real world, it is the heart of this real society’s unreality. In all of its particular manifestations – news, propaganda, advertising, entertainment – the spectacle is the model of the prevailing way of life.
The Society of the Spectacle
Guy Debord and Fredy Perlman
Problem is, while he’s on the general subject of Failure, he can’t help probing the nearby, related topic of What the Fuck Went Wrong with Mankind.
The Overstory
Richard Powers
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