doom loops of the goods life in our urban communities of fate We find ourselves living (somehow) in a community of fate; perhaps a doom collective of dividuals in a control society; perhaps a foaming co-ommunity of couples alone together in their apartment bubbles, incapable of realising themselves through one another in – full circle – a community of fate. We roll in strange circles; these are surreally loopy times.
https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-pk545-16e7436 Continuing the conversation with Chris Hobson, recorded in the third quarter of 2024. This returns to the central theme of smartphones, social media and digital technologies, thinking through the social costs and consequences that come with them.
When I started this series, I envisaged it maybe in three parts of no more than 2-3000 words. Tragicomically, the points and ideas have continued to calve and hive off; it’s not such a bad problem to have, ultimately, but in the meantime, it’s easy – including for me – to start to feel disoriented by it. This post, then, is just a way of keeping this bouquet in hand.
In this post – which I’m determined will be the penultimate in this series – I want to focus on the hinge between the affordance of the e-scooters, especially some particulars that arise from the particularities of its vehicular design, and social acceleration.
In the opening post in this series, I incautiously risked naming our zeitgeist – as stupid, stubborn, surreal (3S). 3S = 2024, was my claim. 2024 smells stupid, to me, in the same way the sweet scent of Cool Water scented 88–’92, while citro-sweet CK One and the nasal riesling of L’eau d Issey Pour Homme spritzed the spirit of the ‘94–’05, as a musk deer in season sprays against the base of a tree.
After finishing the first of three planned pieces on the stupid, stubborn, surreal presence of the e-scooter, I realised there was a lot that had to be said about disruption for any of this to make sense. What follows is a section I wrote from an aborted book;
Hello all, In thinking through the stupid, stubborn, surreality (3S) of 2024, there are many examples that one could use: Ukraine and Gaza, Trump and Vance, Olympic Breakdancing and Opening Ceremony Transpanics, etc etc etc.
To each time its geist ; we clock this1. Zeitgeist is a vexing thing to try to grasp; we glimpse a glint, a slippery subjective apprehension of it. Thanks for reading living together, somehow! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Zeitgeist is the great collective instance of the elusive obvious. Seldom does even a great artist comprehend and convey it – when it lands, it is a rare, fleeting, precious anomaly2.
posting season is upon us: expect a few posts in August...
In our recent conversation, Chris and I talked about how a lot of contemporary life tends toward the unwitting, unintentional yet systemic and consequential production of ‘itty bitty shit bits’, life shredded into the micro plastics of attention and electronic-reactive piecemeal work tasks, which are consequential, but lack meaning. In some cases, as I explore here, it’s actual plastic… Two things about humanity.
Imperfect World podcast, March 2024