illegibility

30 Oct 2021 02:15 - 16 Dec 2022 12:22
Open in Logseq
    • I don't know, it should be kind of obvious that it is often not in one's self-interest to be well-defined, to have a clear formal description of your life available to all and sundry. But it isn't, and nowadays we have Facebook and its demonic brethren that force us to make legible our most intimate social relationships, the better to use them as fuel for advertising engines.
    • And deeper than that, it is in the very nature of computer technology to make things legible. That's almost definitionally what it does, from Hollerith's census systems onwards. As computer professionals it is our responsibility to do this in a way which is not oppressive and antihuman; although the forces pushing the other way are mighty indeed.
    • Rationalism seems too oriented towards legibility; for my taste at least. As I've said elsewhere, they seem intellectually retro, and haven't gotten the news about the limits of reason and representation:
      • The whole movement is kind of retro in a way that is sometimes appealing but just as often appalling. Peter Sloterdijk labelled rationalists as "the Amish of postmodernism" and it often does seem like an effort to be staunchly and cluelessly devoted to ideas that nobody really takes seriously any more.
    • See the interestingly related concept of nebulosity.