Some big reads for Friday

Friday’s Finds:

friday2“Any enlightenment which requires to be authenticated, certified, recognized, congratulated, is false, or at least incomplete. – R.H. Blyth” – via @cyetain

“McLuhan (ca.’75); Academics “have been asleep for 500 years and they don’t like anybody who .. stirs them up” – via @wodekszemberg

You are not an Artisan

The artisan delusion is important because almost everything artisans want to do — all the local-and-sexy work — is actually algorithmically scalable once you filter out the noise. There just isn’t much requisite variety there. Which means it is more vulnerable to being taken over by post-industrial modes of automated production, not less. Because software makes assembly lines more capable, not less.

Dave Pollard: Will the Collapse of Civilization Begin With Global Corporatist Totalitarianism? – via @C4LPT – “while financial, commercial and political collapse are inevitable, social collapse is not”

Corporatist Totalitarianism is the creation of a state that disenfranchises the majority and funnels all decision-making, wealth, power and security to an integrated Corporatist few. They do this ostensibly on the basis that this few know better than the masses how to deal with crises, but in fact they know there just isn’t enough of anything left to go around any more. So, like alphas in an overcrowded rat cage, they deem it appropriate to lie, mislead and deny, and to hoard everything they can steal for themselves and let the rest suffer and starve.

@gleonhard: The coming data wars, the rise of digital totalitarianism and why internet users need to take a stand

Here is my bottom line: the very same data oil that to a very large extend already fuels the $600 Billion advertising industry will fuel something in the neighborhood of a $1 Trillion global data monitoring and surveillance business – and it’s you and me that will make this happen by allowing them to drill into our data i.e. into us.

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