New dark age: technology and the end of future

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Notes

1 See, for example, ‘The consequences of the technological revolution may be even more frightening than we thought’ (Self, 2018). ‘New Dark Age is among the most unsettling and illuminating books I’ve read about the Internet, which is to say that it is among the most unsettling and illuminating books I’ve read about contemporary life.’ (O'Connell, 2018). ‘Can quantitative data can provide a coherent model of the world or are we slipping into a state of a world of ever-increasing incomprehension? This dualism forms the basis of a new book by James Bridle, looking at our tech dominated world’ (Sandle, 2018). ‘A British visual artist, journalist, and ‘New Aesthetic’ champion offers nightmarish prophecies on the descent into darkness’ (Kirkus Review, 2018).

2 See, for example, ‘ … Facebook is a juggernaut dimly understood even by its own creators’ (Editorial, 2018, p. 61).

3 Taken from the lyrics of the song Every Breath You Take by The Police from the album Synchronicity (written by Sting). Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Every_Breath_You_Take.

4 A few additional stats on data creation may be found in: ‘At the start of 2017, data created on mobile devices quadrupled to over 8 exabytes.’ (Schultz, 2017).

‘According to Computerworld.com, scientists currently estimate the total size of the Internet (as of 2011) to be 295+ exabytes (billion gigabytes).’ How much data is on the Internet? (Heavner, 2013).

1,209,600 new data producing social media users each day. 656 million tweets per day! More than 4 million hours of content uploaded to Youtube every day, with users watching 5.97 billion hours of Youtube videos each day. 67,305,600 Instagram posts uploaded each day. There are over 2 billion monthly active Facebook users, compared to 1.44 billion at the start of 2015 and 1.65 at the start of 2016. Facebook has 1.32 billion daily active users on average as of June 2017. 4.3 BILLION Facebook messages posted daily. 5.75 BILLION Facebook likes every day. 22 billion texts sent every day.5.2 BILLION daily Google Searches in 2017. (Schultz, 2017).

5 ‘U.S. data centers use more than 90 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity a year, requiring roughly 34 giant (500-megawatt) coal-powered plants. Global data centers used roughly 416 terawatts (4.16 × 10¹⁴ watts) (or about 3% of the total electricity) last year, nearly 40% more than the entire United Kingdom. And this consumption will double every four years.’ (Danielak, 2017).

6 ‘Even the best-case scenario of cramming data into every subatomic particle to its theoretical limit – known as the Bekenstein bound – gives just 345 years to saturation point.’ (Paulsen, 2019).

7 The terms are explained at the end of the review.

8 There is little doubt that we conceptualize reality with metaphors. We have a metaphor for an atom as a ‘kind of’ planetary system,’ and we have a metaphor for a planetary system as smaller spheres circling a big sphere, and so on. Metaphors determine how we see reality. As Lakoff claims, ‘Our conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is basically metaphorical in nature.’ (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). We could add that the destruction of the Aztec Empire was in large part attributable to the wrong metaphor.

9 If you are not convinced yet that you are closely watched, check out what some governments do with the Internet. (Safi, Kuo, Augustin, & Roth, 2019).

10 ‘Grendel is one of the three monsters that Beowulf battles. His nature is ambiguous. Though he has many animal attributes and a grotesque, monstrous appearance, he seems to be guided by vaguely human emotions and impulses, and he shows more of an interior life than one might expect.’ (Sparknotes, 2019).

11 See, for example, Schofield (2018).