July 7, 2022
(Here’s some of my patriotic duty for constitutional mischief this campaign season. I don’t consider this to be a complete philosophical system, nor anything mutually constitutive into a personal philosophy by any means, and I’m sure some Spanish guy named Savater might want to either attack or run from it - wherever you are, Savater - but nonetheless, “check this out” and “have you ever noticed this?” as we say.)
Dirty Computer, Solastalgia, and The Politics of Desire, are like new filters though which to see the unseen-as-yet patterns that shape our lives. Sometimes you can feel them as moods through which information is conveyed. Other times it's an aesthetic or tone that these patterns take in our lives. I think they are philosophical concepts, although I don't pretend to have developed them through the extension of older philosophical traditions, but through empirical observation.
Where do I see this joint paradigm of Dirty Computer, Solastalgia, and The Politics of Desire going in the future?
Dirty Computer is going to take over to a large extent. But it's also going to "leave the cloister" and engage more with the world, on the most part. Some but very few will stay "in" and mostly on the extreme technocratic side, and entirely ancillary to True Power, which will be dispersed "into the world" and among the population. So, "the culture of law." Among those who are still "in" the subject of concern and/or work is the fundamental coding architecture, and the commentary in actual content about what that structural paradigm of computing means (i.e. Moxie Marlinspikes's essay on Web3 is the kind of content I'd expect to stay useful from someone creating content from "inside".). The Might/Power/Authority paradigm is not isomorphic because that is about parliamentary action, etc. But Might, Power, or Authority, it will be relevant and still "Dirty Computer" if/when it gets content from the world "outside" the computing cloister, refine it through Dirty Computer, and release the refined product into the world. And this is going to merge with the (quasi) legal paradigm of "whose paper is better", of course: but "compacted" into the object of the computer, or closer to it around it. The question is how much new idea can be brought into "the office surrounding the office" - that is, besides pen, paper, computer and all subsequent and inherent power, what else is to become Dirty Computer? Dirty Computer will subsume Solastalgia and the Politics of Desire in so far as it solves their problems.
Solastalgia is always going to be situation in a place and a narrative as a tension between devolution of an evolution and critique of a minimalism in understanding. The crux of the matter is that the only thing that makes us want to seek complexity and the nuanced answers is this feeling of solastalgia. I have no illusions that humans would have appreciated an Eden until it was destroyed or lost. But, this same feeling of loss at what we unknowingly destroyed is what makes us want to understand it and then fix it, and then recreate it. "They know not what they do" - but as soon as we do we see it in full nuance, and want complexity and nuance in solutions. There will be a lot of confusion from this paradigm, but also a lot more mechanisms for clearing up confusions. Will the environment be better? Yes, but we have to consider some complex choices, like pollution regulation and clean up versus carbon emission regulations - and only the application of nuance will decide whether that is a true or false dichotomy and how to navigate or dismiss it. (Dirty Computer.)
The Politics of Desire has to properly understood in that it's utterly "improper" and "nasty" but at the same time not relegated to sex and sexual desire. We have to understand that it's a nexus implicating literacy, feminism; what motivates us to support progress but also more importantly how do we identify what kind of progress is worthy of support - what is progress and what is worthy progress. Example: the oldes authoritarianism in the politics of literacy - China - has somewhat of a negative tradition of care that suggests that a family or support system is necessary for the writer or reader. On the other hand, conquering to the extent that you win a family and a network of support as a writer or reader is awesome too. And you see how this concept of desire becomes about literacy too. But then, could we liberate women from this responsibility through technology, so that woman can pursue their own goals, and practices and literacy of their own - but even utopianly, not on their own: if support for the work of men and women can be truly reciprocal. Dirty Computer, as you can see, always reoccurs. But the authoritarian gatekeeping of Chinese is contested even there - and there is no need for it as a police action. It is an emergent property of the system of writing. But here's the crux of the Politics of Desire: as the rules of literacy are dealt with and challenged and no longer needed, the rules disappear but the required social feelings somewhat remain.
Dirty Computer, Solastalgia, and the Politics of Desire, are not related to the Seven Liberal Arts and Sciences. Which is -?
Many years after, the good clerk Euclid
Taught the craft of geometry full wonder wide
So he did that other time also,
Of divers crafts many more.
Through high grace of Christ in heaven,
He commenced in the sciences seven;
Grammar is the first science I know,
Dialect the second, so I have bliss,
Rhetoric the third without doubt,
Music the fourth, as I you say,
Astronomy the fifth, by my snout,
Arithmetic the sixth, without doubt
Geometry the seventh make the an end.
For he is both meek and courteous,
Grammar forsooth is the root,
Whoever will learn on the book,
But art passeth in his degree,
As the fruit doth the root of the tree;
Rhetoric measure thee with ornate speech among,
And music is a sweet song;
Astronomy numbereth, my dear brother,
Arithmetic sheweth one thing that is another
Geometry the seventh science is,
That can separate falsehood from truth, I know
These be sciences seven,
Who useth them well he may have heaven.
So it's not them. Specifically, it's not music, astronomy and arithmetic. But it can explain where we are in those things. Likewise it's not Realism, Literature and Art unless we want those to be about Dirty Computer, Solastalgia, or the Politics of Desire. It's not an old thing, anyway: it's a new thing; just frankly describing what it's like to live in this world right now on the cutting edge.
I don't claim to have picked the most respectable-sounding names for my philosophical concepts Dirty Computer, Solastalgia, and The Politics of Desire. I also don't claim them as ideals, no; but rather as descriptive categories, maybe. But what are you going to call them instead of these names? I am open to new names for what I'm trying to describe here with Ms. Janelle Monae's phrase "Dirty Computer". -- but what else am I supposed to call the mood when someone working on contract with a mid-sized Japanese city downloads the personal data for all 460,000 city residents onto a USB stick, then goes out partying all night, passes out on the street, and wakes up to find out that the USB stick is gone?... Dirty Computer...
For that matter, what about the US domestic wiretap program? Or extraordinary rendition? Dirty Computer...
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