Astra Taylor Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• Not to be to be a vulgar materialist or be too reductive, but all of that was completely absent from the conversation. Instead we were told it was a "revolutionary" moment, where these new tools would inevitably displace the old media dinosaur and that things would be democratized and wasn't it great we could all collaborate on these platforms.

  Astra Taylor

  Media, Would Be, Tools

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I'd go to conference after conference and it would essentially be the talking points. Either pro or con. It's amazing how polarized the tech conversation is. There's also this neurological fixation, the incessant wondering what the Internet's doing to our brain: "Does it make us stupid, does it make us distracted?" And then the other guys say, "No, it's making us smarter than ever, and better than ever, and more connected." And it's like, where is the economic and social context? Why is that rarely considered?

  Astra Taylor

  Stupid, Talking, Guy

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• It's not just that we all as individuals should reevaluate our relationship with our devices - maybe you should, on a personal level - but in terms of balancing the micro and the macro and the personal and the structural, it's actually a bigger issue than you and your phone addiction.

  Astra Taylor

  Issues, Phones, Addiction

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I'm interested in the way the whole cultural landscape can shift over time. Okay, this will seem like a silly example, but look at the whole discourse around "selling out," a concept people say is irrelevant because there's no more distinction between mainstream and underground, inside and outside (which I don't really believe, but that's another issue).

  Astra Taylor

  Believe, Silly, Issues

  Source: therumpus.net

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• All this stuff - about the materiality of the network, what it's made of, and how it works - should be part of a basic media literacy, because we depend on this technology for more and more aspects of our day-to-day lives.

  Astra Taylor

  Technology, Media, Stuff

  Source: therumpus.net

  11 Copy quote

• The market won't let us treat all data equally because there's a potential to make huge gobs of money not doing that. In the United States of America, people will pay to be first unless we do something to stop them. We don't have defenses built in because we haven't been investing in criticism that would help us mount a defense. I

  Astra Taylor

  Data, America, People

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• The point is, this is what happens when advertising and data collection is the dominant business mode. We are encouraged to be compulsive. It's not that we're terrible addicts who need to go to an AA meeting and get off our gadgets.

  Astra Taylor

  Data Collection, Needs, Gadgets

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• I was shocked when I tried to articulate this to someone who had posted the film and asked them to remove it for a few months, and I actually told them that after that they could put it back up and they were just completely unwilling to compromise - you'd think I was Rupert Murdoch or something.

  Astra Taylor

  Thinking, Months, Compromise

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• There was all this enthusiasm about amateurism and the idea that people could now just make videos in their bedroom, or blog news stories and share it online, and isn't this great? Now we can do it just for the love of it and not try to be professionals, corrupted by careerism.

  Astra Taylor

  News Stories, Ideas, People

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• On the one hand, I'm a kind of crazy anarchist-sympathizer with a hippie background, so this sounds pretty good to me. Make something for the love of it! But the reality is so much more complicated.

  Astra Taylor

  Crazy, Hippie, Reality

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• Again, it does seem like frustration is mounting in interesting ways, but I'm not sure there will be some dramatic tipping point. Then again, looking back on the history of television, you never know. People had to fight and articulate the politics and the rationale for different funding mechanisms. That was a long and drawn-out battle fought in different countries; it's not like BBC and the CBC in Canada just magically appeared out of the ether. People had to organize for it. I'm always willing to be surprised.

  Astra Taylor

  Country, Fighting, Frustration

  Source: therumpus.net

  5 Copy quote

• One of the big myths about people growing up is that they are "digital natives;" that just because they've been raised with the Internet - that you're very adept at using the app on your phone - it doesn't mean you have any idea about how the Internet actually works.

  Astra Taylor

  Growing Up, Mean, Phones

  Source: therumpus.net

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• One sad consequence of this is that people don't feel permitted to try understand Internet infrastructure, so I'm really grateful to groups like Free Press and other nonprofits who are trying to make the issue urgent and comprehensible. And Andre Blum's book Tubes is great on this topic.

  Astra Taylor

  Book, Grateful, Issues

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• It's always the balance between the individual's subjective experience and the social structural condition. As individuals we have access to more than we've ever had before. Giving up our data seems a small price to pay, especially if, as you say, we don't feel we have anything to hide.

  Astra Taylor

  Giving Up, Data, Balance

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• One thing that struck me about going to those tech conferences was all the enthusiasm for free culture, and remixing, and social media, but people's greatest ambition was to be sponsored by Chipotle or something equivalent to that. It was this weird mix of collaborative, utopian claims and this total acquiescence to commercial imperatives.

  Astra Taylor

  Ambition, Media, People

  Source: therumpus.net

  5 Copy quote

• As a citizen I might be well-behaved and have nothing salacious or radical about me, I might be a total bore, but I might suffer somehow if other people are being spied on and blocked from doing important work that might have a collective benefit down the road. The personal doesn't necessarily translate to the social.

  Astra Taylor

  People, Suffering, Important

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• There's this divergence out there between the very small and the very large with the middle disappearing. There is something paradoxical going on where there is this access and we can seek out things on the fringes, but that doesn't describe the overall reality, because the big are bigger than ever.

  Astra Taylor

  Reality, Fringe, Disappear

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• think there's a culture of Silicon Valley that seems to have the attitude that you can have it both ways, that you can be an insurgent but also, ultimately, it's paid for by advertising, when in fact advertising is totally retrograde. Now that's an industry we should be disrupting, and maybe you disrupt it by funding public media. None of this is technological destiny; there are only social choices.

  Astra Taylor

  Attitude, Destiny, Thinking

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• Are we on the tail-end of a generation that is enamored with the novelty of these devices and will younger people coming of age be more blasé about them in a healthy way? You look back at the history of any medium and the people who were there when it was developing, whether it was the telegraph or cable television or radio, thought, This is amazing, it's going change everything, or, The human community will finally be able to recognize each other and speak and be one - I mean, some people thought the telegraph or television would usher in world peace.

  Astra Taylor

  Mean, People, Community

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• What we need to do is take that inchoate sense that something isn't right and give it a structural component and the sense that things can be another way.

  Astra Taylor

  Giving, Needs, Way

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• One connection I see between the work I did on philosophy and my work on technology is that both communities tend to mystify and create an atmosphere of complexity.

  Astra Taylor

  Philosophy, Technology, Community

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• Whether it's a professional, academic keeping people out by using certain mystifying language, or technologists presenting their work as incredibly complicated, no one can understand it (especially not "moms," who are always invoked as the ultimate know-nothings, which is incredibly insulting to a whole lot of people).

  Astra Taylor

  Mom, People, Insulting

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• There's also the issue of tech titans throwing their weight around in Washington and lobbying. There was just a Reuters poll that reported that more than half of Americans are concerned that tech companies are "encroaching too much on their lives." That's pretty major, considering these companies were universally loved not that long ago.

  Astra Taylor

  Issues, Long Ago, Too Much

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• ulturally, we are definitely seeing people being to ask hard questions. There's been a major shift over the last year. The NSA revelations played a big part but there are all sorts of other issues too, like inequality and gentrification in the Bay Area, and labor abuses everywhere from Amazon's warehouse, to Apple's factories, to start-ups like Uber and TaskRabbit.

  Astra Taylor

  Years, Nsa, Uber

  Source: therumpus.net

  7 Copy quote

• It's very complicated. There's been this broader mechanism, an industry, which wants people to use free services, from the old days of advertising-supported papers and magazines, to ad-supported free television.

  Astra Taylor

  People, Want, Use

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

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