Template:M intro systems financialisation: Difference between revisions
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====Map and territory==== | ====Map and territory==== | ||
{{Drop|T|hat much is}} obvious: it is not the lesson we should draw. We should already know it. It is already imprinted in our cultural fabric, however determined the [[modernist]]s may be to forget it | |||
The lesson is this. If we mistake the map for the territory — if we organise our interests and judge our outcomes only by reference to the map, ''we thereby change the territory''. Gradually, by degrees, the territory converges on the map. This is excellent news, in the short term, for the machines and the class who employ them — cartographers — as it makes life easier. Amongst the rest of us, out there in the territory, it presents two kinds of bad outcomes. | The lesson is this. If we mistake the map for the territory — if we organise our interests and judge our outcomes only by reference to the map, ''we thereby change the territory''. Gradually, by degrees, the territory converges on the map. This is excellent news, in the short term, for the machines and the class who employ them — cartographers — as it makes life easier. Amongst the rest of us, out there in the territory, it presents two kinds of bad outcomes. | ||
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Things that can’t be ranked and counted — that aren’t “legible” to this great high powered information processing system — have no particular [[value]] ''to the system, in the system’s terms'' — it can't digest them<ref>The digestion metaphor is apt: processing intractable things is like trying to digest flax.</ref> or extract value out of them — it literally cannot “process” them — this is so whether or not these have any value to ''us''. | Things that can’t be ranked and counted — that aren’t “legible” to this great high powered information processing system — have no particular [[value]] ''to the system, in the system’s terms'' — it can't digest them<ref>The digestion metaphor is apt: processing intractable things is like trying to digest flax.</ref> or extract value out of them — it literally cannot “process” them — this is so whether or not these have any value to ''us''. | ||
====Value==== | ====Value==== | ||
{{Drop|F|orgive me a}} [[postmodern]] moment but ''[[value]]'' is a function of cultural and linguistic context — sorry, Professor Dawkins, but it just ''is'' — the richer the language, the more figurative, the more scope for imagination, the more scope for alternative formulations of ''value''. | |||
Conversely, inflexible languages, with little scope for imaginative reapplication have much less scope for articulating values — it is much harder to capture all that richness of meaning. The closer a language is to one-way symbol processing, the more it resembles ''code''. | Conversely, inflexible languages, with little scope for imaginative reapplication have much less scope for articulating values — it is much harder to capture all that richness of meaning. The closer a language is to one-way symbol processing, the more it resembles ''code''. | ||
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If you render human experience in machine language, let alone in the constrained parameters of international financial reporting standards, you are losing something. You are losing ''a lot''. | If you render human experience in machine language, let alone in the constrained parameters of international financial reporting standards, you are losing something. You are losing ''a lot''. | ||
But if energy is free, you can afford to be wasteful with it. If your financialising techniques generate enough financial value | But if energy is free, you can afford to be wasteful with it. If your financialising techniques generate enough financial value — ''money'' — for the same amount of effort, who ''cares'' how much extra ineffable value leaks out of the system as you go? This is the promise of scale, and the interconnected network promises a ''lot'' of scale. Go Taylor Swift, forget about the Nietzsche-loving doom metal merchant from Austin. | ||
In the eyes of the financialising machine the unique differing pleasures we derive from Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations — or listening to Keegan Kjeldsen talking about Robert Michel's [[iron law of oligopoly]]'' — or, damnit ,even Taylor Swift —reduce ''precisely'' to the unit cost for which items of that cultural artefact can be sold, over the cost of producing and distributing it. Any greater value — the life lesson, aphorisms and fortitude it magically confers that guide you through through your heaviest seas and blackest storms count for nothing. It is hardly a novel idea to regret that something is being lost hereby. | In the eyes of the financialising machine the unique differing pleasures we derive from Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations — or listening to Keegan Kjeldsen talking about Robert Michel's [[iron law of oligopoly]]'' — or, damnit, even Taylor Swift —reduce ''precisely'' to the unit cost for which items of that cultural artefact can be sold, over the cost of producing and distributing it. Any greater value — the life lesson, aphorisms and fortitude it magically confers that guide you through through your heaviest seas and blackest storms count for nothing. It is hardly a novel idea to regret that something is being lost hereby. | ||
Conversely, things that ''can'' be counted can acquire “value” even if they don't have ''value''. There are plenty | Conversely, things that ''can'' be counted can acquire “value” even if they don't have ''value''. There are plenty | ||