Posts tagged "technology":

Functional life

Programming languages (and their users) are often grouped into two main intellectual schools of thought: Object-oriented programming (OOP) and functional programming. These two schools both claim to offer ways to manage the increasing complexity that comes with the development of larger and larger programs. Functional programming states that this complexity can be managed by following these principles:

1. Functions are first-class citizens.
2. Functions are deterministic.
3. Functions should not have side effects.
4. Data is immutable.

Not all of these are directly applicable to non-programming concepts, but twisting them somewhat gives us an interesting perspective on how do deal with complexity and chaos in our lives.

Email as a Revolutionary Medium

In an increasingly interconnected and technologically sophisticated world, our capabilities for communication and diversity of ways to do so also increases. This is often approached as a problem, with each method merely remaining due to network effects, but I believe that this multitude of means are a strength and not a weakness. I do however still see what I deem as a misuse of tools, and I shall endeavour to explain, and hopefully convince you of, my ways of structuring communication in different spheres.

The key difference that I think many do not make is the division between urgency and importance. This might seem an unwieldy or arbitrary division, but I believe it is crucial. In many cases needing an answer quickly is the only thing one cares about, and in others it is the accuracy of the response that matters. To explain simply, here an order of different modes of communications:

Sorted by importance:

When you want to be very clear about something you always want to meet in person, and if speed is necessary nothing is faster than calling someone’s cellphone. But there is one medium that has been overlooked, or in many cases even despised, email.

The Indieweb wiki’s section on email describes an “Older [reason] to use email” as “messaging among older internet users” as if this is an archaic or outdated form of messaging. This is echoed by my anecdotal experiences with talking to younger generations of people who in many cases detest email, having only used it in a professional setting and for making “accounts” to websites that then flood them with newsletters and advertisements. I understand these experiences that I imagine many people have, but they do not mean that email should be thrown out altogether. Instead it should occupy a new place in the way people communicate.

The word revolution has an interesting history, meaning both a transformative change in a given field (although often political) as well as a simple revolution of a spinning object, returning to its starting position (see RPM; revolutions per minute)¹. These two seemingly homonymous words are however deeply interconnected, and to explain this I want to use the example of the Glorious Revolution. It was not only a profound political development, overthrowing the established idea of the divine right of kings and replacing it with popular sovereignty, but also formulating it as a return to the normal political order of the ancient rights of the English people². The Meiji Restoration in Japan was also of this nature, a profound and forward-looking development that framed itself as a return to the original state of things.

So what does this have to do with email communication for the kidz? I see email as a niche that no other medium occupies, that being asynchronous communication. All communication is of course asynchronous in some sense, but there is an expectation that texting should ideally be done instantly and intensely. One is expected to respond quickly, and “leaving” someone “on read” is seen as an insult. I think that this form of synchronous communication, when combined with the scale of modern technology, creates enormous stress on the individual. At all times one is able to intimately³ communicate with thousands of people, leaving the individual paralysed from overstimulation. Email by contrast emphasises long-form messaging, often being longer than posts on microblogging services meant for permanent or semi-permanent publication. This gives the individual more time to respond but also the sender to live their own life while waiting for a response. Originally this was of course a technological necessity — it was impossible to reach someone through the internet when they were not at their computer — but that limitation has since disappeared through the introduction of the cellular phone and later the smartphone.

This does not mean that the problems with email are not real but that they are obscuring the usefulness of the technology. The primary change I would recommend (or that needs to be done) is the division between communication and information. There is no denying that a lot of services rely on email for registration and advertisements. But there is a clear mental barrier between receiving an email from a real human being and a machine sending you a morass of spam that one is not expected to reply to, but simply to consume⁴. The greatest damage to email has been done by no-reply@domain.com. To counter this one needs multiple email addresses, one for machine communication that is seldom used and another for human connection. This allows for the mental separation of messages so that the enormous flood of email does not drown out the signal, and so that individuals are not anxious when they are sent an email.

About the website

I think every personal blog that is somewhat custom built should have documentation written on its design philosophy and implementation. I see this as an extension of the free-software ideal; you should not only be allowed but also able to extent and modify another program to your needs.

  (require 'org-static-blog)

  (setq org-static-blog-publish-title "Joar von Arndt")
  (setq org-static-blog-publish-url "https://joarvarndt.se/")
  (setq org-static-blog-publish-directory "~/Documents/blog")
  (setq org-static-blog-posts-directory "~/Documents/blog/posts/")
  (setq org-static-blog-drafts-directory "~/Documents/blog/drafts/")
  (setq org-static-blog-enable-tags t)
  (setq org-static-blog-enable-og-tags t)
  (setq org-static-blog-image "https://joarvarndt.se/vonArndtCrestWhite.png")
  (setq org-export-with-toc nil)
  (setq org-export-with-section-numbers nil)
  (setq org-static-blog-index-length 1)
  (setq org-static-blog-use-preview nil)

  (setq org-static-blog-page-header
        "<meta name=\"Joar von Arndt\" content=\"Joar von Arndt\">
      <meta name=\"referrer\" content=\"no-referrer\">
      <meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"initial-scale=1,width=device-width,minimum-scale=1\">
      <link rel=\"stylesheet\" type=\"text/css\" href=\"https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/bitmaks/cm-web-fonts@latest/fonts.css\">
      <link href=\"static/style.css\" rel=\"stylesheet\" type=\"text/css\" />
      <link rel=\"icon\" href=\"static/favicon.ico\">
      <link rel=\"me\" href=\"https://github.com/JanJoar\" />
      <script src=\"https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.5.1/jquery.min.js\"></script>
      <script src=\"static/sidenotes.js\"></script>
      <script id=\"MathJax-script\" async src=\"https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/mathjax@3/es5/tex-mml-chtml.js\"></script>")


  (setq org-static-blog-page-preamble "<div class=\"header\">
            <a href=\"https://joarvarndt.se/\"><img id=\"themeImageHeader\" src=\"vonArndtCrestBlack.png\" class=\"header-img\" alt=\"Crest\" width=\"50\"></a>
          </div>")

  (setq org-static-blog-page-postamble
        "<div id=\"archive\">
            <a href=\"https://joarvarndt.se/archive.html\">Other posts</a><script src=\"static/theme.js\" defer></script>
          </div>")

  (setq org-static-blog-index-front-matter "<a href=\"https://joarvarndt.se/archive.html\"><h2>All Posts</h2></a>")

  (setq org-static-blog-enable-tag-rss t)

  ;; For syntax highlighting of code (Like this).
  (setq org-src-fontify-natively t)
  (setq org-html-htmlize-output-type 'css)
  (setq org-src-preserve-indentation t)

  (setq org-image-actual-width nil)

#+begin_marginnote
This is how I write a margin note!
#+end_marginnote

;;; blogPublish.el --- Summary:

;;; Uploads the contents of the blog folder to the required one on the server.

;;; Commentary:
;;; Probably not the most elegant nor beautiful solution, but it seems to work for me.
;;; The HTML files on the remote server are first deleted through tramp, and then
;;; the content is reuploaded in case there are any changes.  Since plain text is so
;;; quick to upload there is no issue with reuploading unaltered content. 

;;; Code:

(require 'org-static-blog)

(defun blog-delete-remote-html ()
  "Deletes all html files on the server."
  (let ((tramp-default-method "ssh")
        (remote-directory "/ssh:jovo@100.119.139.3:/var/www/html/blog/"))
    (with-current-buffer (find-file-noselect remote-directory)
      (let ((default-directory remote-directory))
        ;; Ensure the remote directory is accessible and its contents are loaded
        (revert-buffer)

        (dolist (file (directory-files default-directory t "\\.html$"))
          (when (file-exists-p file)
            (message "Deleting %s ..." file)
            (delete-file file)
            (message "Deleted all .html files in %s" remote-directory)))))))

(defun upload-blog-contents ()
  "Uploads the required HTML to the blog via SFTP for async."
  (let* ((local-dir "/home/jovo/Documents/blog/")
         (remote-dir "/var/www/html/blog/")
         (remote-host "100.119.139.3")
         (remote-user "jovo")
         (sftp-command (concat "echo \"put " local-dir "/* " remote-dir "\" " "| sftp " remote-user "@" remote-host)))
    (async-shell-command sftp-command (get-buffer-create "Blog upload"))))

(defun website-publish ()
  "Function running after org-static-blog-publish to publish to the website."
  (interactive)
  (blog-delete-remote-html)
  (upload-blog-contents))

(advice-add #'org-static-blog-publish :after #'website-publish)

;;; blogPublish.el ends here.

Writing About Jacques Ellul

I am by no means an expert on Ellul, I have merely read three of his books (Presence in the Modern World, The Technological Society, and The Meaning of the City) But in trying to communicate his influence on my thinking, I have inadvertently written many times about him, albeit at an all too basic level. There are many theories claiming to explain all of human history, or at least the structure of our current society, but Ellul’s technique works because of its simplicity and deliberate vagueness. It is however this quality that makes explaining Ellul to others so challenging. Here is one example of an attempt made by me to quickly summarise the central ideas of Ellul’s technique.

The technical concept can be briefly summarized as a conglomerate of thoughts, methods, and approaches considered to be objectively the best for achieving a purpose. It is important to distinguish this concept from technology, such as computers, engines, weaving machines, and so on. Technology is merely a consequence of technique, not the cause. People in modern society can no longer imagine life in the way that prehistoric and medieval populations lived. Almost all problems are expected to have technical solutions; if the solution to a problem requires something to be done, then the problem is technical. This seems almost tautological — if nothing needs to be done, is there really a problem? However, problems often arise from attempts to improve the situation, and technique always demands solutions to increasingly complex problems.

This is by no means a short summary, it is longer than the introductory paragraph. But to compress it inevitably means allowing for serious misinterpretation, and readers are not often familiar with an obscure post-war anarchist Christian sociologist. This is made even more difficult owing to the fact that technique is applicable to such a wide number of disparate fields. It is for this reason that explaining Ellul has become dreadfully boring, despite the fact that I recognise Ellul as a figure that would bring enormous comfort — I almost dare to say enlightenment — to a great number of people. But I feel compelled to do so, again and again, because I too am a member of our technical society. Just like Kaczynski¹ I feel compelled to utilize technique against itself despite being fully aware of the fruitlessness of doing so.

Ellul naturally takes inspiration from Marx’ historical materialism as well as Hegel’s idea of Geist. The main difference is that where Marx and Hegel both see an end point, a perfect communist society and Absolute knowledge respectively, Ellul instead sees technique as an ever-expanding — being driven only be a need to encompass every facet of human society. Technique per definition can have no limit because when it reaches absolute mastery over any one idea it will simply move on to greater and greater scales. Only something like the paperclip maximizer converting all of the mass-energy in the universe would ever reach a hard limited; technical society however still hopes for a continued advancement after that.

Since technique dominates every area of society, it has become relevant for an untold number of discussion I have come across. For example, in an article about the possibly planned use of TikTok by the CCP to destroy western civilization, Gurwinder effectively makes clear how Wang Huning describes America’s crisis of technology, and how it shares similarities with Nick Land’s view of accelerationism (all in attempt to expose a CCP accelerationist plot). I see Gurwinder’s thesis as fundamentally incorrect, the moral decline of western civilisation is not to be solved through any return to “traditional moral values”, technique only moves forward, though it very well might be marketed as such a return². Gurwinder quotes Land’s A Quick-and-Dirty Introduction to Accelerationism:

The point of an analysis of capitalism, or of nihilism, is to do more of it. The process is not to be critiqued. The process is the critique, feeding back into itself, as it escalates. The only way forward is through, which means further in.

Land is entirely correct in his description of the symptom, but misattributes the cause. Capitalism is not a driving force of anything, it is simply a state of affairs itself caused by technique. As I write in my essay on the philosophy of nuclear weapons, technique is inherently alienating and a cause for nihilism, as Land has realized. But capitalism is not the cause of this; Soviet socialism is an even purer form of technique³. The planned economy requires a constant need for things to be done, for organisational meetings and for statistics to be collected so that more accurate and better choices can be made, even at exorbitant costs. Why socialism ceased in the USSR and China was because of a technical choice that free-market capitalism was more efficient, and it was this decision that Fukuyama described as his end of history; the triumph of free market liberal democracy as the most efficient mode of societal organisation. This does not mean that it will remain so forever of course, but that it is simply meaningless to discuss the issue, for when something more efficient comes along, it will simply be done.

Just like populism technique lacks any ideological motive. There is no serious ideology or movement that seeks to constrain to reduce technique, as doing so is seen as foolish. Ideas such as free-market libertarianism, anti-AI protestors, and environmentalism all want to use technique to offset its limitations. Libertarians want to move technical applications to private actors for efficiency gains, anti-AI protestors want to impose rules to guide AI development, and environmentalists want to build and expand renewable energies and recycling infrastructure to offset the negative effects of industrialization. These are all respectable in certain ways of course, but it showcases how even radical unorthodox ideas are really conforming to the mainstream more than any form of conservatism⁴.

Diplomacy Today: A backstabbr and AI powered newspaper

Diplomacy Today is a python program and corresponding flask application that serves and hosts an early-twentieth-century-style newspapers generated from the turn orders of a game of Diplomacy hosted on backstabbr. The idea, and a large portion of the core code, are not my work, and I deserve none of the credit for it. But the original program seems to have been abandoned last year, and was perhaps only used for one game. But that is the beauty of free software, I have taken nraw’s original code and iterated upon it over the course of, so far, four games. It now contains more features and improved polish that builds upon the basic functionality of a GAI generated in-universe newspaper. I attempted to rewrite the program in chez scheme as a learning exercise, but ended up not using it as python has some nice libraries that I couldn’t bother to reimplement in scheme.

To use it you should:

1. Make sure Mozilla Firefox is installed.
2. Clone the Github repository:

git clone https://github.com/JanJoar/diplomacy_today.git

cd diplomacy_today

1. Install all the python packages:

pip install -r requirements.txt

1. Get your OpenAI API key and export it to the OPENAI_API_KEY environment variable.
2. Generate the newspaper:

python3 main.py

1. Run the web application using something like gunicorn:

gunicorn -b 0.0.0.0:1914 app:app

If you have any issues with installation or want to features, feel free to contact me, preferably at my email at joarxpablo@pm.me so that I can improve the program.