Just as Josef K, the protagonist of Kafka's 'The Trial,' awoke one day to discover that he had become part of some unfathomable legal carnival, we, too are frequently waking to discover that the rules of the digital game have once again profoundly changed.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes how rapidly changing digital landscapes can impact our lives, often without warning or understanding.
Evgeny Morozov draws a parallel between Kafka's character, Josef K, who finds himself caught in an incomprehensible legal system, and our own experiences with the unpredictable nature of the digital world. Just as Josef K feels helpless amidst the arbitrary rules of his situation, we similarly face the constant evolution of technology and digital environments that reshape our understanding of reality and our roles within it.
In practice
During a tech conference, when discussing the implications of rapid technology changes.
Technological defeatism - a belief that, since a given technology is here to stay, there's nothing we can do about it other than get on with it and simply adjust our norms - is a persistent feature of social thought about technology. We'll come to pay for it very dearly.
For many oppositional movements, the Internet, while providing the opportunity to distribute information more quickly and cheaper, may have actually made their struggle more difficult in the long run.
I have no problem with technological solutions to social problems. The key question for me is, 'Who gets to implement them?' and, 'What kinds of politics of reform do technological solutions smuggle through the back door?'
The newspaper offers something very different from Google's aggregators. It offers a value system, an idea of what matters in the world. Newspapers need to start articulating that value.
Social media's greatest assets - anonymity, 'virality,' interconnectedness - are also its main weaknesses.
The decentralized nature of online conversations often makes it easier to manipulate public opinion, both domestically and globally. Regimes that once relied on centralized systems of media control can now deliver ideological messages more subtly, with the help of little-known intermediaries like anonymous commenters on websites.
More than anything else, technology will pave the way for innovative change at Starbucks. The bulk of Starbucks' innovation over the next several years will be technology-focused.
Our dream was that someday nobody would talk on a wired telephone. Everybody would talk on a wireless phone.
A most important, but also most elusive, aspect of any tool is its influence on the habits of those who train themselves in its use. If the tool is a programming language this influence is, whether we like it or not, an influence on our thinking habits.... A programming language is a tool that has profound influence on our thinking habits.
Technology is not an image of the world but a way of operating on reality. The nihilism of technology lies not only in the fact that it is the most perfect expression of the will to power... but also in the fact that it lacks meaning.
Once the automobile appeared you could have predicted that it would destroy as many people as it did.
Safety is not just about trying really hard and being really careful. You have to design technology that makes it possible for a computer to be safe.
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