Series | Platypus

Fake News and the Rotten George Soros

 Bryce Peake  May 25, 2017

One of the fascinating things about FAKE NEWS and the attendant debate about bias, lying, facts and information is the incredible relevance of so-called “classic” anthropology in our current moment. For my money, Levi-Strauss has been particularly important for my ethnographic work with the highly combustible rhetoric and action of the American Right. For the past two years, I’ve been doing ethnographic fieldwork with Trump supporters, specifically white nationalists, but also everyday individuals with different investments in Trump as a symbol and idea concretized into a body. As anthropologists (and other assorted ethnographers) comment on the political milieu in the US, I have been shocked by the shallow, simplified assumptions about how the Right operates. “Ideology” is such an unsatisfying shorthand, which assumes so much. Here, I’d like to take off from Andria Timmer’s post over at Savage Minds about who George Soros, the Right’s favorite punching bag, actually is. Here, I want to argue that for Trump supporters of all different stripes, it doesn’t actually matter who Soros is or what he does. George Soros – and the same thing might be said about FACTS or NEWS more widely – is something that “grassroots” conservative activists think with, not about. Fake news, in other words, is about ritual and a political cosmology. (read more...)

Three Perspectives on “Fake News”

 Shreeharsh Kelkar  May 9, 2017

Editor’s Note: Today, Shreeharsh Kelkar brings us the inaugural post in a new series on Fake News and the Politics of Knowledge. The goal is to tackle the knowledge politics of both so-called “fake news” itself and the discourse that has cropped up around it, from a wide range of theoretical perspectives on media, science, technology, and communication. If you are interested in contributing, please write to editor@castac.org with a brief proposal. Donald Trump’s shocking upset of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US Presidential Election brought into wide prominence issues that heretofore had been debated mostly in intellectual and business circles: the question of “filter bubbles,” of people who refuse to accept facts (scientific or otherwise), and what these mean for liberal democracies and the public sphere. All these concerns have now have coalesced around an odd little signifier, “fake news” . (read more...)

Becoming More Capable

 Alex Taylor  April 22, 2017

Editor’s Note: This is the second post in the series on Disabling Technologies “We need to exercise the imagination in order to elbow away at the conditions of im/possibility.” Ingunn Moser & John Law (1999, 174) What is it to be capable? How might we elbow away the conditions that limit ability, to become more capable? In this short piece, I take seriously Rebekah’s invitation to account for “different ways of doing, acting, and living in the world.” The anthropological imperative to “take into account difference” and consider how objects “intersect with social worlds, imaginaries and emergent social practices” speaks to my ongoing efforts to engage with the long and troubled relationship between technology and dis/ability. Specifically, it resonates with my work that asks what, if anything, artificial intelligence (AI) might offer the blind and vision impaired. (read more...)

After, and Before, Anthropos

 Jon Bialecki  April 6, 2017

Filled with new atheists who see religion as “deathism,” yet animated by yearnings for immortality played out on a cosmic scale, it is easy to see why there is debate as to whether transhumanism and singulatarianism are either formally or effectively religious or religion. On one hand, the anthropologist Abou Farman has convincing argued that the one of the key historical possibility conditions for transhumanism to emerge as self-conscious social movement was religion’s loss of its monopoly on the ability to make determining statements on ultimate issues. If the Church cannot speak authoritatively about eternity, perhaps some futurists can? But Farman’s observation has to be weighed against the plethora of transhumanist organizations that have taken on religious trappings – groups like Teresem, Turing Church, or The Church of Perpetual Life. Further, there is also the claim that since striving for immortality can be given a genealogy that runs as far back as the epic of Gilgamesh, it cannot be properly classified as solely belonging to the secularism or the current secular dispensation (though this argument mistakes genealogical linkage for fixed identity). (read more...)

Weekly Round-up | March 31st, 2017

 Ian Lowrie  March 31, 2017

We’re back to full steam on the round-up this week! Your editor’s brief paternity leave included the aimless stockpiling of dozens of partially-read tabs in Chrome, and we’ve got the cream of the crop for you here. As always, let us know if you’ve written, sculpted, recorded, or just stumbled across anything cool on the web for next week’s round-up. (read more...)

Anthropos beyond the Human

 Grant Otsuki  March 14, 2017

In their thoughtful provocation, Jon Bialecki and Ian Lowrie focus our attention on anthropos, and suggest that in transhumanists, anthropologists might find kindred spirits. Though our approaches and traditions may differ, we share “the same conceptual terrain.” Concerned as we all are about shifts in our ways of living and being in a “rapidly accelerating technological contemporary,” transhumanists and anthropologists may indeed have much to learn from each other about future forms of anthropos. But implied in their discussion is a convergence between “anthropos” and “human.” What is at stake in making this equation? Transhumanists and anthropologists alike are tuned into the future of the human, but we should also remember that futures are never very evenly distributed. My work has focused on figuring out the contours of a similar problem space. My main ethnographic study was on a network of researchers in Japan who make what they call ningen-chūshin gijutsu (人間中心技術), roughly “human-centered technology.” These take the forms of humanoid and non-humanoid robots, and various types of wearable technologies. Much of what they develop are interface technologies that operate on a variety of senses: vision, hearing, and touch, but also balance and proprioception. These researchers want to use such interfaces to make humans faster, more efficient, or more comfortable, or link them to machines to off-load repetitive tasks to free up a human for more demanding or interesting things. (read more...)

What the $@#! is an “implication for design”?

 Rebekah Cupitt  March 7, 2017

Editor’s Note: This is the first post in the series on Disabling Technologies The upcoming theme for the Association for American Anthropologists Annual Meeting is “Anthropology Matters.” While clearly signalling the need for anthropologists to engage and contribute to current social and political affairs in the U.S., the theme can also be interpreted more generally. Today, we’re announcing an upcoming thematic series, Disabling Technologies, which will look at how anthropological perspectives matter for technology designers working in contexts of health, disability, and equality across the globe. (read more...)