This is an excellent piece. I'm afraid it's too long for most folks to read, which is really a shame. The whole time I was reading, I kept wondering how the web has affected our ability to focus and read, for example, long articles. 25000 words? Or a top 10 list?
Hack the planet.
Also, I think Richard Feynman is relevant here. In one of his Messenger Series lectures (I think it was the one about the distinction of past and future), he talks about how he believes the deepest understanding of humanity, and the universe in general comes from examining every aspect, no matter how distant from your own experience. The entire width of human experience tends to yield the most informed results -- breadth is better than depth, so to speak. Jack of all trades, and all that.
I appreciate the compliment. I kinda knew it would not be read by many because of its length - so I didn't even bother to submit it to hacker news. But I was pleasantly surprised today to see it on the front page. I have been thinking about breaking it up into smaller articles - but something in me has resisted. The most important point requires the reader to stitch together a great number of different threads - and would be largely intelligible without the background.
I tried to explain the idea over at esr's blog - because I thought the crowd there might be interested and might get it. Amusingly esr let loose at me (called me a sloppy thinker no less!) - and I realised it just couldn't be articulated in small bytes of info.
But yeah - intimacy comes at a great cost of time - the time spent really getting to know a person through great chats and extended exploration. This article assumes intimacy with the world because of the time required to invest in it. But if just a few people like yourself get a chance to look at it - and maybe even refine some of the ideas (which they certainly need) - then that's good enough for a first effort.
Splitting it up would definitely detract from the point. I doubt many would discern the irony in it.
One thing that's relevant: very few "hackers" obtain really good, close friends early in life. I've been lucky to have found a few very, very good friendships in middle and high school, and very few since. It continually amazes me how shallow and disconnected most people remain for most of their lives -- I find myself coming back to old friendships constantly (in terms of thinking about how we relate to each other). For example, playing in a band in high school was educational. Being so intimate (in certain ways) with my friends to a point where we could play musically and make mistakes and recover through mere eye contact was quite an experience.
It's something that's difficult to replicate, especially in a field that's so disconnected from human contact. I really appreciated this article because it articulated something I've felt for a long time but haven't been disciplined enough to accurately reflect upon.
Is that true about hackers not really having close friends? I don't know as many hackers as I would like - but two of my very closest friends are hackers (and how I came to be exposed to the culture). Besides that - I've always assumed that hacker culture is very closely related to nerd culture - wherein I find the greatest propensity for intimacy.
I can't really speak for hackers at large, but in general the hacker community is seen as semi-autistic, and I've been diagnosed with an autistic-spectrum disorder (Aspergers). I think perhaps the article (quite excellent otherwise) underplays and maybe misunderstands slightly the way that kind of autistic outlook can alter intimacy. That sort of situation he describes, where you find someone you think you're intimate with and it turns out it's all a lie -- that happens a lot if you're unable to correctly interpret the way people behave. So early "close friends" aren't friends at all, and you never let later friends get close because you can't trust them. At least that's how it is with me, and a lot of people with Aspergers have it much worse. Then again, a lot of people in the hacker community have it much better. But if the hacker community is correctly characterized as autistic... a lack of close friends relative to "normal" people wouldn't surprise me, both early and later in life.
I know that the friends I have from high school are much more intimate (again, in certain ways) than any other friends I've made since. It might have to do with the amount of shared adversity or something like that, and tons of people don't ever experience that. But who knows.
I'm only a single data point, so it's certainly dangerous for me to make assumptions like that.
I'd be surprised if the phenomena of the difficulty of establishing intimate relations later on in life isn't actually universal. The obvious reason why this would be the case is that people have less time when they are older. And intimacy requires lots of time.
After finally getting through the whole thing (which took many installments over the course of two days, due to my schedule actually and not my poor attention span) I see how interconnected all of your ideas are and how the missed intimacy between the artist and hacker (and the irony there) only makes complete sense at the very end. Really fascinating stuff, the entire article.
However, I think where you really shine here is in your descriptions of what intimacy and signaling are, their connection, the role of play in both, and how because intimacy is so valuable, there can be no direct "signal" for it. That plus your close analysis of the first scene of The Social Network, would make a killer essay (although perhaps more about human psychology than the dystopia you're painting here).
I also would have liked to see more examples of places today where (and how and why) intimacy is already being undermined. I think we all have an intuitive sense of, "yeah, now we have lots of really shallow facebook friends instead of a few REAL friends," but that's usually about as far as most people go when making such an argument. Having a face-to-face, one-on-one conversation still feels quite a bit more personal than any computer-mediated communication, and I think most people would agree that it would be nearly impossible to create a real, intimate relationship without some significant personal interaction like that.
But why do we feel that way? Now that I've read your article, I think that (contrary to popular belief), it's not just that we can't tell when someone is being sarcastic on instant messenger. I think you've nailed it when you say, "Notice how relaxed and off-the-record exhange and role-play is becoming a more risky enterprise. All your emails, your musings on your blog – even your google searches. It can all be used against you." We NEED to have conversations that are transient, that we know no one else can ever listen in on. Plus, it's important to occasionally have one's full attention, and knowing that they aren't simultaneously having the same conversation with 9 other people (getting back to your whole theme of "intimacy takes time and is expensive").
As someone who has come of age with the internet, I kind of take it for granted that anything I ever type into a computer may be one day used to humiliate me (well, at least ever since it happened the first time, around age 11) -- I'm sure this has deeply affected how I approach trust, play, and intimacy.
I probably have lots more thoughts that will surface as soon as I hit "reply," but as I'm trying to keep this short enough that you read it, I'll stop here :)
Thanks for investing so much time. Sorry - it's a bit hard to keep track of discussions on HN because of a lack of notifications - so my reply has been a bit slow.
I agree completely that we need a more concrete understanding of how/why intimate behaviours are in fact under threat (if that is indeed the case). The analysis of the first scene of the Social Network was there to give at least one example of how it is two people can actually be quite involved with one another and yet completely fail to establish an intimate connection. But we need more. It's impossible for me alone to provide that data. I'm not even an empirical researcher. But even more importantly - how could an empirical study be conducted? That's a very difficult question.
I think what we need to start by people telling their stories of intimacy - or lack of it. This might at least allow us to begin refining out intuitive understanding - which in turn might allow us to conduct more rigorous investigations.
I'm also pleased you enjoyed the "paradox of modern intimacy" section. I have thoughts about an essay on just that topic alone. Your comment has provided me with a nice motivation boost. Cheers! :)
Wow. 25,000+ words, and yet he missed what I think would be a much more compelling argument to support his thesis; ie: Apple is the perfect storm of Hacker plus Artistic culture. As a company it operates as a native in both the artistic and technological spheres, and that cross cultural influence gives it great power in both spheres.
They're making exceptionally tinkerer-hostile products. Maybe that culture exists inside Apple, but they're doing as much as they can to smother it among the general public.
Yeah - I had stuff to say there - but the article was already way too long - as you point out.
But I don't believe Apple represents the desired fusion - it leans too much on the artistic ideology side imo. But I think that would be much more the controversial claim and more difficult to support - it's another 25k word topic in itself.
Great article. I haven't had time to read the whole thing, but I disagree with the characterization of Jaron Lanier as an artist who can't speak technically (as the author of this article surmises from a choice quotation). Mr. Lanier is a rather gifted hacker.
I think my characterisation of his overall understanding is perhaps not generous enough. I think I was a bit too incensed at the particular argument of his I was focusing on at the time.
But the particular argument of his I was addressing is extremely poor. Perhaps this is more of a result of a lack of understanding about non-technologically related things like art etc... as opposed to his understanding of tech itself.
I agree - the artist in me wrote it for me - selfish creatures that we are. I really never expected anyone to read it - let alone see it on the front page of hn.
But I'm sincere about the efforts to change my ways. I'm writing much less and coding a lot more. ;)
Hum. Completely artificial distinction. I'm both an artist and an hacker, and so are countless other peoples. Was Leonardo Da Vinci an artist, or a hacker? The most preposterous part is when he conflates "philosophers" with artists, this is ridiculous. Was Descartes an artist? Leibniz? Newton?
Overall, this is an irrational, artistic piece, and too long with that :)
Just because someone like you is both and artist and hacker doesn't mean the analysis of the two as distinct tendencies does not have any validity.
Part of what is frustrating about your reply (which I received a lot over at esr's blog) is that we're actually on the same side. While I'm invoking the distinction you're deriding - nevertheless I'm arguing that those who embody more one side than the other should try to balance their approach... and in fact become more like you - should you in fact be someone that has fused those tendencies in a balanced way. So what are you arguing against here exactly?
As for the conflation between artists and philosophers - it was a necessary simplification because I don't have another hundred thousand words worth of time to explicate the commonalities and the differences as I see them. I'm doing a phd in analytic philosophy - so I have some understanding. For the purposes of this article one can assume that the important commonality between the two is that they both have a tendency toward the production of ideology in one form or another. If you want to disagree with that claim - go ahead. But for me to care you'll have to do more than simply claim that I'm ridiculous. Pony up with an argument or be silent.
> For the purposes of this article one can assume that the important commonality between the two is that they both have a tendency toward the production of ideology in one form or another.
I'd say that Philosophy, like science, produces narratives to explain the world. This is very different from art, which never pretended to provide any explanation.
As such, I don't think that non-verbal art generally produces an ideology. An artist, usually does, though, but not through his/her art, through additional, parallel works or discourses. See for instance, Dali's or Berlioz' books; or simply talk about music or painting with a musician, or a painter. The art narrative definitely is outside the scope of art itself.
I suppose most verbal art (litterature, poetry, etc) can carry an ideology. I don't know if the idea system is part of art itself, though. We could debate that an artist' impressions are used to utter his/her idea system without being part of it per se.
I suppose here a strict formalist approach to art. Some people would disagree, however I don't think any other approach to be mainstream nowadays. Your description of art and artists strangely rely upon obsolete 19th century notions, I don't know if it's an elaborate trick or a lack of knowledge of modern art, but it hampers your dissertation; these "romantic views" were more or less dead in 1917 both with Duchamps' fountain and dodecaphonism.
> But for me to care you'll have to do more than simply claim that I'm ridiculous. Pony up with an argument or be silent.
Sorry to have hurt you. I couldn't resist the urge to cry with the trolls. The writing of this piece is way too much casually conversational and magazine-y to be taken too seriously.
Okay - fair enough. I'll leave the discussion about art/philosophy/ideology there as it's too huge for this venue. But I appreciate you taking the time to explicate your view.
I can't resist however pointing out the delicious irony of your last sentence though. It's okay that you took its style to be an indication of poor quality.
I'm interested in attracting readers whose high propensity toward intimate behaviours allows them to look beyond various surface signals and engage with the purely semantic content of the piece. If you did in fact engage the piece in that way - then that makes your final comment so ironic that the thought alone brings me much pleasure in contemplation. Those who did will know exactly what I mean.
Hack the planet.
Also, I think Richard Feynman is relevant here. In one of his Messenger Series lectures (I think it was the one about the distinction of past and future), he talks about how he believes the deepest understanding of humanity, and the universe in general comes from examining every aspect, no matter how distant from your own experience. The entire width of human experience tends to yield the most informed results -- breadth is better than depth, so to speak. Jack of all trades, and all that.
We'll see.