#3: OMG LOL *skrrRRKSSSHH*

Why do people text and drive?

I was in the car with my boyfriend, and we were driving from my house in the Bay Area back to SLO after a fun weekend with my family. He was driving, and I was taking a nap. When I woke up, I looked over, and saw him texting. Immediately I told him to stop, and he dropped his phone into his lap and went, "Wasn't me!" I told him not to text while driving, and asked if he had been doing that the whole time I was sleeping. He replied, almost indignant, "No! My friend was just talking to me about this Prophets of Rage concert that happened in LA this past weekend and I wanted to know what he was saying."

That blew my mind. Like wow okay I hope you appreciate knowing that a bunch of people got wasted in a park listening to rock music while we lay in a ditch somewhere in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere surrounded by broken glass and a dented car frame, dirt and blood splattered everywhere. Pardon my French (and hyperbole), but his answer was just that astounding to me. He made it seem like I was the one being unreasonable for valuing my life--OUR lives--over his (relatively) unimportant conversation. You never NEED to text someone while driving, even if they claim it's urgent. If it's really urgent, they'll call. I don't understand why people do this... Every single person without fail is a worse driver when they text and drive, and this can literally kill people. OTHER people, not just you, the driver.

Let's just map this out for a second... Let's say my boyfriend crashed, and we both died because he crashed into a ditch. We both have 5-person nuclear families, and very large extended families. Already, over 50 people have been affected by this. And that's not including our friends, assuming only our very closest friends feel significant grief. Okay, so that's the mini-articulation of emotional wreckage. The insurance companies have to be contacted, as do doctors, morticians, funeral organizers, venue owners, headstone makers, potentially lawyers, potentially banks as someone takes out a loan to pay for all of this, maybe someone needs a therapist, who knows.

Everything is so much bigger than who we are where we are when we are. Why do we act like it's not? Where did this weird assumption that what SHOULD be low-level tasks (e.g. brake, accelerate, etc.) can now just be high-level tasks (e.g. get from A to B without crashing or getting pulled over) come from? Why don't we pay attention anymore?

Are we overestimating the extent to which we can control multiple technologies simultaneously? The extent to which are cyborgian bodies enable us? Clark sort of gets at the notion of assemblages in his chapter "Bad Borgs?" He talks about how the webs in which we are entangled are getting larger and more complex, but that we haven't lost any control. Rather, we must establish a more biological connection with these webs (assemblages): "The complementary skills of these biological subsystems help make human intelligence what it is today. The complementary skills of a host of nonbiological subsystems will help make human intelligence what it is tomorrow" (176). But humans can't master all skills, can they? There literally aren't enough eyes in a human body to make texting and driving (obviously, self-driving cars notwithstanding) a thing. But is the concept of a self-driving car, where you could easily text and drive, the human intelligence of tomorrow Clark is writing about?

Why do we just assume this human intelligence of tomorrow is good? Again, to bring in the last blog post and one my favorite chapters from S & W, "Progress for whom? ... Progress for what? ... The problem comes when the 'careful measure' of the real quality of real people's lives is abandoned in favor of the unexamined affective power of the language of progress that can be used to degrade that very same quality of life" (29-31). Who is this human intelligence benefitting? Who are the humans that are the intelligent ones? What is and is not and intelligent skill of a nonbiological subsystem? Where are we going, and why?

#2: Progress At Your Own Convenience

Dr. Blau, I've been waiting until we finished reading this book to write this blog post, because I was sure that the later, heavier chapters would surely inspire me to write... But after what, 8 weeks? I still ask myself almost every single day about Chapters 2 & 3 from Slack and Wise: "Progress" and "Convenience." In retrospect, I probably should have written these sooner given how often I thought about these two chapters, but I really thought Agency or surely Identity would do it for me... And while they were both excellent chapters, these questions of progress and convenience are on my mind almost every day.

I was so glad when you asked Dr. Slack (I had to actively restrain myself from having a when-I-met-Dr.-Ceccarelli-level explosion, because hoLY SHIT I SAW THIS WOMAN AND SHE ANSWERED A QUESTION I ASKED!!!) about what she does in her life to actually deal with believing what she does about progress and about convenience, because I've been struggling with the same thing. It's never enough to question the status quo; you have to be able to do something about it too. (If it's unclear, I whole-heartedly support the Revolution.)

The whole time I was reading these chapters I was nodding almost every two seconds. I've underlined things several times for emphasis, written "YESSSS" (or some variation thereof) in the margins almost 10 times, and generally just agreed with everything the authors were saying. I mean, they're just so right. "We often hear, 'you can't stop progress;' but what is often meant is, 'you shouldn't stop progress'" (17). THAT'S ONE OF THE MOST CORRECT THINGS I'VE EVER READ!!! "When it comes to conveniences, the reasonable choice seems to be to toss it and consume something new" (45). DR. BLAU!!! YES!!! Amazon has something called Amazon Dash, and they're basically little buttons that you own and they're hooked up to your Amazon account, and each button is for a specific product, and whenever you click the button, it orders that product for you. If that isn't the epitome of "progressive" and "convenient" technologies aiding and abetting the delightfully horrific structures of consumerism and capitalism, I don't know what is.

I agree with basically everything they wrote in these chapters, so I won't go on about that much longer, but for me... They just didn't really go far back enough in the human timeline.

Are progress and convenience just human desires? Convenience maybe more conscious, progress less so? When fire became a thing, was that not just so we could see at night? Either to protect ourselves or to hunt for longer, whatever it was? Was that not just convenience? And then as fire led to things like cooking and traveling for longer periods of time and other cool stuff, was that not progress? Do the things that historically progress our society start as conveniences?

I know what S & W talk about are progress and convenience in a contemporary sense, and I'm totally on board with them. I think we've totally exacerbated what these words mean and how important they are/should be to people, and I think we're screwing ourselves over as a society in always wanting to achieve "progress," making everything that is progressive just a stepping stone instead of an accomplishment. I think we're making too many shortcuts in the name of convenience that're starting to negatively affect our memory (individual and collective), our critical thinking, etc.

But are these just inherent to humanity? Humans are a storytelling species; are they also a species that wants an easier, better life? I mean, other animals do this too, right? The reason the predators will stop to eat the slowest of the pack isn't because it's objectively the best prey to eat, it's because it's the most convenient. Clark talks about it himself in his chapter "Global Swarming," when he talks about how ants make food trails. He literally writes, "... in order to discover and exploit the best, meaning shortest routes..." (145). (Already a ton to be said about how he's totally buying into the narrative of convenience, but disregarding that...)

I know the point isn't that doing things for the sake of convenience or the sake of progress is 100% inherently bad, but that we should question why we are doing something and if our "progress" is really progress, and if our convenience comes at negative expenses to things... Basically, to be critical... But it's hard to find the line. And I might be over-critical and way too cynical of innovation because of its tendency to privilege certain people and disadvantage others (white supremacist capitalist patriarchy rearing its ugly head, once again)... But maybe I shouldn't be?

I don't know Dr. Blau. I'm still a little confused on this one. Not confused... Just uncertain. I feel like these chapters left me with so many questions (some of which I'd like to think are "good question" questions), but I just feel like I have so few answers.