[jdreyfuss]

Good food for thought. A lot to consider there.

I think besides the dichotomy of finding your in-group necessitating more clearly defining the out-groups and the harm that can come with that, there's also an underlying question of whether or not being able to so easily "find your people" is a positive thing in sum. It certainly seems positive for marginalized people and for niche fandoms and geekeries and all the usual ways we think about it, but on the flip side of the coin, the same ease also exists for hate groups and those seeking to cause harm.

[educomments]

The KKK and the nazis managed to form and grow without the help of the internet. Also, finding other people who enjoy talking about cars or writing fan fic doesn't have this sort of harmful in-group/out-group dynamic.

So I'm a bit skeptical of the narrative of the piece, especially because there's no actual evidence provided.

My skepticism extends to the broader narrative of this newsletter.

Illich's alternatives -- especially the conviviality stuff -- always struck me as dangerously Utopian: if only we were all the same, then everything would be great.

He's like that well-meaning stoner who asks "why can't we all just get along" and sort of shakes his head and tells you that you don't get it if you ask how, concretely, we're supposed to "just get along" in Gaza or Darfur or Kashmir or any other place where there's a lot of zero-sum resource/power allocation underlying centuries of conflict. The dismissal of real and concrete harms on both sides of conflict is at least unhelpful and possibly harmful.

Conviviality is a nice sentiment, and the world would perhaps be a better place if everyone shared that sentiment. But sentiment is a starting point, not an actual solution. The world's problems are usually too complex to be solved with pure sentiment, and things will go wrong in unexpected ways if you try.

One concrete example: the modern commercial internet's ad-driven information economy elucidates a major flaw with Illich's "Learning Webs" from Deschooling Society: the company that owns the platform just happens to be an ad company. It's a flaw that even the strongest critics of Illich could never have anticipated in the 1970s.

The point is more general: convivial societies only work if everyone is convivial, and there will always be insanely inventive non-convivial people. Even people who are more-or-less decent folks and even people who adopt slogans like "don't be evil" will end up throwing wrenches in your plan.

[ruytlm]

>Also, finding other people who enjoy talking about cars or writing fan fic doesn't have this sort of harmful in-group/out-group dynamic.

Purely anecdotally, but I beg to differ. There is more than a little bit of tribal hostility on e.g. Tumblr around various fandoms.

To me, the real issue is that surrounding yourself with like-minded people only teaches you to interact with people you primarily agree with and are comfortable with, rather than the more valuable skill of interacting (civilly) with people you disagree with.

[taneq]

> that well-meaning stoner who asks "why can't we all just get along" and sort of shakes his head and tells you that you don't get it if you ask how, concretely, we're supposed to "just get along" in Gaza or Darfur or Kashmir or any other place where there's a lot of zero-sum resource/power allocation underlying centuries of conflict

It just hit me while reading this that stoners are (often) slackers, and it really does make less sense to fight over resources instead of sharing if you start with this mindset.

[dredmorbius]

The Nazis in particular utilised the mass media of the times, most especially audio, public address, and radio, though also video newsreels and cheap paperback publishing, to spread their message.

During and prior to WWII, german advances especially in audio capture (mic), recording (mag tape), playback (speakers), and broadcast & receiver (radio) were decades ahead of the Allies' own technology.

You don't get the Nueremberg rallies without high-quality mics, massive public-address ampifiers and speakers and cinematgraphy (Leni Riefenstahl). Hitler's ability to broadcast live-quality radio addresses across Germany stumped Allied intelligence -- their best recording technologies were wire recordings and low-fidelity vinyl, both with very obvious artifacts (wire recorder demo here, at beginning of video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=90ihiTwJPCc). The only way to achieve this quality otherwise was to be in the studio, and this clearly wasn't possible.

("Wearing a wire" refers to wire recorders.)

After WWI, Bing Crosby, with support through military and government intelligence, was instrumental in developing US magnetic audio and data tape technology, through AMPEX and 3M.

https://web.archive.org/web/20070929110934/https://www.ameri...

https://web.archive.org/web/20080821140025/http://history.sa...

(There is a further AMPEX-CIA connection through Larry Ellison and Oracle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Ellison)

It was German use of mass media -- though in WWI-- that turned the meaning of 'propaganda" from literally a holy undertaking (the propagation of faith by the Roman Catholic Church) to its present pejorative sense. WWII Nazis capitalised heavily on and greatly extended earlier practices.

Tactical use of radio communications also playe a decisive role in war -- the key differentiator between Grman and French armour in the Battle of France was that German tanks all had radios, and could respond to developing circumstances. French tankers could only play out prescribed batle plans, or act independently and uncoordinated with all other units.

There is actually a long history of the disruptive (and often highly harmful) effects of new and especially mass media, and numerous historical inflection points can be traced to revolutions in information and communications technologies: moveable type and the Thirty Years War, vast advances in printing technology and literacy and the revolutions of 1789-1914, and later ("the long 19th century" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_nineteenth_century), yellow journalism and the Spanish-American War, WWI, tje Russian Revolution, WWII, the Chinese Revolution, Father Coughlan, Jim Crow, Civil Rights, the Vietnam War ant ant-war movements, the rise of hard-right talk radio and cable television, and lately, social and mobile Internet.

Today's Nazis and KKK are using the Internet. It's the cheap, high-fidelity, visceral-imact mass medium of the age.

[leetcrew]

maybe this is a naive view, but imo the ability to find people "like you" is a neutral thing. it can be very good, very bad, or somewhere in between depending on your definition of "like you". I certainly don't miss the times when I was the only person I knew who thought computers were cool.

[raxxorrax]

> the same ease also exists for hate groups and those seeking to cause harm

Which are the only ones you will find if you are looking for something negative. There is a downside to almost everything, so what would you suggest? Force everyone into the same group or allow them to choose?

I don't think this question is hard to answer.