| Yes it's hard to know what is appetitive and what is rejecting in
culture right now. It is really self-devouring in some ways. What the author (Luke Burgis) refers to as "thick" desires are, to me,
simply the age old depth of human values - messy, complex,
emotional. And he paints the countervailing ethos as "thin" - one
dimensional man (to use Herbert Marcuse's term). But I am not sure his food metaphor works as vibrantly as he would
like, to describe culture, and in some places I think he gets it
backwards. Also, one should more sensitive throwing around words like
"anorexic" without thinking what that condition entails. When I wrote Digital Vegan, it's original title was going to be
something like "Digital self-defence" [1]. But I wanted to avoid too
strong a combatative metaphor for that book. The Cody Brown quote that
is the final title came late, in recognition of the hostility towards
those wanting more control over their diet, whether digital or
culinary, and the courage needed to take a principled stance. But control, or the lack of it, and compensatory behaviours is at the
heart of many problems. I had been reading Susie Albach's Bodies
about dysmorphia, abuse and self-perception. The relation of these to
technology had a big influence on me. However, reading about teen
suicides, now linked to social media and having in some ways
supplanted eating disorders in focus, led me to add this to the
preface: " Throughout this book I use the metaphor of food and consumption to
talk about technology. In no way do I mean disrespect or to trivialise
the serious conditions of anorexia, bulimia, avoidant eating, or
obesity. Indeed, I believe that many forms of technological and
material abuse share the same root causes. " Whether we build ourselves and our culture "thin" or "thick" revolves
around our ability to control what we take in, our knowledge of how it
affects us, and our own extant self-image in relation to what we seek
out. [1] Thats phrase has been knocking around the cryptoparty scene
since 2010, and Snowden uses it in "Permanent Record". |