Tagcapitalism

πŸ”– The Shape Of The Machine (archive) by Mike Hoye

Google’s monitor and monetize system can be broken down into three parts. In isolation these parts seem to be well-intentioned.

  • Performance: AMP will speed up your web pages
  • Search: Faster loading pages are better search results
  • Advertising: Ad revenue keeps websites alive.

Put them all together and it becomes a thinly veiled extortion scheme. And unlike Microsoft and Facebook, Google still pretends that it is doing good work with good intentions.

πŸ”– Radical Care as the Foundation for a Better World (archive)

Care is the foundation of society. It goes unrecognized and is undervalued. It is crucial for the maintenance of the personal, as well as the maintenance of infrastructures and institutions. Without it there would be no economy, culture, or politics.

Care goes beyond the logic of capitalism:

  • Value as defined by capitalism is quantifiable through economic measures
  • Values like caring on the other hand are cultural, ethical, and qualitative, and are thus hard to measure

There are places where radical careΒ isΒ beingΒ demonstrated. Sociologists can enable Popular Education, a process that connects people’s experiences with critical theories. This helps people place their problems in a historical and political context and use the knowledge to develop strategies for change.