Subtle algorithmic tuning

"I fear the subtle algorithmic tuning of feeds more than I fear blatant dark ads. It used to be impossible to send customized messages to millions of people instantly. It used to be impossible to test and design multitudes of customized messages, based on detailed observation and feedback from unknowing people who are kept under constant surveillance.

"It might turn out that a certain font around someone's portrait on a certain day makes a small percentage of people trust that person just a little less. Maybe the same font showed up in a popular video about an unpleasant topic that same day. No one will ever know why the font has the effect it does, though. It's all statistical." (p. 78)

From Jaron Lanier's "Ten Arguments for Deleting your Social Media Accounts Right Now"

Stars are abscesses upon the skin of our universe.

By invoking a brane metaphor for our universe we can see stars as an abcesses upon that 'skin' or brane. Through it light leaks, which in our universe has the property of energy. But it is a filtered 'bleed through' of a pure idea from another dimension intent upon ordering our universe. In that other dimension all is purely crystalline but its structure is merely a resonance pattern because in this dimension, where idea and substance are coextensive, being and idea are all times and everywhere, always.

The pornographic object

The pornographic object is the pupil.

Recording media turn culture and history into a trash heap. Because it subjects us to peering through a hole in the fence.