Tag: attention economy

the communicative engine of populism

Post author By G
Post date Jun 3, 2026
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The deeper question of our historical moment concerns whether large-scale communication systems can remain sustainably coherent while continuously generating the uncertainty upon which their own operation depends.

Tags attention economy, イデオロギー, エントロピー, コミュニケーション, テクノロジー, ポピュリズム, ý nghĩa, Bedeutung, công nghệ, chủ nghĩa dân túy, communication, communicative systems, Complexity, cybernetics, 熵, 真理, 確率, 系統理論, 系统理论, daedalus, Daedelus Kite, democracy, вероятность, значение, идеология, истина, коммуникация, популизм, entropie, entropy, 言語, 語言, 语言, 기술, field logic, hệ tư tưởng, idéologie, ideology, 소통, 포퓰리즘, 언어, 엔트로피, 확률, 의미, 이데올로기, 진리, 철학, Kommunikation, langage, language, meaning, ngôn ngữ, технология, философия, энтропия, язык, phase locking, philosophie, Philosophy, political extremism, populism, populisme, Populismus, probabilité, probability, propaganda, resonance, sự thật, sens, social media, Sprache, systems theory, technocracy, technologie, technology, triết học, truth, truyền thông, uncertainty, فلسفه, فلسفة, فناوری, لغة, معنى, معنا, پوپولیسم, vérité, Wahrheit, Wahrscheinlichkeit, xác suất, 傳播, 哲学, 哲學, 意義, 意識形態, 意识形态, 意味, 意义, 技術, 技术, 概率, 機率, 民粹主義, 民粹主义, 传播, آنتروپی, أيديولوجيا, إنتروبيا, ایدئولوژی, اتصال, احتمال, ارتباطات, تكنولوجيا, حقيقة, حقیقت, زبان, شعبوية

Philosophy

the gap is the product

Advertising sells illuminated absence, incentivising us to pursue idealised selves that remain permanently, profitably out of reach.

Philosophy

can’t buy me love

Wealth is not virtue; it is often merely the moment at which exploitation, inheritance, appetite, spectacle, and institutional obedience acquire sufficient polish that the public begins misunderstanding aggregate power as sufficient proxy for strategic wisdom and true moral virtue.

cybernetics

Barry, from Parramatta

A technologically-mediated civilisation has built planetary systems of prediction and control around biological reflexes still calibrated for tribe, threat, status, and symbolic belonging.

cybernetics

The first rule of communication systems theory fight club…

Post author By G
Post date May 22, 2026
2 Comments on The first rule of communication systems theory fight club…

It took me a long time and much exasperation to recognise and acknowledge that the first rule of communication systems theory club is: do not tell people about the theory. Not because the theory is secret. Because the theory is ineffective as information. People are not waiting for a better model of the system that […]

Tags attention economy, bureaucratic life, cognitive burden, cognitive overload, communication economy, communication systems theory, communicative overload, complexity theory, cultural criticism, cultural machinery, cultural systems, institutional complexity, maintenance burden, meaning systems, modern alienation, modern bureaucracy, modern life, network society, recursive systems, social architecture, social complexity, social maintenance, social performance, social systems, social theory, structural alienation, structural complexity, structural inertia, symbolic architecture, symbolic economy, symbolic performance, system persistence, systemic inertia, systems philosophy, systems theory, systems thinking, technological mediation, technology and society

Philosophy

Loneliness: The Cost of Connection

Post author By G
Post date May 22, 2026
No Comments on Loneliness: The Cost of Connection

In post-industrial Western societies, relationships increasingly pass through technological and transactional systems before they pass directly between people. Friendship, intimacy, courtship, status, belonging: much of social life now moves through screens, platforms, metrics, services, and algorithmic surfaces. Distance has collapsed. Presence has become persistent. The modern person can remain linked to hundreds, even thousands, of […]

cybernetics

Transactional Isolation as Control Plane: Social Media and the Industrialisation of Communicative Alienation

Post author By G
Post date May 11, 2026
No Comments on Transactional Isolation as Control Plane: Social Media and the Industrialisation of Communicative Alienation

Social media platforms are usually described as communication technologies, but their deeper operational logic is closer to behavioural recurrence management. They do not optimise for resolution, understanding, repair, or psychological settlement. They optimise for continued return. That means the platform is not primarily designed to complete the user’s need, but to make the user come […]

cybernetics

Cognitive Bandwidth and the Politics of Belief

Post author By G
Post date May 9, 2026
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Cognitive bandwidth becomes cultural destiny because the carrying capacity of technologically mediated communication systems exceeds the carrying capacity of the biological minds living inside them.

Tags adaptive communication, adaptive communication structures, adaptive communicative systems, adaptive cultural systems, adaptive emergence, adaptive informational dynamics, adaptive political systems, adaptive semantic systems, adaptive sociotechnical systems, adaptive symbolic systems, adaptive systems theory, adaptive transmission systems, adaptive volatility, adaptive-systems, algorithmic amplification, algorithmic culture, attention, attention and culture, attention economy, attention infrastructure, attention systems, belief systems, cognition, cognitive bandwidth, cognitive carrying capacity, cognitive infrastructure, cognitive limits, cognitive overload, cognitive systems, collective behaviour, collective cognition, collective semantics, communication acceleration, communication and adaptation, communication and adaptive evolution, communication and cognition, communication and complexity, communication and emergence, communication and entropy dynamics, communication and power, communication and recursive complexity, communication and systemic risk, communication and volatility, communication attractors, communication dynamics, communication ecology, communication entropy, communication field dynamics, communication overload, communication system continuity, communication systems, communication theory, communication under complexity, communication-driven culture, communicative complexity, communicative entanglement, communicative evolution, communicative phase space, communicative recursion, communicative-fields, complex adaptive systems, complex systems, Complexity, complexity and cognition, complexity and communicative systems, complexity and culture, complexity and meaning, complexity and politics, complexity and transmission, complexity dynamics, complexity theory, cultural adaptation, cultural attractor states, cultural attractors, cultural entropy, cultural evolution, cultural feedback, cultural informational dynamics, cultural informational systems, cultural infrastructure, cultural recursion, cultural signal propagation, cultural systems, cultural throughput, cultural transmission, cultural volatility, cybernetic culture, cybernetic systems, cybernetics, distributed adaptive systems, distributed cognition, distributed cognition systems, distributed communication, distributed communicative fields, distributed cultural cognition, distributed cultural systems, distributed meaning, distributed semantic systems, distributed symbolic systems, distributed systems, emergence, emergence and complexity, entropy, entropy and belief, entropy and communication, entropy and culture, entropy and networks, entropy and sociotechnical systems, entropy and systems, entropy dynamics, evolutionary communication, feedback, field logic, human-systems, hyper-networked systems, hyperconnectivity, identity systems, ideological recursion, ideological systems, ideological transmission, information ecology, information overload, information systems, informational attractors, informational civilisation, informational continuity, informational culture, informational density, informational ecosystems, informational environments, informational phase space, informational politics, informational recursion, informational recursion dynamics, informational social systems, informational survivability, informational systems, media acceleration, media ecology, media recursion, media systems, media theory, network culture, network dynamics, networked belief systems, networked cognition, networked communication, networked society, neural bandwidth, phase space, phase-space dynamics, philosophy of technology, platform dynamics, political communication, political communication systems, political entropy, political psychology, political systems, politics of belief, recurrence, recursion, recursive adaptation, recursive adaptive systems, recursive amplification, recursive attention systems, recursive belief structures, recursive communication, recursive communication ecology, recursive communication structures, recursive communication systems, recursive communicative entanglement, recursive cultural attractors, recursive cultural communication, recursive cultural evolution, recursive cultural morphology, recursive cultural systems, recursive cultural transmission, recursive dynamics, recursive entropy, recursive field dynamics, recursive identity, recursive ideological propagation, recursive ideological systems, recursive ideology, recursive informational ecology, recursive informational systems, recursive media, recursive network dynamics, recursive political communication, recursive politics, recursive semantic systems, recursive semantics, recursive social dynamics, recursive social entanglement, recursive social propagation, recursive social systems, recursive socio-cultural systems, recursive sociotechnical systems, recursive structures, recursive symbolic structures, recursive systems, recursive transmission, semantic amplification, semantic attractors, semantic compression, semantic density, semantic evolution, semantic fields, semantic infrastructu, semantic recurrence, semantic recursion, semantic stability, semantic systems, semantic transmission, semantics, signal propagation, social communication systems, social complexity, social entropy, social systems, sociotechnical complexity, sociotechnical systems, symbolic compression, symbolic systems, symbolic transmission, systemic adaptation, systemic cognition, systemic communication, systemic dynamics, systemic emergence, systemic informational dynamics, systemic risk, systemic semantic evolution, systems and communication, systems and entropy, systems and identity, systems and identity formation, systems and media, systems and recurrence, systems and symbolic order, systems dynamics, systems ecology, systems emergence, systems of collective belief, systems of meaning, systems of recurrence, systems of symbolic reproduction, systems of transmissibility, systems ontology, systems philosophy, systems propagation, systems theory, systems thinking, systems under informational pressure, systems-level communication, technoculture, technological acceleration, technological communication, technological communicative systems, technological culture, technological entropy, technological informational systems, technological media systems, technological mediation, technological social systems, technological society, technological systems, transmissibility, transmission dynamics

Philosophy

Bad Words With Weapons

Language does not contain the world; the world contains language, yet impoverished meaning becomes machinery, mythology, and moral fact precisely when language behaves as though its crude categories contain reality itself.

Philosophy

Life is wonderful…

…and the world still offers beauty without asking for an account, a password, a dashboard, a technical-debt register, or a defensible reason; nevertheless, we now live inside a rusting scaffold of technological systems, each one Frankenstein-rebuilt from yesterday’s failures and sold as tomorrow’s cure. Social media is only the visible rash. Beneath it sits the […]

Philosophy

Moloch: The Neurochemistry of Transnational Greed

Post author By G
Post date Apr 26, 2026
No Comments on Moloch: The Neurochemistry of Transnational Greed

Transnational corporate power does not merely strip-mine the material world. That would be amateur hour. It also strip-mines the symbolic order: trust, language, law, legitimacy, attention, aspiration, fear, guilt, hope, all the warm little mammals by which civilisation convinces itself it is not just a spreadsheet wearing perfume. The corporation no longer sells products in […]

Philosophy

Bad Moon Rising: The Statistical Field of Power

Post author By G
Post date Apr 26, 2026
No Comments on Bad Moon Rising: The Statistical Field of Power

The statistical field is already acting before the subject appears as a moral interpreter. This is the part capitalism prefers not to see, because capitalism tells its favourite story backwards: the individual wants, chooses, competes, acquires, rises, fails, deserves. But the field has already moved first. Exposure precedes intention. Repetition precedes belief. Scarcity, status, threat, […]