David Graeber: On Bureaucratic Technologies and the Future as Dream-Time

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  • čas přidán 26. 05. 2021
  • The twentieth century produced a very clear sense of what the future was to be, but we now seem unable to imagine any sort of redemptive future. How did this happen? One reason is the replacement of what might be called poetic technologies with bureaucratic ones. Another is the terminal perturbations of capitalism, which is increasingly unable to envision any future at all. (01/19/2012)

Komentáře • 386

  • @sidremus
    @sidremus Před 2 lety +168

    One thing I really don't miss about university is that people, instead of asking a question, give a barely coherent monologue as a comment.

    • @cornerstore_d
      @cornerstore_d Před 2 lety +10

      So true! We do not teach listening and asking questions that's for sure

    • @Kid_Ikaris
      @Kid_Ikaris Před rokem +7

      so true! although you always learn a lot about the speaker on how the reply to those nonsense discursions

    • @BigAussieDonkey
      @BigAussieDonkey Před rokem +1

      So true! People sometimes say things that are not appropriate to their situation

    • @adriaanvanbrugge1960
      @adriaanvanbrugge1960 Před rokem +3

      My thoughts exactly. As well I was wondering about the degree of narcissim and self-importance of individuals while they do exactly what you have described, and in a way try to lecture a vastly more knowledgable speaker instead of humbly asking for clarifications (which is a real purpose of Q&A).

    • @sidremus
      @sidremus Před rokem +6

      @@adriaanvanbrugge1960 "hey you "professional" who only spent his entire life and career on the topic, I just read the wikipedia article and it says here under criticism that..."

  • @Theo.M1989
    @Theo.M1989 Před rokem +39

    David's comparison of an Iphone to a stupid toy was the most lovely, sincere and ideology-smashing phrase of his entire talk. His will be missed

    • @seankelly1291
      @seankelly1291 Před měsícem

      People still say that the iPhone is proof of capitalism's superiority, while I say it's proof of corporate socialism. But at the end of the day, it's just a precursor to what's to come.

  • @cornerstore_d
    @cornerstore_d Před 2 lety +52

    This is a summation of a wonderful essay in "The Utopia of Rules". I never met David, but still I miss him terribly. RIP

  • @AbeldeBetancourt
    @AbeldeBetancourt Před 2 lety +24

    Unbelievably dim Q&A question section.
    The idea that modern capitalist re-organization is making us dumb holds a lot of water.

    • @8xster8
      @8xster8 Před 2 lety

      Their system and purpose got dismantled and they needed to be defensive to justify Stockholm syndrome

  • @davidotness6199
    @davidotness6199 Před 2 lety +98

    An anecdotal aside: the Somali pirates weren't a 'thing' until foreign factory fishing fleets wiped out their coastal fishery resources.

    • @mark3xxy94
      @mark3xxy94 Před 2 lety +6

      in the merchant marine there were tales of pirates in that area in the late 1940s and early 50s.

    • @newagain9964
      @newagain9964 Před 2 lety +3

      @@mark3xxy94 perhaps a small number. Some criminals/bandits/etc are rational actors. They will always exist.

    • @ishumaeruharaorda217
      @ishumaeruharaorda217 Před 2 lety

      Somali pirates are all a pastoral people they are camel and sheep herders and not fishermen, piracy is just profitable and culturally acceptable like cattle rustling

    • @ChannelMath
      @ChannelMath Před rokem +2

      things like that are basically the entire history, not just of capitalism, but of human expansion, no?

  • @jojo-gy9pp
    @jojo-gy9pp Před rokem +30

    I love the way he giggles out of pure joy. It seems like he is amazed he can even have these discussions.

    • @voltcorp
      @voltcorp Před rokem +2

      it's one of the things that makes me relate so much to him (not at all comparing my knowledge or insight). I've always felt genuine joy from deep conversations, and with overwork and pandemic isolation I see myself often giggling with excitement whenever I have an opportunity to engage in them.

  • @1398go
    @1398go Před 2 lety +78

    I still can't believe he has passed away, just devastating! :(

    • @kevintewey1157
      @kevintewey1157 Před 2 lety +1

      Lightbulb lightbulb they thought it was such a great invention but do you remember who invented the recording device? Now we can hear people who are dead
      Edison also?

    • @Dude0000
      @Dude0000 Před 2 lety +4

      @@kevintewey1157 I’m not sure Edison invented the lightbulb.

    • @esindirik4447
      @esindirik4447 Před 2 lety +1

      oh my I didn't know! he was so young, what happened!?

    • @sonnyobrien
      @sonnyobrien Před 11 měsíci

      @@esindirik4447wow you are so cute

  • @kyivstuff
    @kyivstuff Před 2 lety +30

    Just finished The Dawn of Everything. The world lost so much.

  • @leezowers3964
    @leezowers3964 Před 2 lety +58

    Legend. Just read the hist of everything and it is gona help reframe my whole PhD in more hopeful light.

    • @ClarkPotter
      @ClarkPotter Před 2 lety +1

      What is "hist"?

    • @Andrew-yq4gu
      @Andrew-yq4gu Před 2 lety +9

      @@ClarkPotter History. I think he’s referring to Graeber’s last book “The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity.”

    • @kingmu1
      @kingmu1 Před 2 lety +6

      I'm reading it now. It is definitely changing how my book on capitalism will start.

    • @6Diego1Diego9
      @6Diego1Diego9 Před 2 lety +1

      is it boring though? is so long

    • @kingmu1
      @kingmu1 Před 2 lety +4

      @@6Diego1Diego9 It depends on the reader. I thought it was pretty interesting.

  • @LaLasta
    @LaLasta Před 2 lety +20

    I miss David graeber

  • @TommyLikeTom
    @TommyLikeTom Před rokem +10

    The algorithm by which this fellow decides when to take a sip of coffee is so complex that youtube engineers are even stumped

    • @Jacoblue
      @Jacoblue Před 10 měsíci +1

      You genuinely made me laugh. Thank you.

  • @pipster1891
    @pipster1891 Před 2 lety +32

    We play this game with a Graeber lecture - try to guess when he'll actually take a drink from his cup or how many times he'll pick up the cup.

    • @theangryginger7582
      @theangryginger7582 Před 2 lety +8

      His staunch refusal to, at any point in his career, take a sip from one of the coffee cups he so often used as makeshift batons is truly awe-inspiring.

    • @funkbungus137
      @funkbungus137 Před 7 měsíci +3

      like Parenti's eternal struggle with microphones lol.

    • @ChromaticTroubadour
      @ChromaticTroubadour Před 2 měsíci +1

      👌

  • @mizztotal
    @mizztotal Před 2 lety +67

    1:12:38 "So this has nothing to do with human need. It has to do of maintaining a system of radical inequality." Graeber's point is the only reason we don't have technological advances that replace work is because the Elite decided it would undermine their means of social control. So they've stymied growth. Yet no one is really challenging them on it because Americans have been dumbed down enough to believe a new iPhone version with slight changes is somehow progress.
    Sidenote: I was disappointed with the Q&A session in which no one seemed to grasp his idea and people kept asking irrelevant questions. What a waste. Now sadly he's no longer here to ask...rest his soul.

    • @charleswarren1901
      @charleswarren1901 Před 2 lety +1

      First, we're asked in "The Dawn of's" broad theses to accept that all human learning, experiences, beliefs and, indeed, all human history didn't evolve along a linear path from ancient to modern times. Fine. Let's disregard "everything" to hear them out, because these two scholars have landed on something that's never been postulated before.
      Wrong: it has been thrown out there many times, always in nineteenth-century thought, always by romantics who sought to believe we had something to learn from the "noble savage." It was wrong then, and it's wrong, now. Let's recall, "nasty, brutish and short," and let's let it go at that.
      Second: "Everything" asks that we subscribe not only to the NBS ideal, wherein we're drawn into another nineteenth-century ideal of communal living, but can be modernized and modified according to socio-philosophical concepts centered on "equality." And here's the essential flaw, because if the first Helter-Skelterism wasn't bad enough, then its out, now.
      Third, lastly, the authors argue that we need to devolve to a primitive state (which never existed, mind you), one devoid of "hierarchies," in order that we work toward achievement of "equality" for all persons, regardless of sex, race, age, et cetera.
      In short, and if they understood the history of human civilization, then they'd look to the model of the Western European heterosexual male.

    • @vvendetta721
      @vvendetta721 Před 2 lety +10

      @@charleswarren1901 ignorance so well written is madness by any other name.

    • @charleswarren1901
      @charleswarren1901 Před 2 lety +1

      @@vvendetta721 If you have something to say, which I think you do, then say it. I mean, why hold back? I've been waiting for someone to offer a substantiative response to my criticisms, but all I get in return is rude snubs and baseless ad hom attacks. Please try again.

    • @dimeloloco
      @dimeloloco Před 2 lety +8

      @@charleswarren1901 sounds like you’re going through a midlife crisis huh

    • @Soemrjruur
      @Soemrjruur Před 2 lety +8

      @@charleswarren1901 well, if you are going to be a stubborn rationalist positivist about something like an imagined conception of early history and a simply formal conception of his interpretation of historical facts, i suppose you will go no where. and graeber does make positive claims, you can extrapolate many linear paths, but the point of the book is indeed to present a more accurate understanding of the meandering ebb and flow path of knowledge.
      I am surprised and amused with your objection. It is a pretty silly one, and to insist on linearity simply because of a false historicist bastard philosophical pedigree is stupid.

  • @jonathanmerritt8712
    @jonathanmerritt8712 Před 2 lety +38

    Great talk!
    This makes me think of Richard Battin: the guy who led the development of the Apollo Guidance System. Battin was an amazing engineer; if you read the Space Guidance Analysis (SGA) Memos, and his astrodynamics textbook, you can see just *how* technically involved he was. He *personally* contributed techniques and methods that were actually used during the missions. Often working by himself. If you compare Battin with modern-day "leaders" (actually "managers") of large engineering projects; he's totally different! Modern managers have nowhere near the kind of technical expertise and raw mathematical talent that Battin had... like, not even close. In today's world, a quirky, super-intelligent, hands-on guy like Battin would never make it to a leadership position... he'd be skipped over for some pushy go-getter who "delivers" (what they deliver isn't to be questioned, of course).
    Battin is someone from that idealisitic age of technology, when the leaders were truly THE LEADERS, and not the "people leaders" of today.

    • @CynicalBastard
      @CynicalBastard Před 2 lety

      Needs more funding.

    • @therach7841
      @therach7841 Před 2 lety +1

      You're wrong. Science got ruined by the #MeToo. Battin got cancelled for calling a Houston waitress, "toots". He died of a broken heart and the space shuttle Challenger exploded the very next day.

    • @jazpaz5688
      @jazpaz5688 Před 2 lety +3

      @@therach7841 Battin died in 2014, and Challenger exploded in 1986. Try again kiddo

    • @Tasmantor
      @Tasmantor Před rokem +2

      The definition of "go-getter" is the shaky part of what you say. If you mean a "yes man" who will do what the company wants to maximise profits in the short term, then yeah. Actual experts always run the company a risk of saying no and spending money on doing things better not necessarily more profitably, an actual expert might tell an Elon Musk to stfu and go away. Workers telling owners what's up is verboten and that's what kills this sort of leadership.

  • @bpatrickhoburg
    @bpatrickhoburg Před 2 lety +10

    Thank god this man existed

  • @mntnwzrd66
    @mntnwzrd66 Před 2 lety +7

    1930's: Cars, Machine Guns. 2020's: Faster Cars, Faster Machine Guns.

  • @lidu6363
    @lidu6363 Před 2 lety +50

    Ah, why do the Q&A sections of every interesting talk always turn into a line of people just wanting to share their opinion?

    • @jthadcast
      @jthadcast Před 2 lety +7

      yeah, don't they know that's why we get youtube?

    • @tescheurich
      @tescheurich Před 2 lety +6

      Hoomans. We like that

    • @jonathanedwardgibson
      @jonathanedwardgibson Před 2 lety +11

      We share our stories. It’s what we do. We are denied the eve fire to gather and talk. Go with that flow.

    • @TheFlyingBrain.
      @TheFlyingBrain. Před 2 lety +2

      @@jonathanedwardgibson Or don't go with it, if that's your preference. There's a difference between "sharing our story" as a means of self-reflection and closure, leading to an opportunity to move on and become more than we were, and "sharing" as a demand that others honor your particular sacred cow by demanding they demonstrate that their ideas conform to yours. It's not just that people do what they do, so just go with it. It's also WHY people are doing what they do, and what can we learn from that, which will teach us something about how to be better, kinder, happier, smarter, freer, more creative human beings.

    • @Soemrjruur
      @Soemrjruur Před 2 lety +3

      That’s a good thing. I like hearing opinions

  • @crackfox3613
    @crackfox3613 Před 2 lety +52

    Thanks for sharing this, his insights are like a breath of fresh air.

  • @dinnerwithfranklin2451
    @dinnerwithfranklin2451 Před 2 lety +13

    What a beautiful mind.

  • @kippie80
    @kippie80 Před 2 lety +12

    Here here. Thank-you! "Technology emphasis on social control" is absolutely right.

  • @LexiH36
    @LexiH36 Před 2 lety +5

    RIP. He left as soon as we needed him

  • @harminon1280
    @harminon1280 Před 2 lety +4

    RIP. We miss you. Thanks for the new book.

  • @Stret173
    @Stret173 Před 2 lety +10

    thanks, this upload is a great pretext to relistening to this years after - and so much of it is still so relevant

  • @tribebuddha
    @tribebuddha Před 2 lety +58

    "Soviet Union... if nothing actually worked, they wouldn't have been there for seventy years." We hear ya, David. Rest in peace.

    • @alexcarter8807
      @alexcarter8807 Před 2 lety +9

      First in space and the US has been playing catch-up ever since. Won WWII (US got to help). Provided the *average* worker a better life than in the US. I really hope Putin can bring the USSR back.

    • @SuperTonyony
      @SuperTonyony Před 2 lety +29

      @@alexcarter8807 Putin is a gangster, not a socialist.

    • @tylergooden2183
      @tylergooden2183 Před 2 lety +3

      Psychotic.

    • @digitalspecter
      @digitalspecter Před 2 lety +3

      @@SuperTonyony And that's something I wish more people understood.

    • @jdorritie
      @jdorritie Před 2 lety +12

      And all it took was total thought-control and special priveleges for the upper classes while claiming that all were equal.

  • @usecode___7453
    @usecode___7453 Před rokem +14

    His theory about how we imagine the future kind of explains (at least in my own mind) why Elon Musk is so popular. He sells the people a utopia wich they are allowed to believe in (because it is based on neoliberal values).

    • @elfappo9330
      @elfappo9330 Před 11 měsíci +1

      You posted this comment a year ago and it keeps getting proven right again and again. Great job.

  • @Syncopator
    @Syncopator Před 2 lety +13

    We do have "killer robots" now. They're not *giant* but that's because giant robots make an unnecessarily big target and they don't need to be giant to ikill. And we have flying killer robots too.

    • @Gunni1972
      @Gunni1972 Před 2 lety

      The good thing is, you only must keep them from reaching their charging point, to get a "reprogrammable soldier". It's a great way to hack, or insert a virus into the enemy's system.

    • @user123abc4
      @user123abc4 Před 2 lety

      Legal bureaucracy and central control of the web that is casted over all lives are a threatening happening. Democracy is dead or silenced

  • @thenormalyears
    @thenormalyears Před 2 lety +7

    I miss the occupy movement it was the last time I felt like a better world was even possible. Now I can see things are just getting worse. Even the internet is goin to be ruined by NFTs and cryptobros in their quest to monetize every aspect of our existence.

  • @kippie80
    @kippie80 Před 2 lety +7

    Thank you Thank-you! People conspire. this is true. One person's conspiracy is another person's business plan. Some work, many fail.

  • @thomaskeeler912
    @thomaskeeler912 Před 2 lety +6

    Suppressed technology or humanity just gave up? Which is more likely? There are engineers who come up with brilliant new things, only to have a visit from the men in black telling them that "Seriously, you thought you were the first?" And "So off you go to the Caribbean with a nice little set up for life courtesy of the taxpayer, or... The proverbial else!"

  • @rubentala4762
    @rubentala4762 Před 2 lety +23

    Great talk and mediocre Q&A.
    I was wondering if capitalism's turn away from poetic technology wasn't a conscious counter-revolutionary choice made by the elites. Something else happened at the end of the sixties that David didn't mention here: a dangerous alliance of autonomous working class and radical students. This alliance led to upheavals in France (1968) and Argentina (1969) that I know of. Spain and Italy at the end of the 1970s also had very radical working class movements influenced by council communism.
    The Soviet ruling class also had to repress the workers and students alliance in East Germany (1953), Hungary (1956), and the Prague Spring (1968). All those movements took communist ideals to heart and wanted to do away with the Party (that is the ruling class who exploited them). So the Soviet Union elite also had reasons to counter-revolutionary action beyond repression.
    Silvia Federici has a thesis that European elites at the 14th century made a conscious counter-revolutionary push for patriarchy to divide the revolutionary movements and the people in general. So modern patriarchy wasn't something inherited from the middle ages, but created through new laws and customs and enforced through religion.
    Maybe there is something of this here. Neoliberalism looks like a counter-revolution and not only a "natural development" of capitalism. And this turn away from that dream future (of automation, abundance, end of poverty, flying cars and space exploration) to this mediocre consumerism (where they keep burning fossil fuels and pushing dystopia as the only alternative) is part of that neoliberal counter-revolution.

    • @gekkobear1650
      @gekkobear1650 Před 2 lety +2

      Of course it's conscious. It's been conscious for a long time. And those who build empires do not start from scratch each time. There is knowledge about how to control humans passed through hundreds of generations. This knowledge is what we call "occult" or hidden ("esoteric" or relating to inner processes) . It is mostly very simple and obvious. Those megalomaniac empire builders have used their knowledge of psychology against humans for thousands of years, creating Homo domesticus. It has been useful for me to learn this knowledge so I am aware when others try to use it against me. Silvia Federici is a great start but she's just the beginning. The "counter-(r)evolutionary push towards patriarchy (the domination and subjugation of feminine ways of knowing and being)" you speak of is beyond the 14th century with hunts. It is part of a 10 thousand year sacrificial murder of the Goddess. For some reason, maybe to stay academically accepted, Graeber always tiptoed widely around archetypal and conspiratorial thinking. But it's out there and makes a helluva lotta sense. Check this out if your interested www.google.com/amp/s/godsandradicals.org/2017/04/07/the-world-without-forms/amp/

    • @voltcorp
      @voltcorp Před 2 lety +1

      there was no Q&A because there were no Qs

  • @ChannelMath
    @ChannelMath Před rokem +3

    Love his vision, but a few things I think he gets wrong. First, factories actually are much more automated (though not completely automated as we might have thought), and profits are way up (People do more work but not in the factory). It's not that anyone stopped that on purpose, it's just that it's not worth further automation, given the huge profits and low wages.
    Also, I feel like information and medical technology is way more socially disruptive than transportation.
    There were a few other things but generally about scifi technology: Coming from a science background, I don't think the failure of those dreams is due to politics, or economics. Partially because I think there are always plenty of people that will at least show us what is possible, if it is possible. Those things really just happened to be a lot harder than we thought (although I actually think the all-purpose menial robots will be here soon, but again: wages are so low, there's not a great need for them). Things like the Concorde and quite magical chemicals were killed for good, grass-roots, environmental reasons (aka "it's harder than we thought to do these things in a good way"). Sometimes our dreams are realized, like in the 19th century, sometimes not. It doesn't need to be explained in terms of Marx.
    Look at physics: Almost all the useful basic physics we know was already known by 1920, so is it really surprising that we haven't invented the stuff that we imagined but couldn't yet produce in the 1970s? More and more we are bumping up against new physical limits of our basic methods, often methods we've not changed fundamentally since the 19th century, we've only added precision. We can imagine a lot of stuff, but we failed to imagine the *limits* of what is possible, but maybe that counts as discovery

  • @user-tc5qc4ql8m
    @user-tc5qc4ql8m Před 2 lety +5

    very confused about the first question he received about foxconn laying off workers due to automation. the whole idea graeber was conveying was that people expected revolutionary technology to bring about a corresponding social revolution of some kind, and specifically how that hope is absurd.

  • @hakikatyolureyahaqiqati
    @hakikatyolureyahaqiqati Před rokem +1

    David Graeber.... ❤‍🩹❤🧡💛💚💙💜🤎👋🙏💐🌸🏵🌹🥀🌺🌻🌼🌷☀🌝🌞🌈💯

  • @janespright
    @janespright Před 2 lety +9

    Very good!

    • @lauralucio314
      @lauralucio314 Před 2 lety +12

      He was so insightful and creative. I would have loved to have seen him reach old age.

    • @janespright
      @janespright Před 2 lety +4

      @@lauralucio314 yes, respect, he left too early

  • @kippie80
    @kippie80 Před 2 lety +5

    No kidding, Americans are known for their legalize, another form of bureaucracy. And their battles are all about not How do you do? but How do you sue?

  • @tietscho
    @tietscho Před 2 lety +1

    I like his thoughts on future expectations

  • @bistrovogna
    @bistrovogna Před 2 lety +19

    A happier time when coffee sips still had an above 1% chance of taking place

    • @aichujohnson8444
      @aichujohnson8444 Před 2 lety

      What do ye mean by that?

    • @bistrovogna
      @bistrovogna Před 2 lety +5

      @@aichujohnson8444 if you watch Graeber's later presentations or interviews you will see the coffee almost never being drunk.

    • @vvendetta721
      @vvendetta721 Před 2 lety

      All coffee was sipped by Arabs.

    • @aichujohnson8444
      @aichujohnson8444 Před 2 lety

      It's an astute observation. Bravo!
      Does he actually have any coffee in the cup, or did he just bring the cup for aesthetic purposes?

    • @bistrovogna
      @bistrovogna Před 2 lety

      @@aichujohnson8444 he had coffee in the cup.

  • @vikrantvijit1436
    @vikrantvijit1436 Před 2 lety +3

    Great enlightening inspired talk about state of the prior art, present craft and futures technology singularity that liberates digital humanities from landscape locked legal loopholes, by corrupting culture, language and nature of social political economical psychological operations versus observations controlled science and technology policy study, inquiry and industry specific strategy.

  • @dimalien
    @dimalien Před 2 lety +1

    absolutely bang on .

  • @gg3675
    @gg3675 Před 5 měsíci

    *Friend pointing to a gadget:* "What does this thing do?"
    *Questioner at **1:11**:* "It's not a person. It doesn't do anything!"

  • @kerryfry1857
    @kerryfry1857 Před 2 lety +5

    How does his brain not be disappointed with humanity? Because i am.

    • @jojo-gy9pp
      @jojo-gy9pp Před rokem +1

      It is the pure joy he has in being alive in discussing these things and them being popular.

  • @alinebaruchi1936
    @alinebaruchi1936 Před 2 lety

    Lá vamos nós.

  • @alexcarter8807
    @alexcarter8807 Před 2 lety +16

    Why have anti-gravity boots etc. when we could have homeless camps and visits to the doctor that make you bankrupt?

  • @Gwest555
    @Gwest555 Před 6 měsíci

    “As long as necessity is socially dreamed, dreaming will be necessary”

  • @michaelschneider2874
    @michaelschneider2874 Před 2 lety +4

    But how about those wonderful advances in weaponry ?

  • @tedeliason3483
    @tedeliason3483 Před 2 lety +2

    That explains the labor market. It has been technologically bureaucratized.

  • @guillll
    @guillll Před rokem +4

    I'm a big Graeber fan but I have to disagree with him here. I don't think we should see the technological progress of the 20th century as a success in any way. Yes, we did get airplanes and cars and stuff, but the insane levels of pollution they caused is destroying the world and burning up natural ressources so fast that we probably won't have them anymore by the end of this century (if we're lucky and mankind isn't already wiped out by then).
    I think we should see all these technologies more as a failed experiment, that always was going to fail, but that we're grown so used to that we can't see how crazy they are. So I don't think it's strange in any way that we had to stop going in this absurd direction. We just got to natural limits. Although I'm sure that the capitalist fear of what the workers would do with their free time also played a role, but flying cars and interplanetary travel wasn't going to happen anyway, because modern technology already creates much more pollution that the ecosystem can handle. We can't go to Mars and keep the Earth livable at the same time, actually we can't even have cars and keep the Earth livable at the same time.

    • @danielmeixner7125
      @danielmeixner7125 Před 7 měsíci

      I was very surprised that the existential threats of nuclear war and climate change were only glazed over in this talk. Aren't they a much better explanation for the seeming impossibility of a future, than disappointment in the specific directions that technological progress ended up taking?

  • @sharoncurran6622
    @sharoncurran6622 Před 2 lety

    thank you

  • @JaredAllaway
    @JaredAllaway Před rokem +1

    We're asking why hasn't technology helped workers of the world like robots replace workers and workers get to relax, and someone in the audience asks what if we make progress along these other lines? Progress along those other lines is a good thing, but our main concern should always be workers of the world working less, relaxing more, spending more time with family and friends, etc. We should all want better lives for workers. We should all organize and push for better lives for workers. How does technology fit in? How do our predictions about technology fit in?

  • @emoprep24
    @emoprep24 Před 2 lety +1

    So close to taking a sip

  • @ludviglidstrom6924
    @ludviglidstrom6924 Před 2 lety +4

    Great talk. Just a small comment: he says at some point that it would have been natural in the 60’s or 70’s that we would get to other galaxies in a couple of centuries. That comment really shows his (and I think a lot of other people’s) total lack of understanding of just how insanely large the universe actually is. Our CLOSEST galactic neighbour, the Andromeda galaxy, is 2,5 MILLION lightyears away from us - that means it would take 2,5 million years to reach it AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT. The universe is large.

    • @fionaottley4976
      @fionaottley4976 Před 2 lety +4

      Yeah, that bit really stung. Also his dismissal of smart phones. We all walk around with a powerful computer in our pockets, but he thinks that's nothing.

  • @davitchaganava9622
    @davitchaganava9622 Před 2 lety

    this talk is a precise representation of what it tries to detect as a problem

    • @elfappo9330
      @elfappo9330 Před 11 měsíci

      I don't think you understand the purpose of critical theory

    • @davitchaganava9622
      @davitchaganava9622 Před 11 měsíci

      ​@@elfappo9330 might very well be true... from your perspective. my perspective is a bit different... in my culture(Georgian republic) we tend to read desert fathers and pay a close attention to mystical tradition of the Orthodox Christian church. we do not have bad consciousness about 20 century and instead of deconstructing, tend to reconstruct... with respect.

  • @dabrupro
    @dabrupro Před 2 lety

    Self-surrender is the surrender of all self-concern. It cannot be done, it happens when you realize your true nature.
    Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

  • @wyleong4326
    @wyleong4326 Před 2 lety +2

    Oh my, what a tease that cup is getting.

  • @anm2945
    @anm2945 Před 2 lety

    How many people can catch up with DG?

  • @jimlampshady
    @jimlampshady Před 2 lety +2

    Anyone got a link to content where he refutes agricultural revolution as massive loss of freedoms?

    • @gekkobear1650
      @gekkobear1650 Před 2 lety

      Doesn't exist. He tried to in his new book. But he does not consider trees nor animals nor prairies nor rivers nor forests free beings who can lose freedom. And so he points to proto-agrarian settlements that were relatively anarchic among the humans and declares this to be evidence that agriculture can be fine and dandy. The Entropy Law itself makes it clear annual agriculture requires ecocide and the domestication of free human and nonhuman beings.

  • @dabrupro
    @dabrupro Před 2 lety

    Circumstances and conditions rule the ignorant. The knower of reality is not compelled. The only law he obeys is that of love.
    Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

  • @ArifBasri
    @ArifBasri Před 2 lety +3

    56:30 certain type of technology can only exists because egalitarian needs it.

  • @ThePronchias
    @ThePronchias Před 2 lety

    Love Graeber but I am surprised he got the attribution of PoMo wrong: it was Lyotard in '79. But of course Jameson ran with it.

  • @IanZainea1990
    @IanZainea1990 Před 2 lety +2

    I've been wondering if we need a sort of Justinian code, where the whole system gets rewritten to eliminate a bunch of bureaucracy

  • @tescheurich
    @tescheurich Před 2 lety +2

    Ohhhh David, the only thing I don't miss about you is the too close to the mic mouth sounds. Fuuuuck do I wish I could hear those sounds again.

  • @ChromaticTroubadour
    @ChromaticTroubadour Před 2 měsíci

    3:00 start

  • @SampaJasli
    @SampaJasli Před 3 měsíci

    drinking game: every time he picks up his drink but doesn't drink, you drink. god speed.

  • @melissawolf9128
    @melissawolf9128 Před 2 lety

    Tyhh

  • @adk.lokesh
    @adk.lokesh Před 2 lety +1

    isn't that fredric jameson

  • @damonkowarsky
    @damonkowarsky Před 6 měsíci

    You’ve got way too many ads for a university 😤😤😤

  • @EyeLean5280
    @EyeLean5280 Před 2 lety +1

    Okay, they posted this 6 months ago but the original video must be a decade old.

  • @darthclide
    @darthclide Před 10 měsíci +1

    The maddening thing is hearing that "but sci-fi is hard" student blabber on with extreme examples of flying cars. Here is a short list of mundane and realistic sci-fi dreams that should have come true barring the rich and powerful holding it back:
    1. Fusion power
    2. Cleaner nuclear power
    3. Having a small city on the moon
    4. 1,000,000 Mbps internet for every home in the world
    5. Self driving cars
    6. Robots that can do 90% of human jobs.
    All it would take is the USA government spending $300 billion on any of these listed instead of on wars, and we would have it by the end of the decade.

    • @markschoenberger7825
      @markschoenberger7825 Před 5 měsíci

      Fusion is being worked on, same with self driving cars - but these are VERY difficult technical problems. Not sure #6 is a good idea to begin with. What would an average person DO without work?

    • @darthclide
      @darthclide Před 5 měsíci

      @@markschoenberger7825
      "Fusion is being worked on" means nothing without massive government funding and worldwide cooperation.
      "Working on self driving cars" means nothing without massive government funding and worldwide cooperation.
      As for your concerns about #6, I encourage you to read David's book "Bullshit Jobs: A Theory" and "The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People's Economy" by Stephanie Kelton. Both in conjunction help you answer the more important question which is "what WOULD a person be doing if they no longer had to worry about having food or a home to live in?" It is time to let go of our obsession with work giving meaning. It is literally killing our planet.

  • @bundleofperceptions1397
    @bundleofperceptions1397 Před 2 lety +8

    Flying cars would be a nightmare -- imagine traffic where everyone is zipping around every which way. And getting into a traffic accident at an altitude of 155 ft. is not likely to be a pleasant encounter. Why don't we have the things of Star Trek? It turns out that when the governments and oligarchic corporations behave like an organized crime syndicate, they tend not to make the most sensible decisions . . . . . . who would have figured?

    • @nescius2
      @nescius2 Před 2 lety +4

      do you mean the killing and cloning devices called _teleporters?_

    • @DrLimbic
      @DrLimbic Před rokem

      Flying cars don't have to crash. They can continue to float

  • @YOliver
    @YOliver Před měsícem

    All this technology existed then in secret programs but was suppressed.

  • @michaelschneider2874
    @michaelschneider2874 Před 2 lety +2

    Robots will not need to support us human beings? Just the Royal Few !?

  • @questioneryusef8264
    @questioneryusef8264 Před 2 lety

    Basically its transportation tech should be focused first. Theres already too much debt on real estate. Remove the first big one which is transpo.

  • @ChangeHandle1
    @ChangeHandle1 Před 11 měsíci +3

    Very late to ask this question, but I'd appreciate if anyone could explain.
    As I understand it, he theorizes that automation of labor is potentially dangerous to capitalists because it may lead to some class consciousness, so they instead turned to outsourcing manufacturing jobs to developing nations with a lower cost of labor.
    How does this not effectively have the same result to the American worker has lost their job? If we are to (crudely) follow his analogy of human technology to build ancient monuments, might we say that this outsourcing is akin to automation but with "human technology"? How does this choice deflect the development of class consciousness that might arise from displaced labor?

  • @brendenhamilton
    @brendenhamilton Před 7 měsíci

    1:19:21 true on every level

  • @richardouvrier3078
    @richardouvrier3078 Před 2 lety

    versus "emancipatory" techs.

  • @quantumfineartsandfossils2152

    fuck yes my point exactly

  • @StephenNicoletti
    @StephenNicoletti Před 4 měsíci

    Spirulina cultivation for food and carbon sequestration is not a crazy idea.

  • @dev9619
    @dev9619 Před rokem

    Idk who this is but CZcams has been trying to shove his content down my throat for weeks now. Please make it stop. 😭

  • @sarahkelly2350
    @sarahkelly2350 Před 3 měsíci

    on a relative side note, it might be asked what role the hegelian dialectic plays in our estimation of social progress...? more of us are free to work at someone else's goal, buy overpriced crap we have been cornered in to needing, to what extent have many social injustices, the solutions to which will profit some, been the fabricated byproduct of some racket that profited some( others), which has nearly enough exhausted its believability...?

  • @m_ots
    @m_ots Před 2 lety +1

    based af

  • @Agarwaen00
    @Agarwaen00 Před 5 měsíci

    Interestingly the Chinese still dream of making those Solar Satellites that bean energy to earth real.

  • @michaelschneider2874
    @michaelschneider2874 Před 2 lety +2

    The US Army has Robo Dogs !

  • @The.world.has.gone.crazy...

    10 years later nothing changed on the contrairy

  • @peterjol
    @peterjol Před rokem

    I am getting bored with saying it but it should be like a eureka moment for anyone who THINKS about it.......just make it financially worthwhile for people to share the jobs we would agree we NEED people to do and work much less....and there would be no more bullshit pointless jobs...it would actually solve most world problems.

  • @zulfikarali8096
    @zulfikarali8096 Před 2 lety +1

    Real need to create robotic leaders, programmed to never be corrupt, to never be controlled by a select few, to never work against the best interest of the people, and occasionally eacort certain poeple off the planet. any other laws?

    • @markschoenberger7825
      @markschoenberger7825 Před 5 měsíci

      But programmed according to whom? Who would you trust with that much power? And if they had AI, what is stopping the robots from instituting their version of human values upon us?

  • @harishsp7152
    @harishsp7152 Před 7 dny +1

    33:09

  • @BruceWaynesaysLandBack
    @BruceWaynesaysLandBack Před rokem +1

    Ppl who don’t know politics shouldn’t get to ask questions🙄

  • @Ticibon
    @Ticibon Před 6 měsíci

    The rice burner comments are pure Chinese Gold. He love him iPhone more than noodle

  • @richardouvrier3078
    @richardouvrier3078 Před 2 lety

    controlling" ict techs BC wealth is based upon labour, not engineering/tech.

  • @waterkingdavid
    @waterkingdavid Před 2 lety

    31:05

  • @zoofeather
    @zoofeather Před 2 lety

    Fill out form - are you experienced.?

  • @1wharfboy
    @1wharfboy Před 2 lety

    HOHN 844

  • @jthadcast
    @jthadcast Před 2 lety +9

    as David Graeber suspects, advanced technology machines will never come to pass, humans are always cheaper. tesla discovered that without human nannies to fill in the gaps of flawed technology the robots produced absolute crap. semiconductor factories, most highly advanced application of robotics are so costly that today they're all but impossible to fund without trillions in state investment, never mind the toxic waste dump they require.

    • @tomikexboii5403
      @tomikexboii5403 Před 2 lety +1

      Advanced Technology Machines will never come to pass under Capitalism and System Inequality, you mean?

    • @aichujohnson8444
      @aichujohnson8444 Před 2 lety +1

      There is cost to automation. At times, in the interest of time, the pragmatic approach is to employ a hybrid approach. That is, to only automate those tasks that are repeated very frequently.

    • @aichujohnson8444
      @aichujohnson8444 Před 2 lety +1

      It's not the Capitalism that's the issue, but bureaucracy. Managers sometimes lack the technical insight. As a result, those managers take a nearsighted approach which perpetuates the cycle of manual drudgery.

    • @jthadcast
      @jthadcast Před 2 lety +1

      @@aichujohnson8444 not with our technology, full automation is still beyond reason even without the waste that is mandatory under capitalism and that IS the issue. there will never be a capitalist solution. automation hit a dead end.

    • @SkyRiver1
      @SkyRiver1 Před 2 lety

      The most advanced chip "machine" is made by one company ASMl in the Netherlands. It costs about 150 million dollars. The company that has purchased the most of them is TSMC in Taiwan. Today to build a brand new, advanced chip fab in the USA is estimated by TSMC to cost 37 billion USD. If the US government were to fund this project with the amount of money you claim is necessary "trillions" (lets say two trillion, since you did use the plural which I suppose you understand means more than one) If the government were to give TSMC two trillion dollars they could build 54 of the most highly advanced fabs on earth. One for ever state and five in California.
      So you see, your idea of how much these things cost is so far off that it is funny, well maybe not funny but most certainly ridiculous. But then when has not knowing WTF your talking about ever stopped any one from expressing a monumentally incorrect opinion as fact. Just as if they really had some real notion of what they were talking about. Other than that, the rest of your statement is equally reliable in as far as reality is concerned. Nice fake narrative though, perhaps you could have a future at Fox News.

  • @jramnes
    @jramnes Před 2 lety

    I love David Graeber but every time he smacks his lips my body shivers, so hard to listen to because of this.

  • @jayblummer146
    @jayblummer146 Před 2 lety

    14:26

  • @JAMAICADOCK
    @JAMAICADOCK Před 2 lety

    Technological progress slowed down because progress in general slowed down. E.g. take the emergence of printing, was it really a product of the invention of the printing press, or rather was the printing press a product of the Protestant revolution, as in more people desiring to read the Bible in their own language? The demand creating the supply?
    As labour became cheaper from the 70s onward, the need for labour saving devices became less. The exploitation of third world labour, the suppression of Western trade unions, the end of the Cold War, the growing price of energy, the mass influx of migrants and refugees all played a part in the cancellation of the future in terms of radically new technological developments.
    Capitalism and globalization in that sense, becoming victims of their own success, as the competition with communism faded, and vast new streams of exploitable labour came on tap - the need for new labour saving devices faded too.

  • @darthclide
    @darthclide Před 10 měsíci +1

    1:05:34 Sigh... There just had to be one of THOSE types of people in the audience. Yes lady, we want to ditch all social progress in favor of flying cars. Do people like that ever think before they speak?
    And even IF we did ditch social progress. Has it ever occurred to you that many of these equality issues you fight so hard for, are actually just mind games created by the rich and powerful to keep you fighting over meaningless minutia, while they keep robbing you blind?

  • @darrellroberson8339
    @darrellroberson8339 Před 2 lety

    Oyibo Grand Unified Theorem

  • @sakuraando24153
    @sakuraando24153 Před 2 lety

    rip