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- The consolidation of power by tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple, is equivalent, almost exactly, to the consolidation of feudal power by Western European states at in the period between 1450–1600. The mega tech corporation is a new type of transnational superpower. What distinguishes a Google from say, a Standard Oil, is the grip it has on our living consciousness — the ability to form thoughts, opinions, and behaviors. The tech company represents an entirely new type of governmentality.
- I’m increasingly convinced that we should stop reading the news and start reading history. The news would be a lot better if we did.
- One defining feature of an empire is that its citizens refuse to see the end coming for the empire. An empire is a nation-state with eternal longings.
- Notice how the second Kavanaugh was confirmed, he ceased to be news. The confirmation fight thrilled people, but its outcome was politically pre-determined. The danger of political theater is that it exhausts the energy we need for our political reality. It makes more sense to fight the conditions that made Kavanaugh inevitable, not to fight the man himself — who is simply a boogie.
- I read recently that China holds over a trillion dollars in U.S. debt — what scares me is not the fact that China owns U.S. debt, what scares me is that the number (the trillion before dollars) is too large for anyone to understand the consequences of this state of affairs. The more abstract an economic system is — the more intangible — the more likely it is…
