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_tourist's review
essays, some fun some less. the limited nature of the book's project is relatable, but im not sure i buy the technophobia wholesale anymore.
akemi_666's review
2.0
Hmm, not sure if I'm into Hakim Bey as much as I used to be.
He reads like an anarchist boomer suggesting potlucks and crochet parties as an alternative to television and virtual reality. Like, if you're going to create a hierarchy of most to least alienated technics and technologies, then you should probably do a phenomenological or political economy analysis, instead of saying read Foucault and Baudrillard.
It's been a common theme, across history, that the newest technologies are seen as more alienating than the previous ones; but every technology has a different quality of alienation and pleasure, than the prior. In other words, they structure our identities, bodies and communities differently. Technologies cannot be compared like quantities of exchange value — that's capitalist and cop mentality.
I used to hang out with an eco-feminist and she would associate anything she deemed technology as masculine and alienating and tech-shame me, even though I'm non-binary (this was about ASMR of all things, lol). She also drove everywhere in her car. I'm sick of primitive authoritarians masquerading as free spirits, yea?
It's still a beautifully written piece and I appreciate Hakim Bey's taoist anarchism, but also, he needs to realise the tao is in everything, and check his reactionary techphobia. Everything is tech, bro, and you can be immediate in your experience of mediation. It's how films, games and books move us.
I am still partial to his idea of not engaging with the mainstream, because the mainstream sustains itself on resistance. All forms of attention centred there is attention that could be directed elsewhere. Creating a temporary autonomous zone has merits.
Xenofeminism is a good response to Hakim Bey's primitivism.
He reads like an anarchist boomer suggesting potlucks and crochet parties as an alternative to television and virtual reality. Like, if you're going to create a hierarchy of most to least alienated technics and technologies, then you should probably do a phenomenological or political economy analysis, instead of saying read Foucault and Baudrillard.
It's been a common theme, across history, that the newest technologies are seen as more alienating than the previous ones; but every technology has a different quality of alienation and pleasure, than the prior. In other words, they structure our identities, bodies and communities differently. Technologies cannot be compared like quantities of exchange value — that's capitalist and cop mentality.
I used to hang out with an eco-feminist and she would associate anything she deemed technology as masculine and alienating and tech-shame me, even though I'm non-binary (this was about ASMR of all things, lol). She also drove everywhere in her car. I'm sick of primitive authoritarians masquerading as free spirits, yea?
It's still a beautifully written piece and I appreciate Hakim Bey's taoist anarchism, but also, he needs to realise the tao is in everything, and check his reactionary techphobia. Everything is tech, bro, and you can be immediate in your experience of mediation. It's how films, games and books move us.
I am still partial to his idea of not engaging with the mainstream, because the mainstream sustains itself on resistance. All forms of attention centred there is attention that could be directed elsewhere. Creating a temporary autonomous zone has merits.
Xenofeminism is a good response to Hakim Bey's primitivism.
superdilettante's review
5.0
I can't say I fully followed all of it, but what I did get was fantastically inspiring--an intellectual and ideological jump-start.
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