Non-Things
We no longer inhabit earth and dwell under the sky: these are being replaced by Google Earth and the Cloud. The terrestrial order is giving way to a digital order, the world of things is being replaced by a world of non-things – a constantly expanding ‘infosphere’ of information and communication which displaces objects and obliterates any stillness and calmness in our lives. Byung-Chul Han’s critique of the infosphere highlights the price we are paying for our growing preoccupation with information and communication. Today we search for more information without gaining any real knowledge. We communicate constantly without participating in a community. We save masses of data without keeping track of our memories. We accumulate friends and followers without encountering other people. This is how information develops a form of life that has no stability or duration. And as we become increasingly absorbed in the infosphere, we lose touch with the magic of things which provide a stable environment for dwelling and give continuity to human life. The infosphere may seem to grant us new freedoms but it creates new forms of control too, and it cuts us off from the kind of freedom that is tied to acting in the world. This new book by one of the most creative cultural theorists writing today will be of interest to a wide readership.
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2recommend
7mentions
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2023–2026years
57% recommend43% neutral
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What Hacker News says
- I didn't read Peak Mind, but two books that are somewhat in the same vain (based on your description) are:
1. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59794522-non-things
2. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/236849376-attensity
First one I highly recommend. Second one I'm reading now, so far it's.. okay. The ideas in the book resonate with me but the writing is poor. The first book (Non-Things) talks about our relation to the digital versus the physical, and it convinced me to stop using my phone as much.
- 'boredom' is how I'd call it but it has a negative connotation. Being bored is useful, it lets your mind wander and it's where real creativity can happen.
I read "Non-Things: Upheaval in the Lifeworld" recently and since reading that I make an effort to not pick up my phone as much. I'd recommend reading the book, if you're looking for something to do instead of doomscrolling.
- Yes, and I'm increasingly bored of talking about 'the internet'. AI definitely plays a part in that, I don't want to deal with randomly generated articles or content. But even regular content, like YouTube shorts, are unhealthy for the human brain.
I'm currently reading non-things by Byung-Chul Han, which is an interesting exploration of internet's impact on humanity/humans. Haven't finished it yet, but enjoying it so far.
- You might also enjoy...
Byung Chul Han, Non-Things: Upheaval in the Lifeworld
- I'm reading "Non-things: Upheaval in the Lifeworld" by Byung-Chul Han, who has things to say about it. "Things" are naturally possessions to be owned; the non-things that we as a society are moving towards are information to be consumed. If you have a physical book, you can pass it along to someone else, margin notes and dogears and all, but the experience of an e-book is fundamentally different. You might feel like you 'own' the bits because they're on your local computer and have no DRM, but your relationship to the actual item is not one of ownership. Just think about leaving your favorite book as .epub to someone in your will to see how non-sensical that would be.
- I think this is worth reading. It gives a lot of interesting points and cultural references to read further.
Is it relevant for this forum? I think so because engineers don't fully understand how technology shapes how people think. The recent thread about the ethics crisis in tech https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42540862 comes to my mind. We act as it doesn't touch us, but our very passivity is the same as Mrs Pelicot's: when the power we serve take away our own personal power (even the banal ones we can see, e.g. installing our own software on our own computers), we wine meekly when it is already too late.
Slavoj Žižek touches how the 92 episodes of rape of Mr Pelicot on the drugged out Mrs Pelicot, who was unaware until the police showed her photos, mirrors how "digital powers treat us today".
How Mr Pelicot is obviously the weaker one, slave to its own compulsions, who can only act on an unaware object, and cannot deal with a person with her own will. A tale we all live in how tech removed the Big Other from our lives (I have also been reading Byung-Chul Han's "Non-Things" book, which contains similar ideas).
"we must not ignore or avoid digital media: their manipulative use is not inherently inscribed into their technology. They can be repurposed for emancipatory purposes [...] The system desperately seeks to control digital media because it recognizes their potential as tools for massive awakenings – including among women"
Finally, he tells about the "Her Story (directed and written by Shao Yihui), exploded on Chinese screens in December 2024. [...] Her Story deserves to be celebrated as an exemplary case of feminine awakening that avoids the traps of politically correct moralizing stiffness. It hits both targets: the strong presence of male chauvinism in Chinese society and the ruling Communists’ solidarity with it (not to mention other critical stabs at state power). "
