On Automation

The Tyranny of Algorithms

Do we want a world where a software program 

picks the next pop-music star and legals system 

run on opaque pieces of code?

By EVGENY MOROZOV

In "Player Piano," his 1952 dystopian novel, Kurt Vonnegut rebelled against automation. For Vonnegut, the metaphor of the player piano—where the instrument plays itself, without any intervention from humans—stood for all that was wrong with the cold, mechanical and efficiency-maximizing environment around him. MORE HERE

Assholes: A Theory

VIA

MEDIA, NEW MEDIA, POSTMEDIA - Domenico Quaranta

Review
English abstract

The Compass Of Pleasure - David J. Linden

Bob Dylan and Siberian Reindeer Agree: Everybody Must Get Stoned



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Everything begins just in order to end

"Pierre Anthon left school the day he found out that it was not worth doing anything as nothing mattered anyhow. The rest of us stayed behind. And even though the teachers carefully cleared up after Pierre Anthon in the class room as well as in our heads, a bit of Pierre Anthon remained within us. Perhaps this is why things later happened the way they did ..."
For those who are interrested in nihilism and "doing nothing", i propose this youth novel by Janne Teller, more here.