A friend, knowing all about my interest in the impacts that "technology" is having on our lives - and on our politics - gifted me, back in February, with a delayed birthday present, the above book by Chris Hayes. Here is a quick report.
Circe tells Odysseus that the voyage upon which he is about to embark, in his effort to return home with his men, after a long absence, will take him by an island inhabited by the "Sirens," whose song is intended to lure Odysses and his crew to their deaths. Odysseus is supposed to "pay attention" to Circe, and to make sure that he does not pay attention to the song of the Sirens. Odysseus accomplishes this, with Circe's guidance, by stopping the ears of his crew with wax, so they can't hear the Sirens, and by tying himself to the mast of his ship, so he is not able to direct his crew to steer towards the Sirens, and thus to perish.
Moral of the story: Our "attention" is desired, and if we give our attention to those who want to take it from us, "death" may well be the result. At any rate, giving our attention away to those who want it, and who will be seeking to beguile it from us, may turn out to be a very bad mistake.
Hayes moves quickly from the Sirens of Greek myth to the "sirens" of our police and emergency service providers, who also want our "attention," but not in order to draw us towards them, but to warn us away.
Here is how Hayes evaluates the different kinds of "sirens" that vie for our attention:
The Sirens of lore and the sirens of the urban streetscape both compel our attention against our will....Attention is the substance of life....Every single aspect of human life across the broadest categories of human organizations is being reoriented around the pursuit of attention.
In the end, Hayes does not offer up "wax for our ears," in a modern updating of Circe's advice to Odysseus. The book ends, in fact, with a chapter entitled, "Reclaiming Our Minds." That chapter paints a rather hopeful portrait of our supposedly growing ability to ignore the call of the technology-enhanced "Sirens" of our modern time, and thus to recover a relationship with the world that is not mediated by the technologies that are luring us (and he almost says it this specifically) to our deaths. In other words, unlike Circe, Hayes is conveying a pious hope that things will turn out alright in the end.
What is my reaction to that final chapter of Hayes' book? To quote Bob Dylan (as I am wont to do): "I just said, 'Good luck.'"
I don't want to be discouraging, or to warn you away from The Sirens' Call. I reccomend this book. It is, I think, a very well-stated evaluation of all of the ways that we are sailing into danger, as we let technologies lure us into what will likely be a social and political disaster.
Forewarned is forearmed, so read Hayes' book. After you do, you may well be persuaded that we need to take some rather decisive action, vis a vis the technologies that are so beguiling to us, lest we perish from our beguilement.
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