Hungry Ghosts in the Machine (addiction and digital capitalism)
Interview ahead of the publication of Mike Watson’s Hungry Ghosts in the Machine (Revol Press)
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I gave it half an hour, but this was not very enlightening to me. Some notes:
Integration of worldview (including all between all states of intoxication/sobriety) is perhaps the most significant problem obliquely mentioned, which relates to what is sometimes called ‘information overload’ but I regard mainly as a worldview integration challenge for people. Addicts may prefer and fly to the worldview of intoxication without wanting to come back.
Addicts lie, which isn’t helpful for philosophy. And they tend to be more self-absorbed, which again taints their generalisations.
You don’t have to namecheck dozens of philosophers to do philosophy. These days I only tend to sparingly read philosophers on certain applied topics they have empirically researched, though they often have to cite other thinkers.
Psychoanalysis has perhaps had its heyday, and tells you more about those theorists and their narrow cultures than the real world or human minds.
‘Addiction’ is a word often abused. Someone gazing intently at their mobile phone may be reading a newspaper. Are newspaper readers addicted? Many people socialise healthily through games or social media like online learning sites.
We don’t live under ‘Capitalism’. This is a basic failure of understanding. Nor is our use of online services ‘Digital Capitalism’. Our political and digital economies are mixed and much more complex than this crude cartoonish misrepresentation. Most of our digital world is based on idea communism (the Internet protocols, Web standards, most Web browsers and server software examples of open technology, the digital commons, global science, and many other features).
I don’t think this cosy chat format is best conducive to philosophy or its woolly, lengthy, unstructured appearance easy on viewers/listeners. There are better examples out there. But if you do want to take this route: if an interviewer asks a question, this should be presented as an accessible heading and the response section clearly identified (perhaps both in hyperlinked table-of-contents form and in video chapters with onscreen text support).