Let's just put it out there: This a creepy system. On the Internet, no one may know you're a dog, but on the phone? It just seems wrong. What good could spring from a bunch of conversations in which one member is ventriloquizing through a machine?
I don't find it particularly creepy. Telemarketing is sleazy in and of itself. You're barging into someone's life, on the device they use to talk to friends and family, to try to take their money. I don't see how this makes it any worse. I just hang up as soon as I realise it's a telemarketing call.
The information society is a network of databases who think they are people. Don't make an intentional fallacy.
Fandom Unbound
Moe elements are traits that invite particular forms of otaku affection* and that are recognizable across a wide range of anime and manga characters and narratives. Today's moe otaku culture represents a fundamental overturning of the premises of modernist narratives. By positioning the act of appropriation and play of signifiers as the generative foundation of cultural production, it downplays the traditional modernist emphasis on "original" and proprietary narrative constructs.Undergirding the growing visibility of otaku culture is an increasingly robust social, technical, and place-based infrastructure. Shifting from the previous section's focus on cultural content and process, the chapters in the second section of this book examine these enabling locations and infrastructures. As described earlier, otaku culture has strong afi nities with user-configurable digital media and online networks that connect people many-to-many and peer-to-peer, rather than relying on the one-to-many mass broadcast model of communication. Many of the core characteristics of today's networked and digital age were evident even in the early origins of otaku culture. These characteristics include immersion in specialized and fluid niche knowledge networks (Anderson 2006; Hagel, Brown, and Davison 2010), decentralized forms of social organization and production (Benkler 2000, 2006; Shirky 2008), the primacy of participatory amateur and DIY media ( Jenkins 1992; Leadbeater 2004; Varnelis 2008), distributed and collective innovation and intelligence (Hippel 2005; Howe 2009; Jenkins 2006; Lakhani and Panetta 2007; Shirky 2010), and an open and nonproprietary approach to intellectual property (Lessig 2004, 2008; Weber 2004).
Of course, the "act of appropriation and play of signifiers" can as easily be motivate by dis-affection
Watched a Czech "road movie" last night. It was not only like and unlike every other road movie and thereby interacting with that database in my head, several lines said by the female lead were word-for-word things that were said by women to me in my nomadic twenties.
Thought about Adorno and Haneke's 71 Fragments, but not yet. But the Haneke has inspired me to think about disruptive communication of a negative utopias in terms of aleatory and aphoristic performance.
To elaborate a bit, what I find creepy about it is the blurring and merging between person and algorithm, a sort of Weberian transhumanism.
Also, this comic, which came out the same day I found this article: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3294#comic
Telemarketing is demeaning work which degrades the humanity of everyone who comes in contact with it, so if it is to be done at all, it's best to be done by machines as much as possible.
I have suddenly been getting lots of calls from numbers I don't recognize that don't leave messages. I wonder if my cell has just showed up on some list that people are telemarketing from.
I thought the blurring of person and algorithm began with the Industrial Revolution.
To elaborate a bit, what I find creepy about it is the blurring and merging between person and algorithm, a sort of Weberian transhumanism.
But the humans would only be working off a script anyway. And it's not as if robocalls are anything new. All this does is combine the two.
The telemarketer is the Jew of Weberian Transhumanism.
5: This is a real long shot, but I recently ordered a bunch of magazine subscriptions and gave them your cell phone number which I had noted at a meetup some years ago. I'm pretty sure that's not it, but I guess it could be.
"Ukraine keeps the focus off the evil 1 percent telemarketers, so I guess we have Putin to thank for that. The improving economy helps as well."
I find myself being needlessly polite to robot callers even when I know it's a robot. I figure someday the robots will be programmed to take offence at rudeness and I'll be ahead of the game when they rise up and enslave us all.
9: Oh, good. That's all right, then.
10: Prediction: in the next two years, Citigroup will invade Moldova.
On Crimea, I can't stop laughing at the guy on the right. Next time, wear a suit and bring your evil face, dude.
Article linked in 10 may be peak Politico:
The terrain is now shifting fast as the 1 percent fights back hard and the effectiveness of the populist approach comes into question.
...
Langone's comments [Home Depot guy comparing rich people persecution to Nazi Germany]-- sure to draw ire from those who find such comparisons to Nazi Germany insensitive --echo previous remarks from venture capitalist Tom Perkins, who likened the actions of some in the Occupy Wall Street movement to the Kristallnacht attacks on Jews in 1938. Perkins gave several interviews after the ensuing uproar, but he never really backed away from the comparison. And Langone showed no hesitancy in invoking the Nazis when describing current populist rhetoric.
They're mad as hell and they're not going to take it anymore!
The link in 10 should also give us a suspect in the disappearance of MH370.
So there's some sort of shadowy cabal of bankers controlling the world's media? I think I've heard that one before.
Who else is likely to own a secret volcano island lair in the middle of the Indian Ocean complete with a runway capable of landing a Boeing 777 than the 1%?
I just wanted to write those who find such comparisons to Nazi Germany insensitive again.
Clearly not anyone at Politico where they are inured to the rough and tumble politics of the privileged fighting to retain their privilege. Economic domination ain't beanbag.
17: Wait... was it within cruising distance of the underwater Dubai supercities? ... must try to think
12: Just kidding. I used your land line.
Maybe I should get dressed and go to work.
Does a secret volcanic lair count as a tax haven?
It's never Peak Politico. Two years from now, they'll be posting articles on how protests against hedge fund hunt clubs that ride around Manhattan spearing working people are likely to produce a backlash that could provide Scott Walker with an opening against Hillary.
21: Are all your antipodal shenanigans dealt with? Did you successfully land the jet on Kerguelen?
23: You're right, local maxima Politico.
Rottnest Island., actually. A sacrifice to the Rottnest Monster.
Since this is now the politics thread, who says money can corrupt elections? Payday lenders, apparently ("corrupt" is such a harsh word, though).
I was skeptical at "let's assume it's better for workers" (why let's!) but the idea that having someone hang up on your avatar instead of your voice was less emotionally exhaustive persuaded me.
I am a real person and wish to subscribe you to our newsletter.
About 50% of our junk calls are computerised. I assume it's connected with the no-call list, since the remaining half are all obviously off shore, presumably so that they can't be pursued. What I mainly resent is that unlike the Bombay specials, they don't hang up when the phone goes to voicemail. Also, they presumably don't pay some poor bastard in Bombay a living wage.
