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Taking Care of Youth and the Generations
Bernard Stiegler works systematically through the current crisis in education and family relations resulting from the mesmerizing power of marketing technologies. He contends that the greatest threat to social and cultural development is the destruction of young people's ability to pay critical attention to the world around them. This phenomenon, prevalent throughout the first world, is the calculated result of technical industries and their need to capture the attention of the young, making them into a target audience and reversing the relationship between adults and children.
Taking Care exposes the carelessness of these industries and urges the reader to re-enter the "battle for intelligence" against the drive-oriented culture of short-term ("short-circuited") attention characteristic of the negative aspects of the new technologies. Long-term attention, Stiegler shows, produces retentions of cultural memory mandatory for social development—and for the counteracting of ADD and ADHD. Examining the history of education from Plato to the current quagmires in France and the United States, he tracks the notion of critical thinking from its Enlightenment apotheosis to its current eradication. Stiegler is unique in combining the most radical of theoretical constructs—such as "grammatization"—with quite traditional values, values he proposes we re-address in our not-so-brave new world.
Taking Care exposes the carelessness of these industries and urges the reader to re-enter the "battle for intelligence" against the drive-oriented culture of short-term ("short-circuited") attention characteristic of the negative aspects of the new technologies. Long-term attention, Stiegler shows, produces retentions of cultural memory mandatory for social development—and for the counteracting of ADD and ADHD. Examining the history of education from Plato to the current quagmires in France and the United States, he tracks the notion of critical thinking from its Enlightenment apotheosis to its current eradication. Stiegler is unique in combining the most radical of theoretical constructs—such as "grammatization"—with quite traditional values, values he proposes we re-address in our not-so-brave new world.
263 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2010
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About the author
Bernard Stiegler
87 books180 followersBernard Stiegler heads the Department of Cultural Development at the Pompidou Center in Paris and is co-founder of the political group Ars Industrialis. Stanford University Press has published the first two volumes of Technics and Time, The Fault of Epimetheus (1998) and Disorientation (2008), as well as his Acting Out (2008) and Taking Care of Youth and the Generations (2010).
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 29, 2022
So much easier and shorter than the many volumed "technics and time".
The way in which Stiegler operationalizes then deploys the work of Simondon(technical object) and Leroi-Gourhan(speech and gesture) is very interesting. Although he will often be doing a reading of a specific philosopher in his books the influence of Derrida, Simondon, and Leroi-Gourhan seems to be on practically every page no matter what subject he is addressing. One should for sure read Simondon's article and Leroi-Gourhan's book before attempting Stiegler. Also if you have any understanding of Heidegger or Derrida it helps to access Stiegler's philosophy.
This book addresses education. Not schooling: education. The central thesis is that the distinction between adult and child is being eradicated. Stiegler argues this is a bad thing. It amounts to adults fleeing from the responsibility inherent in being "adult" and children who are left without guidance on how to be.
His example of a French ad campaign is a little pop culturey for my tastes, but the example of how children are being "tried as adults" is much more convincing. I also think of examples like how grown men cover their vehicles in murals of Trump or qanon or whatever. That is an adult and that is how they are expressing their political viewpoint: its fucking childish. Or as Stiegler says it is "bete" a word which has multiple meanings (like all words I suppose) but the two dominant meanings are "stupid" and "beastly". So it is not just stupidity, but a regression of humanity to a state of beastliness. I don't remember if Stiegler makes this reference, but it reminds me of "victor the wolfboy"/Victor of Aveyron. A child abandoned by adults who found a different way to be in the absence of a human guide. That way of being was clearly beastly and Victor was forever prevented, as a result of this way of being, from developing his verbal cognition to the level of most humans who receive education.
Stiegler uses many concepts that he developed in Technics and Time, one of the more interesting concepts in my opinion being the spread of attention grabbing technologies. The trillions of dollars spent on mind control....sorry "marketing" which uses scientific means of improving its ability to grab the subject's attention.
The accessible example of this is social media that has algorithims and employees who spend all day figuring out how to get you to scroll for just 5 more seconds or engage with just one more social media post.
If adults have been reduced to children, children have been set adrift without being taught how to survive, and the dominant means of communication becomes these algorithmic attention-grabbing technologies: all political/social demands become clickbait. All methods of salvation or liberation become brand names. Democracy becomes impossible and the technology of capitalism stands over and above us all FOREVER.
The alternative is for adults to take up the responsibility we have neglected and teach the new generation. Whether that be how to read, how to make a fire, how to fish, how to kick a soccer ball, etc. this transfer of memory is necessary for humanity to mature/grow. To move away from beastliness.
I enjoy Stiegler, he has really challenging reads but they are rewarding and they are always grounded in reality.
The way in which Stiegler operationalizes then deploys the work of Simondon(technical object) and Leroi-Gourhan(speech and gesture) is very interesting. Although he will often be doing a reading of a specific philosopher in his books the influence of Derrida, Simondon, and Leroi-Gourhan seems to be on practically every page no matter what subject he is addressing. One should for sure read Simondon's article and Leroi-Gourhan's book before attempting Stiegler. Also if you have any understanding of Heidegger or Derrida it helps to access Stiegler's philosophy.
This book addresses education. Not schooling: education. The central thesis is that the distinction between adult and child is being eradicated. Stiegler argues this is a bad thing. It amounts to adults fleeing from the responsibility inherent in being "adult" and children who are left without guidance on how to be.
His example of a French ad campaign is a little pop culturey for my tastes, but the example of how children are being "tried as adults" is much more convincing. I also think of examples like how grown men cover their vehicles in murals of Trump or qanon or whatever. That is an adult and that is how they are expressing their political viewpoint: its fucking childish. Or as Stiegler says it is "bete" a word which has multiple meanings (like all words I suppose) but the two dominant meanings are "stupid" and "beastly". So it is not just stupidity, but a regression of humanity to a state of beastliness. I don't remember if Stiegler makes this reference, but it reminds me of "victor the wolfboy"/Victor of Aveyron. A child abandoned by adults who found a different way to be in the absence of a human guide. That way of being was clearly beastly and Victor was forever prevented, as a result of this way of being, from developing his verbal cognition to the level of most humans who receive education.
Stiegler uses many concepts that he developed in Technics and Time, one of the more interesting concepts in my opinion being the spread of attention grabbing technologies. The trillions of dollars spent on mind control....sorry "marketing" which uses scientific means of improving its ability to grab the subject's attention.
The accessible example of this is social media that has algorithims and employees who spend all day figuring out how to get you to scroll for just 5 more seconds or engage with just one more social media post.
If adults have been reduced to children, children have been set adrift without being taught how to survive, and the dominant means of communication becomes these algorithmic attention-grabbing technologies: all political/social demands become clickbait. All methods of salvation or liberation become brand names. Democracy becomes impossible and the technology of capitalism stands over and above us all FOREVER.
The alternative is for adults to take up the responsibility we have neglected and teach the new generation. Whether that be how to read, how to make a fire, how to fish, how to kick a soccer ball, etc. this transfer of memory is necessary for humanity to mature/grow. To move away from beastliness.
I enjoy Stiegler, he has really challenging reads but they are rewarding and they are always grounded in reality.
Read
October 13, 2017This book always haunts me, in a good way. Obtuse at first, its message has slowly become more clear to me and has become a formative line of thought in my budding research interests.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews