📑 New Ways of Seeing: can John Berger’s classic decode our baffling digital age?

James Bridle discusses some of the ideas relating to cloud computing and seeing the world around us in a BBC podcast series. This is associated with his book New Dark Age.

Marginalia

As Berger wrote in 1972: “We only see what we look at. To look is an act of choice.” Beneath the surface of the street, and behind the screens of our computers, hide powerful forces that shape all of our lives. To reckon with them requires a new way of seeing: an understanding of the connections between infrastructure and code, state surveillance and corporate power, social prejudice and algorithmic bias, and the environment and computation. It’s a form of seeing vital to understanding the times we live in, and as at every previous time in history, it’s artists who are helping us to forge it.