Source: The Peaceful Revolutionist
by David S D’Amato
“The French social theorist and philosopher Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) memorably argued, ‘We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning.’ The advent of smartphone culture was a kind of coup for the ruling class. It installed an incredibly pervasive infrastructure that captures attention and commodifies subjectivity; it embedded new tools of diffuse, voluntary social control through which people actively, almost obsessively, pursue their own erasure. Today, under digitized capitalism, the logic of the slot machine has come to dominate almost the entire social experience, with rewards spooned out variably and an uneasy sense that one must compulsively reengage the system.” (08/23/25)