Seeing where Matt's head is at in 2020 encouraged me to reread his first book, the bestselling Shop Class as Soulcraft, which came out in 2009 in response to the market crash that everyone seems to have forgotten now as we're increasingly told we need austerity to pay back the predatory organizations who caused the debt in the first place. Running the economy is a good gig if you're one of the 'financial class' who maintain the fiction. You can crash the market and make billions of people poorer and then profit from it indefinitely as you charge interest on the loans you handed out to 'solve' the crisis you caused. It takes a special kind of stupid to buy into this.
I've come at this digital prejudice from an educational technology point of view on Dusty World, but it bears examining from a motorcycling perspective too. Crawford is a physicist and mechanical and electrical technician, but he seems to have drawn a hard line between digital technology and everything else. It's probably an age related thing. Matt's about five years older than I am. As I was getting into early home computers and figuring them out he was already through high school and working in his trade. I ended up heading towards IT because when I was working as a millwright I was the only one willing to take computer controlled systems on in a department full of older people who couldn't be bothered.
The idea that digital technology is opaque and unknowable is a continual professional frustration for me as a computer technology teacher. Other educators, students and parents all buy in to this opacity even while they embrace information and communication technology in more aspects of their lives. I understand the reluctance to make ourselves literate in this emerging technology, but if we're all going to use it I'd suggest we're all responsible for having at least a basic understanding of how it works or else we're going to all end up illiterate in a digitally powered world.
A bunch of smooth talking sociopaths have taken over the face of digital technologies, but I can assure you that Google, Facebook and the rest are not the limit of what digital technology can do for us. Thinking that is dangerously reductive. There was a time when the internet was newly birthed from academia and the people on it were exploring a new frontier rather than leveraging it in an Orwellian attempt to monetize our attention. I'm a digitally literate person and I have no love for them, but I get the sense that Matt truly despises computing to the point of lumping any digital tech in with the sociopaths. It's a hard distinction to make, though John Naughton does a good job of coaxing it out of author Shoshan Zuboff:
"While it is impossible to imagine surveillance capitalism without the digital, it is easy to imagine the digital without surveillance capitalism. The point cannot be emphasised enough: surveillance capitalism is not technology. Digital technologies can take many forms and have many effects, depending upon the social and economic logics that bring them to life. Surveillance capitalism relies on algorithms and sensors, machine intelligence and platforms, but it is not the same as any of those."
There is a point in the book where Spalding has to re-orientate the reader on how electronics work in MotoGP. Unlike what a consumer is used to, racing electronics have nothing to do with safety. Their only intent is more speed even if it means more effort and skill is expected from the rider. While everyone watching a race has only ever experienced electronic interventions (anti-lock brakes, traction control etc) as a safety blanket thrown over their incompetence, a racer only experiences them through the lens of performance. Electronic intervention on a race bike make it more extreme and harder to ride. That alone should make the true breadth of electronics and digital technology in riding a bit more clear. They are only self-driving us because someone wants them to for their own reasons, not because the tech is inherently focused in that direction.
Crawford often speaks of the mechanical work he's doing on various machines, but mechanical work doesn't end where a computer is involved. There are some parts of vehicular evolution where automation is a much needed advance. Crawford does make a point of mentioning this, but grudgingly. Reading Classic Bike Magazine a few weeks ago I came across a great article about Dr Desmo, Fabio Taglioni, the Ducati engineer who spent his career continually looking for advancements for the brand. His quote about computer controlled fuel injection is much like a MotoGP team's fixation on performance rather than protecting a rider from their own incompetence and is yet another reminder that electronic and digital technology does not have to replace human agency but can in fact enhance it.
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| Sorting out the Triumph's fuel injection system by finding a modified fuel map and installing it on the bike's FI computer was one of this year's most satisfying repairs. |
It's critically important we don't romanticize old technology for the same reason we shouldn't romanticize previous time periods. If you think the 1960s were some kind of magical time in human history odds are you're a heteronormative, neurotypical white male. From the point of view of the vast majority of the people on the planet the nineteen sixties were fucked, and so was much of the technology we were using back then. That time of excess and privilege has led us to the brink of disaster fifty years later. Longing to go back to it or recreate it is a kind of insanity.
Crawford talks about technology that is locked and closed, like Mercedes without dipsticks to check your own oil, or electronics that are sealed to prevent 'tampering'. Corporations are able to do this because people have been convinced that digital technologies are something they can't comprehend, but this is bullshit. The companies offering to do everything for you aren't technology companies, they are advertising companies. Ignore them and ignore authors who dismiss digital technology as inherently nannying. Modern technology can just as easily be used to enhance human ability and force us to be smarter, stronger and faster as it can be used to make us stupid, docile and compliant. The issue is the intent of the people peddling it, not the tech itself.
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