Matt Webb<blockquote>It’s a paradox of the work I do that it involves capturing the isness and tethering it, while at the same time I know it shouldn’t be like this. But it has to be done if we’re to do anything at all. We’ve made these same decisions over evolutionary time: Carved the world into objects and forces: nameable things. Created a neural semiotcracy over a billion years. And we try to escape it every day. And we know this because we see it expressed unrepressed in technology, where it can exist in grids and axes without the moderating influence of a world of becoming to shake it apart. And so, in technology, we have to resist reification even more.
But just because I know this, it doesn’t mean I have to shy away from production and doing, even when it works counter to my beliefs. I can’t inhabit only a world of ideas operating on other ideas–thinking and doing inform one another, and so it is our job to make thinking rigorous and doing fluid, without losing the essence of either. Doing - production - constraint of self and others - exerting power - is thinking that affords fixity, and is between ourselves. It’s difficult, but it is a more open thinking, that by exerting pressure on many gives freedom to them all. I won’t take either position, but will react towards the balance.
Know this: Every single flag I place in the ground is a compromise, and every flag and every compromise I resist. But I will go on placing those flags. I will inhabit paradox. I will not be unpowerful, just as I will not want it. Don’t assume otherwise.</blockquote>