I’m Tim Gorichanaz, and this is Ports, a newsletter about design and ethics. You’ll find this week’s article below, followed by Ports of Call, links to things I’ve been reading and pondering this week.
I first saw a picture of the Guggenheim Bilbao in my high school art history textbook. It’s a slightly insane-looking curved metal building that you could fairly criticize for not having anything to do with the beautiful old city and green mountains that surround it.
But it planted the name Bilbao in my imagination, and six years later I got to go there.
I’m enchanted by the Basque Country—but going into that would take us too far afield for this piece. Suffice it to say that over the year I lived in Madrid, I made three separate pilgrimages to Bilbao. I visited the Guggenheim on each of those trips, and once even dined at the restaurant inside.
The only work of art that really sticks with me from the museum is by Richard Serra. And since he passed away last week, I’ve had the occasion to reflect on visiting his work in Bilbao and learn some more about him.
Serra specialized in gargantuan metal sculptures. His work in Bilbao is representative in that respect. The Matter of Time is a set of enormous wavy and bendy metal sheets that you’re invited to walk through, between and around.
Some of them like labyrinths deliver people into large circular rooms where everyone just sits on the floor, a little stupefied.
As the museum writes in its blurb for The Matter of Time:
The layout of the works along the gallery creates corridors with different, always unexpected proportions (wide, narrow, long, compressed, high, low). The installation also includes a progression in time. On the one hand, there is the chronological time that it takes to walk through and observe it from beginning to end. On the other, there is the time during which the viewer experiences the fragments of visual and physical memory, which are combined and re-experienced.
Social Media Delivers People
While I was reading more about Serra, I learned about an audiovisual piece of his (along with artist Carlota Fay Schoolman), “Television Delivers People,” from 1973.
The piece is a 7-minute video of scrolling text on solid blue with banal music playing in the background. The whole thing feels like governmental blah-blah until you read what it’s saying. And apparently it actually played on TV.
It struck me for its prescience.
You can watch it below.
Here’s the complete text from the piece, except I replaced all mentions of “television” with “social media”:
The Product of Social Media. Commercial Social Media. Is the Audience.
Social media delivers people to an advertiser.
There is no such thing as mass media in the United States except for social media.
Mass media means that a medium can deliver masses of people.
Commercial social media delivers 20 million people a minute.
In commercial broadcasting the viewer pays for the privilege of having himself sold.
It is the consumer who is consumed.
You are the product of social media.
You are delivered to the advertiser who is the customer.
He consumes you.
The viewer is not responsible for programming–––
You are the end product.
You are the end product delivered en masse to the advertiser.
You are the product of social media.
Everything on social media is educational in the sense that it teaches something.
What social media teaches through commercialism is materialistic consumption.
The NEW MEDIA STATE is predicated on media control.
Media asserts an influence over an entire cultural spectrum without effort or qualification.
We are persuaded daily by a corporate oligarchy.
Corporate control advocates materialistic propaganda.
Social Media establishments are committed to economic survival:
Propaganda for Profit.
Social Media is the prime instrument for the management of consumer demands.
Commercial social media defines the world in specific terms.
Commercial social media defines the world so as not to threaten the status quo.
Social media defines the world so as not to threaten you.
Soft propaganda is considered entertainment.
POPULAR ENTERTAINMENT IS BASICALLY PROPAGANDA FOR THE STATUS QUO.
POPULAR ENTERTAINMENT IS BASICALLY PROPAGANDA FOR THE STATUS QUO.
Control over social media is an exercise in controlling society.
Seventy-five percent of news is received by you from social media.
What goes on over the news is what you know.
It is the basis by which you make judgements, by which you think.
You are the controlled product of social media programming.
Social media programming dominates the exposure of ideas and information.
There is inherent conflict between:
COMMERCE,
INFORMATION,
ENTERTAINMENT.
There is a mass media compulsion to reinforce the status quo. To reinforce the distribution of power.
The NEW MEDIA STATE is dependent on social media for its existence.
The NEW MEDIA STATE is dependent on propaganda for its existence.
Corporations that own networks control them.
CORPORATIONS ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE.
CORPORATIONS ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE TO GOVERNMENT.
CORPORATIONS ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE TO THEIR EMPLOYEES.
CORPORATIONS ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE TO THEIR SHAREHOLDERS.
Shareholders do not organize and enforce their will. Shareholders will buy stock in companies and don’t even know what the companies do.
Corporations mitigate information.
Every dollar spent by the social media industry in physical equipment needed to send a message to you is matched by forty dollars spent by you to receive it.
You pay the money to allow someone else to make the choice.
You are consumed.
You are the product of social media.
Social media delivers people.
Plus ça change…
The notion that “if you’re not paying for it, you are the product” has become a standard phrase in the age of social media. But Serra’s statement here obviously predates the 2010s.
For all the anarcho-libertarian rhetoric of the early Web, clearly it has not escaped the commercial dynamics of prior forms of mass media.
Some months ago I wrote the post “Reshaping Ourselves,” reflecting on how we adapt to the technologies we use (not the other way around, alas), and particularly how we are adapting to AI (again, not the other way around).
In light of Serra’s work, it’s worth wondering, in this AI age, who is the customer and who is the product and where we are being delivered to.
However long the passageway, or however looping the labyrinth or unexpected its turns—however rich the experience along the way—where does it lead? Could you choose a different path?
Ports of Call
Eclipse: I’m looking forward to the solar eclipse on Monday. I’ll be driving to upstate New York to see the totality! It’ll be my first one.
Palm Royale: I’ve been enjoying this 1960s dramedy on Apple TV+. The show follows Maxine, a woman trying to insinuate herself into the high society of Palm Beach based on her husband’s family wealth. The costumes are amazing and the writing is a lot of fun. The reviews are mixed—equal numbers seem to love and hate it. Put me on the love side.
Shrimp Jesus: I haven’t been on Facebook since 2020, which means I’ve been missing out on Shrimp Jesus. This op-ed suggests that the crustacean savior represents the end of the social media giant.