Grazing on Information

Peace Be Unto Those Who Follow Right Guidance.

I’m currently reading a short essay entitled “Informatics of the Oppressed” by Rodrigo Ochigame.

Early in the essay he states the following:

No word captures the dominant form of information consumption on the internet more aptly than “feed”—a ubiquitous term derived from an agrarian metaphor. As in animal husbandry, your information diet is engineered to maximize the yield of a business operation.

From an Islamic Counter-Racist perspective, I was immediately struck by the resonance the above statement has with the following sign/indicator (ayat) in The Qur’an [=The Final Proclamation of God/Allah to Humanity]:

(47:12) Indeed, God/Allah will admit those who are securely committed (to Him) and have acted in a way to promote health (and repair) to gardens beneath which rivers flow, but those who reject (conceal, and are ungrateful) enjoy themselves and eat as grazing livestock eat, and the Fire will be a residence for them.

Peace

Islamic Counter-Racist Thought Food #71

Peace Be Unto Those Who Follow Right Guidance.

Consider this:

When we eliminate uncertainty, we forfeit the human replenishment that attaches to the challenge of asserting predictability in the face of an always-unknown future in favor of the blankness of perpetual compliance with someone else’s plan.

Extract taken from “The Secrets of Surveillance Capitalism” (2016) by Shoshana Zuboff.

Peace