Reposted by Anna Wainwright
Hello Bluesky! My new book, THE FIREARM REVOLUTION, is out on 14 April. It’s about how a new technology changed society, and how hard it was to control. Here’s a little thread of what’s inside:
Anna Wainwright
@annawainwright.bsky.social
827 followers 526 following 24 posts
associate professor of Italian studies at UNH. any and all views posted are my own, not those of my employer. New book: www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/wido…
![Well, everything. The death of art. [Laughs.] A thing that I’ve been struck by in the last year of tech development around art is that what makes us human is making art, even if you’re not a professional artist. This is kind of corny, but I think about cavemen, right? One of the first things we ever did as a species was put our handprints on a wall, and it’s just this drive that has always been there. It’ll always be there. And I think it’s preposterous that these people are suggesting that they develop this technology, and the first thing they want to eliminate is art, so you have more time to…what, email? I don’t know what they think I’m going to do with my fucking day. Most of the population is not artists, but a lot of the population has artistic hobbies, and if you replace that with a computer doing it for you or whatever, it’s just pointless. I think there’s a death drive in these people, almost, and an actual hatred of artists; they are jealous of people with imagination because they don’t have one, and they almost consciously want to eliminate it.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:obalt57atoxc2zooldtuur75/bafkreifnjtvupzmkqg7cggiv2z5nckzpp5yd2sm7h5gg2kq3plbwv2btuy)
