Welcome to Ever Not Quite—essays about technology and humanism.
Why technology and humanism?
The ambivalent relationship between modern people and modern technology pulls in two different directions simultaneously: we are in awe of what we have made and the speed with which we have made it, just as we are increasingly uneasy about the social, cultural, and political circumstances it is producing—which we now collectively face.
I began this newsletter in part because of what has long seemed to me a shallow and historically amnesic popular discourse about technology, even in media coverage that purports to provide broad context and deep analysis of new technologies. This is especially concerning during a period when many technological developments have made it acutely obvious that we have an urgent need for a more robust and critical conversation about the world we are creating. If my goal here isn’t to develop an alternative philosophy of technology, exactly, it is certainly to offer some sober reflections about the many questions modern technology raises when we are willing to pay attention. The essays you will find here are mostly long-form reflections about a topic that interests me, and which usually falls under an expansive definition of technology, but I try above all to write about timely issues that most demand our thoughtful attention.
I often include a very short introduction at the beginning of each post to frame for the reader, in very broad strokes, what the essay is about and what motivated me to write it. If you’re a new reader, you should be able to begin just about anywhere by perusing the archive and letting these introductions guide your interest.
What does the title mean?
It comes from a series of 1908 lectures by the philosopher William James, which were published the following year under the title A Pluralistic Universe. Taken in context, the phrase conveys the irreducible quality of things, their ability to resist complete or final capture in thought or word. Here is James’ original passage from the last lecture of the series:
Pragmatically interpreted, pluralism or the doctrine that [the universe] is many means only that the sundry parts of reality may be externally related. Everything you can think of, however vast or inclusive, has on the pluralistic view a genuinely ‘external’ environment of some sort or amount. Things are ‘with’ one another in many ways, but nothing includes everything, or dominates over everything. The word ‘and’ trails along after every sentence. Something always escapes. ‘Ever not quite’ has to be said of the best attempts made anywhere in the universe at attaining all-inclusiveness. The pluralistic world is thus more like a federal republic than like an empire or a kingdom. However much may be collected, however much may report itself as present at any effective centre of consciousness or action, something else is self-governed and absent and unreduced to unity.
By using his phrase as the title of this Substack, I also have other dimensions of meaning in mind than perhaps James himself did. With it, I intend to capture the elusive nature of things that has always frustrated fundamentalists and absolutists of all stripes, and above all the provisional quality of any attempt at writing. This is a place for me to clarify my own thinking about the questions I write about, not to pontificate on pre-formed positions or even to persuade readers to think one way or another about a given topic. Epistemic humility and qualified conviction hold sway over all I do here.
There is yet another possible interpretation that I intend for the title to evoke, and that pertains to the constellation of conditions within which life itself is lived, the very fragility of which stands in perennial need of care and thoughtful improvement by the living, in frequent consultation with the no-longer living. This project is concerned with pointing in the direction of a more perfect cultural and social fabric, particularly insofar as that fabric is conditioned by the human-made world of technology—even where the complete and final vision, as James says, always escapes.
The Painting
During the summer of 1908, mere months after James delivered his lecture series, the Norwegian painter Nikolai Astrup produced the image you see on the welcome page, titled Preparations for the Midsummer Eve Bonfire. Although this particular painting depicts very little that we would call “technological”, it doesn’t show a world that has rejected technology, but one that is self-assured enough not to be dictated by technological imperatives. Throughout his short career, Astrup’s paintings captured an image of life that is rooted in and attuned to the world in a way that many of our technologies have not thought to sustain, and I could have chosen any number of them to convey artistically some version of the spirit with which I think and write.
Thank you for the time you’ve already spent lingering over these explanations. And welcome to Ever Not Quite.
