Existence, then, was a navigation between cycles religious, planetary and natural. Like all calendars, the Très Riches is a map: allowing navigation through time and the world. Its pages show the months of the year, and the accompanying labors needed: January is for feasting, March is for planting seeds, April is for courtly love, October is for plowing, under heavens painted with crushed lapis lazuli, with the immortal houses of the zodiac winding slowly overhead. John the Magnificent, in the 1410s – and is one of our most luminous glimpses of the world, work and minds of the medievals. One of the High Middle Age’s most beautiful illuminated manuscripts, and certainly its most famous, it was produced for a French Duke, John of Berry a.k.a. The Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry is an example of the maximum. At their maximum, they were complete schemas of orientation: guides to astrological, liturgical and social life, along with some gnarly images of Hell and Heaven. At their minimum, they would be selections of prayers and psalms to be read at prescribed times of the day, by laypeople. These cybersecurity experts, professors and journalists have been ringing the alarm for a while:Ī book of hours is a form unfamiliar to us moderns but was one of the most common formats of publishing pre-printing. It all seems a lot like neo-feudalism, and we’re not the first to notice. And the worst ordeal, of course: being kicked off of the very soil you’ve been plowing to build up your meager online existence. Lost your password? Simply give up your firstborn (well, their name, anyway).
In reality we are laborers, kicking up valuable data to the almighty quadrumvirate of Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google, otherwise known as FANG.Įven the rituals we powerless serfs undergo have a medieval touch to them: every CAPTCHA feels like administered torture. The tech companies, otherwise known as our lords, grant us small pieces of their Internet turf, providing us with just enough to get by – a viral dance craze here and a distracted boyfriend meme there.
While the term has fallen out of fashion with medievalists, it seems ever-more relevant to our contemporary knowledge economy. Indeed, critical minds have been warning us that the Internet is giving rise to “feudalist” power structures for some time now. Have you ever read the T and Cs and felt a bit…ransacked? (Bonus points if you’ve read them at all.) The system seems so overwhelming, so beyond our control, that it’s little wonder we see desperate aunts and uncles posting “FACEBOOK DOES NOT HAVE MY PERMISSION TO SHARE MY PHOTOS,” trying to stem an overwhelming tide of power grabs. 18 minutes and 20 seconds if you let yourself be distracted by the GIFs too much… *In case you really are worried about how long this might take: the estimated overall reading time is 16 minutes and 47 seconds. And if you do, why don’t you forward it to a friend? But sure, sending it to your enemies will do as well. That said: I sincerely hope that you find something in this first issue of No News News. Something for you to read in between the listicles and endless numbers pouring out of the news cycle that (we think) rewards investing a bit more time.* Whatever it is, it’s fun to dig up these tidbits and see how they fare in our current conversation. One author even suggested that there might be a “medieval turn” happening in contemporary culture. But still, why would anyone get hyped up about the Middle Ages? Well, we have a few suggestions that are resonating right now: the vigor and community in the Limbourg brothers’ illuminations, enchanted memes, the application of the term “neo-feudalism” in the critique of data capitalism, the rigorous self-isolation practice of anchoresses or an Instagram account devoted to male hotties of yore.
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