In defence of inaccessibility

2025-04-27

"Keep it secret, keep it safe" - Gandalf

Accessibility has a double meaning. On the one hand, it describes the necessary goal of enabling disabled people to live comfortably in the world we all share. On the other hand, it describes a broader concept, the ability of something to be accessed. I think that the first kind might be specified as disability focussed accessibility, and the second kind just as broad accessibility. This blog post is about the latter.

In this world we are all too connected, yet all too alienated. The internet enables a bombardment of fleeting connectivity. In meta-meatspace, connectivity is not just enabled, but enforced. This allows for a sort of bizarre reversed mass-surveillance, surveillance by the mass. Any post you make in meta-meatspace might be expected to only reach your circle of friends, but always has the potential to "break containment", bringing unwanted attention and harassment. This ability for a post to "blow up" for the wrong reasons creates a panopticon system, behaviour is controlled by the implication that at any time, everyone could be watching. We know this because meta-meatspace places you constantly in the position of watchman in the tower, where the digital architecture has been crafted by behavioural psychologists to influence you to become the enforcer. This is not to mention the obvious, corporate and state surveillance which has even more detrimental effects that social surveillance. All stemming from the fact that everything is accessible.

Art that doesn't challenge is boring. Reading a text is not a passive process, but an active process of creative production: producing one's reading. A text which is simply accessible and asks nothing of the reader, minimises the reader's creative capacities. People have a reaction to this kind of text, that it is infantilising, that it treats the reader as stupid. For a text to avoid being boring, it must offer some level of challenge to the reader. Inherently, challenges are as such because they require something to be overcome, and some people will not be willing or able to overcome it. This is not just an insult to a theoretical stupid reader. Different people find different sorts of challenges engaging. Because of this, it's likely that the more meaningful and personal a text is to one person, the more inaccessible it becomes to another person. The most beautiful poem in Farsi is nothing but meaningless lines to me (who does not speak Farsi).

Intentional inaccessibility is a social signal. It can be used to delineate social alliances through shared reference points and signifiers. A work produced for a small group who "get it" can be more fulfilling on all sides, compared to a work produced for mass accessibility, since it exists in a realm of tangible social relations rather than abstract matters of appeal to an audience one never sees.

Deciding who to alienate produces a vector of power. Strategically designing systems which are inaccessible to one group while remaining accessible to another. My favourite historical example which I believe I've brought up in the past on this blog, from the book "The Art Of Not Being Governed" by James C Scott, is as follows. Certain hill tribes of south east Asia choose to grow cassava as their main staple crop, rather than the flooded paddy rice farms which are popular in the valleys. Cassava reaches maturity in about a year, and so long as you just leave it in the ground, it will remain good to eat for up to two years beyond that. However, the moment you harvest it, it starts to go bad fast, usually it won't last longer than a week out of the ground. Because of this, historically, it has been very hard for lowland states to effectively tax the harvest of the hill tribes, compared to the ease of taxing a rice harvest, since by the time you've transported the cassava back down to the lowland towns and cities, it's already close to going bad, and is therefore hard to sell or use in large quantities. Furthermore, the hill tribes practice mixed-crop swidden agriculture. This means that each person or family's field is not a static, easily documentable plot of land as is the case with rice cultivation, but is rather constantly changing borders with an illegible mix of crops. The hill tribes did not commonly use written language, so there was no physical record for the state to keep track of. Add to this the fact that cassava is generally seen as a less desirable food than rice in the region, and you are left with an environment in which lowland states are unable to effectively monitor, tax, and control the upland peoples. Meanwhile, these agricultural techniques are completely effective for the food needs of these people, and have been for thousands of years. This is a perfect example of cultivating strategic inaccessibility, and it is a vector of power we ought to make use of to resist recouperation and general encroachment of state and corporate power.