Some artists think their art is constrained by the times they are situated in and the technologies of that moment. So they conclude that their art is not timeless. Josh Kline is one such artist; I find this position contentious, as expressed in Zoë Lescaze’s New York Times excellent profile surveying his work and life,

“I’m not a person who believes in this myth of a timeless art,” he told me. “I think that’s propaganda.”

I think Kline contradicts himself when, later in the piece, he makes an extremely valid critique

..it’s not just Big Tech and corporations are going to determine what our futures are like but that individuals can do this and, in a sense, ought to do it.

When a concern from sixty years ago is identical to one in modern times, then any art that stems from it is somewhat timeless. But if the art results from concerns that are similar to those from 175 years ago, then it is undoubtedly timeless. Art is timeless not because its form persists, but because it speaks to struggles that continually demand new responses—each generation must grapple with power, technology, and individual agency anew, and artists who address these concerns participate in a conversation that transcends their moment. Here I show that Kline’s comments (and therefore his works) share these features, making his art timeless. That Kline misses this is why he thinks his art is not timeless.

Kline misses that his view is identical to a Huxley-ian ethos: that the problem currently is that technology is not made for man but that man is being made for technology. Here is the complete Huxley quote:

I think that this is perhaps one of the major problems of our time. How do we make use of this thing? I mean, after all, this was stated in the gospel: the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. And in the same way technology was made for man and not man for technology but unfortunately the development of recent social and scientific history has created a world in which man seems to be made for technology rather than the other way around.

Aldous Huxley

My Straussian reading of Marc Andreessen’s “software is eating the world” is “Big Tech is eating the world”. A logical conclusion then is the world is technology because it becomes softwareThis resembles another conclusion I drew from Huxley: that education is a technology. Kline is reminding us that our personal choices with technology matter—about which companies’ products we use and how we choose to hold each organisation accountable—as they shepherd us to a not-so-terrible future. But Kline’s comment—specifically a call to action to individual choices—is precisely the lesson from Thoreau’s, whose individual resistance to taxation was a personal choice.

In revisiting Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience, I thought of the limitations of Thoreau’s approach but also how individuals could peaceably resist the emerging oligotechnodemocracyBit of a mouthful but it will catch on one day., where a minority with technological power are now being unwittingly elected into government power. Alternatives to Big Tech solutions are feasible but the rest of society needs to coordinate towards a “digital disobedience” by eschewing: WhatsApp for Signal; or Substack for static blogging sites to name a few things. One might even consider building newer personalised solutions—which has never been easier—which are inherently not intended to scale beyond a close circle. While Kline is ambiguous, these are some precise shapes that his call to individual action can take. These parallel responses across 175 years—from tax resistance to platform migration—demonstrate exactly what makes Kline’s art timeless: it addresses a recurring human struggle against institutional power.

This pattern reveals that individual users of technology are constrained in the same manner as these artists. But by becoming builders of alternatives, we might demonstrate that technology can be made for society, not society for technology. This requires expanding our imagination of the possible. By building and using alternatives, we’ll encounter new limits. Yet this work will demonstrate that re-engineering a better society is within our grasp, especially when we stray too far from the ideal—and this is not futuristic thinking.

These historical examples prove that the future Kline imagines—where individual choices reshape technology—isn’t utopian. Radical technological progress was achieved without modern venture capital-driven incentive structures. This was evidenced by the Apollo era but also in the golden years of Bell Labs and Xerox PARC, which emerged from private monopolies. The answers appear to be in constantly determining new incentive structures that do not conflict with our individual moral values.

Timeless art, like Kline’s, might be the fuel for renewed action. Kline embodies the kind of artist Aldous Huxley might have been were he not an author. And his solution of resisting large organisations with individual choice is, in fact, identical to Thoreau’s.

Acknowledgement

An Artist for the End of the World was one of several suggested readings to train one’s ability to assess a journalistic piece from a variety of angles at Inkhaven by Vicky. Thanks!