I’m a Tech Addict and I’m Not Ashamed
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
“Technopoly is to say that its information immune system is inoperable. Technopoly is a form of cultural AIDS, which I here use as an acronym for Anti-Information Deficiency Syndrome. This is why it is possible to say almost anything without contradiction provided you begin your utterance with the words “A study has shown …” or “Scientists now tell us that …” More important, it is why in a Technopoly there can be no transcendent sense of purpose or meaning, no cultural coherence. Information is dangerous when it has no place to go, when there is no theory to which it applies, no pattern in which it fits, when there is no higher purpose that it serves. Alfred North Whitehead called such information “inert,” but that metaphor is too passive. Information without regulation can be lethal.”
― Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology
https://www.amazon.com/Technopoly-Surrender-Technology-Neil-...
If you look at % of people who trend towards similar culture affects, I think you're probably right (but would love to know how/where people are tracking this!) But, if you look at absolute numbers of people who are into something non-mainstream (e.g. not the primary culture), I bet we're way ahead of where we used to be. Also, I bet there are more subcultures flourishing out there -- bronies probably weren't a thing 500 years ago. Finally, I also think we have more acceptance for not being of the primary culture than years ago.
That isn't to invalidate your point, I just have questions about statements that claim something about long term trends.
Bronies sounds more like a marketing demo than a subculture.
It's interesting how the moral panics of a time find their way into unrelated literature, and how jarring they can seem with a little distance (1993)
I don't think this is really related to the proliferation of internet connected technology, or even technology in general. People have always been using bad sources of information to justify false beliefs.
Before Facebook, people cited the crap they read in tabloid magazines.
Before that people cited untested (or poorly tested) theories like phrenology.
Before that people cited philosophers like Aristotle who claimed that all matter could be infinitely subdivided.
And before that people cited whatever their local priest or shaman told them.
Information may have less regulation but it's erroneous to assume, as this excerpt seems to be doing, that regulation of information makes for better information. There is no shortage of instances in which those in charge of regulating information degraded the quality of information, often to suit their own interest. I'm still willing to defend the claim that in aggregate freer flow and production of information improves the average person's understanding of the world .
Do we really think that people living in regimes with more tightly regulated flows of information have better understanding of the universe than people with freer access to information?
Do we really think that people with lesser access to technology have better understanding of the world than those that have no internet access?
Same, same but different. At least you can hold your local shaman responsible when you learn that he took money to feed you lies.
Are you saying that matter can't be infinitely subdivided? Because I'm pretty sure the jury is still out on that one.
> At least you can hold your local shaman responsible when you learn that he took money to feed you lies.
Gods work in mysterious ways. The good shaman give advice that is always right no matter what happens, and fault you for misinterpreting the good word.
The secondary point is when you divorce these pieces of information from their culture they become something else.
> Do we really think that people with lesser access to technology have better understanding of the world than those that have no internet access?
This seems related to what Nassim Taleb would say, "It's easier to macro bullshit than to micro bullshit." IE. Your barber/chef cannot bullshit you, but your economist/software engineer can. Over time the good information gets processed via something like natural selection and you end up with good ideas persisting. So it's not clear to me that a society with the level of information and no clear anchors is full of more understanding than those in the past. See: Lindy Effect
It's a very convincing argument. See Twitter, Facebook (/r/insancepeoplefacebook) et all.
I strongly disagree. Nearly all of the serious misunderstandings of the world I have harbored in the past I believed because I trusted the words of key individuals I held in high regard.
Your reference to r/insanepeoplefacebook actually demonstrates that many people are able to recognize false information online.
Held in high regard isn't the point, it's that you know what bad food tastes like. It's nearly impossible to tell whether an economist on television making market predictions has done due diligence or is just talking out of his ass.
1) Tool-using: where tools are just something humans use to further their basic needs.
2) Technocracy: Where inventing for the sake of inventing starts to happen for the sake of "progress" and the tools start to attack the culture.
3) Technopoly: culture becomes subservient to technology. At this point the reason for technology is to serve technology and not people or culture anymore.
This article seems analogous [1] to an article that states "I use hard drugs and I'm not ashamed" authored by someone who manages to keep their use under control. Sure, it works for them. Great, but they are not the failure mode of drug use.
Fully agree with your second paragraph.
In this simple model, I would probably say books are definitely less stimulation, TV is probably about equal (I have no idea), and modern videogames and social media are definitely much more stimulating. So, books would only become a problem in the presence of other factors but social media can become a problem for anyone.
In highschool I would play high stimulation PC games while browsing the internet on another monitor while listening to music while using voice chat. I also had almost no desire to socialize while in highschool.
[1] It goes without saying that we probably can't reduce activities to a single metric like "amount of stimulation" but I think this is a useful thought experiment.
Rather than technology driving us away from being social, I think being social is driving us to technology.
There are many extremely niche communities that I'd be unable to be a part of if the Internet did not exist.
What is your definition of socialize? What makes voice chat different from voice, other than lack of body language/non verbal cues?
For example, I simply don’t find video games stimulating. I didn’t grow up with them and I never got into them. I’d sooner talk to a human being than play a video game any day.
However, I find books SIGNIFICANTLY more stimulating than social interaction. (Go figure, lol).
I agree with your mental model that humans are social creatures and that if something is more stimulating than social interaction it is likely to be harmful. The nuance is that for some people — like me — video games are LESS stimulating than social interaction, while books are MORE stimulating. That’s why for me personally video games don’t harm me but books — according to your model — do.
Brains are weird. I self-medicate with words and sentences. Am I a “book addict” like some people are “video game addicts”? Or am I just a relatively bookish individual? or both? I think both :)
-non-recovered book addict in the tortured throes of a relapse on literature
Or at the very least an accepted English equivalent such as "Straw man"
Basically I'd like something other than Reverend Lovejoy's wife to appear in a google search.
More serious point is that when a democratic process (Brexit, Trump, Netanyahu, Erdoğan, Putin, whatever) doesn't return what you what - we all retreat to our talk of "the others" (or you could flip the whole think around depending on your personal beliefs).
It just detest my/others/everybody's unwillingness to examine the lazy/meaningless terms we all bandy around and start pinning our shitty arguments to.
I'm not pro or anti "screen-time" - I just hate the term as it's not anything anybody should have an actual opinion on.
It's also not at all obvious that a world where we have access to any number of sources of information and claim and counterclaim is worse than one where the cultural narrative happened and was controlled through the same four or five very large media outlets.
As a simple fact of life too, young people are more malleable and given to respond well to 'actually you're wrong about that' or 'that article is misleading' than olds. Olds are more set in their ways and liable to double down.
Both have been done to death and there's now very little new to say about either. The screen time one isn't even backed by science.
For as long as I can remember "society worries about every change" - but at least previously we focused on the content, rather than the conduit.
Online radicalization, porn addiction, violent videogames, video-nasties, metal music played backwards, Elvis's hips, fictional novels, .. , gnostic gospels, .. , overly-optimistic portrayals of mammoth attack on cave walls etc etc
My concern with "screen time" is that we seem to have taken a step back and have got even lazier in our "ill-conceived collective concerns about 'others'".
It blows my mind that a child today, anywhere on the planet, with a $100 phone can access pretty much every thought or concept humanity has ever produced - whether a thousand years ago, or 30 minutes ago. I'm 42 and what's happened in my lifetime utterly blows away previous milestones like "writing", "printing" or "recording".
What really, really pisses me off is that this isn't celebrated - despite only happening "because of screens"
Now is everything on a screen good? No - of course not. But maybe a better target would be "asymmetric engagement" or "prevalence of uncited facts" or "Kardashians"
"Too much screen-time" should be taken as the equivalent of "Reads too much" or "Discusses over a beer excessively"
Old media likes to attack "screens" because they are an existential threat to their business model and monopoly on narrative creation. They certainly are using the "think of the children" angle but the reason they're attacking the medium and not the message is because the medium itself levels the playing field and takes the power from their hands.
The 'most important battles' relate to surveillance, identity and privacy - and those battles are just beginning.
> one with a good critical eye
can you point me to a few things that are proof of this? I only know her from her yahoo/marissa bashing back in the day, which used sources inside the company. This was weird for me because yahoo and google were nominally competitors, and kara was married to a google vp at that time.
(i'm ex-yahoo)
Without technology my social life would crumble. I'd adapt, sure, just like I'd also adapt to a world without motorized transportation or recorded media.
For people who genuinely worry about technology's impact on their lives, I suggest spending a solid hour or two seizing control of the software you use. Turn off notifications you don't want. Uninstall things that don't provide you utility or joy. Unsubscribe! I have to give myself a digital tune-up along those lines every few months to keep things in check.
Also beyond the scope of questioning are her diet and lifestyle, which are affected by technology. If her diet is the typical technology-enhanced, sugar-rich diet and her lifestyle is the typical technology-enhanced lifestyle where you're not doing a whole lot of plowing in the fields, much less stalking prey for 36 hours straight on an empty stomach... well then, those are going to be factors that contribute to your "needing" a caesarean in the first place.
Anybody who is "anti-tech" is probably fooling themselves a little bit. Even the most valiant resisters are declaring "OK no tech from this point onward," where that point might be in the 1700s or whenever they choose. If you were completely anti-tech, you wouldn't even be able to pick up a rock and use it as a hammer.
Regardless, while being anti-tech is infinitely debatable, we should probably all be staunchly anti-scummy-predatory-BS-tech, just like you should be anti- their less-advanced scummy-predatory-BS predecessors.