Jonathan Franzen: what's wrong with the modern world
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
It's easy to play the critic and sit back and declare that life does not measure up to your expectations. But personally I find building new things, however imperfect they may be, far more satisfying.
I'm at a similar place in life, especially after being a terribly critical person almost all my life. Thankfully, the best takeaway for me from my so far below-par tryst with entrepreneurship has been to be much more appreciative of everything.
All the things that are wrong are things that can also be improved, so, these days, I try to think of what I can do to improve them.
It's also a lot of work!
Providing well-reasoned criticism backed by evidence is much more difficult. Providing constructive criticism or suggestions that are meaningful is even harder.
In many of his points he is true. The conventional means of seeking this same fulfillment are sinking away.
But he overestimates how much people are nullified by technology. And he is blind to the other possible means of access to these feelings technology can provide. Technophobes can't see behind the veil of pixels. They believe that all experiences on a computer are fake, and that the internet is a superficial control panel onto a (boring) machine of cogs and wires. A computer is no more than a stone to throw in a river.
The problem is these people rarely look. And when they do their self fulfilling prophesy dirties their own great experiences (they believe the computer in its wisdom has tricked their emotions). Anyone who has spend years on a forum, or late nights on IRC talking to people they've known for decades, knows these experiences are real.
To engage with technology is the only way to re-find these experiences in the modern world. It isn't really anything to do with technology. It embodies all aspects of life. To anyone growing with hate about the world I give the same advice _engage_ and you will find what you're looking for.
Technology is neutral, and in essence is a metho od illusion. And like all illusions, some are useful abstractions, whilst others are merely distractions. Both things in life are neccessary, I'm affraid. Its life by another means, no different to the use of other media. Other than at a tactical level, it requires new skills and sensibilies (perhaps).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yHBz3K0yKg
That's when I remember the world doesn't want to be saved by what I think is right and appropriate.
But ... I don't think the response is nearly as formidable as the challenge. The writer of the NY Times article has that superficial knowledge of a programmer newbie (for example, comparing Facebook / Google with an operating system is not as wrong as it might seem), but not the depth of thought that Franzen has.
It is, however, more poetic and more emotionally resonant than the response.
Moore's law is a statement about transistor density. It does not apply to algorithmic/mathematical innovation, otherwise we'd have sentient robot buddies already. Do you find the algorithms and languages of today exponentially superior to those of 50 years ago? May I remind you LISP came about in 1958...
I don't think that I'm being like a religious fanatic by believing that better fraud detection on amazon reviews will be implemented in the future.
And this is exactly why I, apparently like Mr. Franzen, appreciate the "quality control" of newspapers like, for example, the Guardian in this case.
Otherwise, people tend to believe that dismissing a thoughtful 5,000+ word essay with, "I really doubt he understands the Amazon algorithms" passes for reasonable criticism.
Here's a quote of his:
I think the Internet should be really strictly regulated, the way the airwaves used to be. If an entire region of the country had its main industry suddenly lose 90 percent of its paying jobs because of the predatory practices of a different region’s industry, you might, if you were the government, step in and say, “We can’t actually let this entire region starve. We’re going to subsidize prices, we’re going to redistribute some income.” Why should Apple shareholders be getting rich while working journalists are getting fired? This is an unjust situation, and the libertarians in Silicon Valley are either moral idiots or liars. They know they’re getting away with shit they shouldn’t get away with, and all they’ve got is this idea of libertarianism. That, and the mantra of making the world a better place.
If you think he's a thoughtful person and he's given a lot of time thinking about this, you're wrong. He's not thoughtful, he's defensive about novelists and journalists, and brick and mortar bookstores.
If you read his articles and if you've read his books, you would understand his position on technology is a simple, not thoughtful, not deeply reasoned position. It is VERY black and white and often just wrong.
I'm only talking about his position on tech/internet. He's a great writer and I've read everything he's ever written. And will continue to do so. I'm a huge fan of his.
Similarly, I LOVE Walt Whitman. However, I wouldn't take advice on the beauty of equations from Walt Whitman. It's perfectly fine for someone to be a great poet, but has no ability to see the same elegance in mathematical equations. But to dismiss those equations, it reveals a certain ignorance. But still, I can get into his perspective and find that his poems are very beautiful.
If what you got out of Mr. Franzen's essay was that he's a technophobe who divides the world into Mac and PCs and doesn't know what an operating system is, then yeah, appropriate response.
Personally, I think his essay was a little deeper than that.
He makes some good points in that we tend to talk about things more often than do them. Social networking is all about talking or rather communication. The noise to signal ratio is too high on social networks, and it is dominated by web robots who spam links, and in-you-face adverting that makes the social network free for the users but subjects them to all kinds of advertising even selling their personal data to scammers and spammers and large megacorporations. Sure the social network is free as in beer, but not free as in speech. You don't have any privacy the social network records everything even the stuff you typed but didn't send, and had to stop yourself before you sent it because it would have been embarrassing. In fact one can reasonable say the social networks take away your privacy by forcing you to use your real name and show everything you do, it takes away your rights, your freedoms, your liberties, and of course also treats you as a product instead of a human being, that they can market advertising towards in order to become billionaires.
Apple vs. Microsoft, we once had that with Atari vs. Commodore, we once had that with DEC vs. Wang, we once had that with IBM vs. Amdal, we once had that with Fairchild/Intel vs. TI. Competition is good, because it forces innovation to stay ahead of your competition. But after the DMCA was passed, it gives too much control and power to megacorproations and robs the consumer of ownership rights, liberties, freedoms, and then forces Malware DRM on them in the name of "profits at any cost" and then the megacorproations contribute to both political parties in the USA to make sure that law is never repealed. Oh did I mention corporate corruption makes political corruption?
Religion itself has been hijacked by the megacorproations. For example Christianity was always about love, compassion, and empathy. Love everyone, love your enemies. Now it is about hate, money, power, fame, bragging rights. It is all about greed, envy, lust, sloth, wraith/anger, gluttony, and worse of all pride. Proud to be an American? Proud to be rich and privileged? Christ himself would not approve of it. Pride is one of the most dangerous of the seven deadly sins. No wonder people are leaving religion and becoming atheists, religious people aren't being true to their religious teachings and taking up corporate teachings instead. Corporation corruption makes religious corruption, as well as political corruption, as well as social corruption, as well as cultural corruption as well as environmental corruption as well as economic corruption, and then even science corruption and technological corruption that leads to poor quality products that last less than three years and are made with the cheapest labor in the worst of all conditions in a third world nation using child labor and slavery. But don't worry, once they replace human beings with robots, all of those factory workers will be out of jobs. Unemployed like the rest of us.
Climate change, global warming, global cooling. I don't know the whole thing because of the margin of error in the data collected and that climategate email thing. All I know is corporate corruption has used it as a bat to beat over the head of poor people by jacking around the price of fossil fuels and then trying to force carbon credits (Created by a system from Enron?) to pay for our 'sins' (Anyone remember this guy named Martin Luther?) so we can use carbon based fuels and still not contribute to global warming. It turns out our sun has something to do with it and it is not a 'human factor' http://m.space.com/23934-weak-solar-cycle-space-weather.html But hey, all of this snow is great, and maybe the wooly mammoths will come back as we enter an 'ice age' of global warming aka global cooling bka climate change? BTW more money is spent on studying climate change than actually finding alternatives to fossil fuels and greener technology and greener programming to save electricity? What's up with that? We cut NASA's space program for the war on terror and then cut it some more to study climate change. Now our space program is a joke as China puts a robot on the Moon, and our space shuttle is recycled 1980's tech and mothballed.
The number of mentally ill people keeps on rising. There is no empathy and compassion for the mentally ill anymore. Since a mental illness is 'invisible' most people think the mentally ill are faking it and are really 'pretentious douchebags' who should just 'snap out of it' and get back to work. All public programs to treat the mentally ill got cut after 9/11 in the USA in order to fund NSA spying and security with the TSA and other agencies. Leaving the mentally ill with little or no support options. Dropping out of college because that college could no support them due to lack of funding by the government. So one neuroscience student the system failed, shot up a Batman movie in Colorado as "The Joker" who was mentally ill. Another failed college student shot up a school in Newtown and was mentally ill. The Navy Base Shooter was also mentally ill talking about ELF radiation controlling him. In all three cases they begged for help, talked about killing people, but got no help and no support. They were just swept under the rug and ignored, until they got really violent and off their meds and got some guns and did some shootings. But the mentally ill are vilified now. The news media only focuses on the 10% of the mentally ill that do violent crimes, won't tell you that 90% are non-violent and in need of help, support, empathy, and compassion. http://blastar.in/crawfraud/?p=143
Still it is a human problem of hating those who are different than you in some way. This is a trait that evolution made to keep tribes of humans together for survival. But we don't need it anymore, because the only race that matters now is the human race. All of our lives are at stake now.
Game of Thrones
Doctor Who
The Hunger Games
Harry Potter
etc.
If any of it got you to think about different issues, I am glad, even if you disagree with me on some or all of it. My goal was to get people to think about the different issues out there that the original article did not get into enough.
I'd argue that compassion and tolerance are best practiced in those small groups as well, as you are forced to recognize the person behind the stereotypes (Note: I live in a town of 800 people and can tell you the names of many people who struggle with mental illness, some of whom I've been blessed enough to be able to help at times).
So I'd actually argue the opposite of your point. Sociologically it's been demonstrated that humans tend (not always) to operate best and honestly in a certain size group. DuPont set up their labs based on this number, though I can't remember it off the top of my head. No human is capable of honestly considering the needs of the entire human race. That's just silly.
In society people tell others comfortable lies to make them feel better. To hide the truth from them. Often people resort to humor as in sarcasm, or satire when they cannot stand another person or group. Sometimes it leads to stereotypes and pre-judgement, sometimes people believe those sorts of things as truths even if they are lies and fiction, perhaps even delusion.
True not one person can run the entire world, Sony and others found out they cannot even run multiple parts of their global operation and had to make each national HQ independent to work, otherwise they had failure. I think it is called The Peter Principle if I am not mistake. If there is a NWO or Illuminati, they cannot control the entire world, it would be impossible. What many contribute as conspiracy is really just gross incompetence.
As a mentally ill person, when I first became mentally ill in 2001, I suffered and was in pain a lot because I was rejected by my peers, by management, by my family, and even my friends left me. I had an 'invisible illness' they could not see, but I was as disabled as a blind person, a deaf person, or a person with no legs. Yet there was nothing but hate for me, mocking, persecution, insults, bullying, and being told by some that I should "Just commit suicide to free up world resources for everyone else" because of how useless I was, and no longer considered a human being.
I am told that I am lucky to have survived it all. Most mentally ill people in my situation do kill themselves. You see it in these startup groups, but nobody wants to talk about the stress and pressure in them that causes mental illnesses and how people have to hide their mental illnesses in order to keep working.
Religion hasn't been hijacked by the megacorporations. Christianity, and most other Western religions, are filled with histories of violence and oppression. The mentally ill have been punished and treated poorly throughout history - as were almost all people throughout history. In fact religion is one of the only parts of society where the mentally ill are venerated, which is a sad fact.
Your focus on corporations being the reason for corruption is unwarranted. The main problems arise when our justice system favors one thing over another - be it groups over individuals, whites over blacks or rich over poor. Dispersing power, focusing on equality before the law and in opportunity, and reducing coercive forces on individuals is the solution. This involves self forming economic entities like corporations but also entails strong and separate political systems that aren't influenced by them.
a. For a cooler look at Karl Kraus, check out the essay on him in Clive James's Cultural Amnesia. b. The PC/Mac/whatever bit is tedious and silly. c. Comparing the US to the Austro-Hungarian empire is also silly. One might stipulate that we comprise wildly different cultures also; but that would require that one skip the "Roman Catholic empire" bit and notice that the empire had quantities of Protestants, Orthodox, Jews, and Muslims.
"Television is also bad; perhaps not as bad as Twitter, but they both start with T, which rhymes with P and which stands for Pool."
Captured his arguments perfectly! Hilarious! </s>