Hey guys, what if good things were actually bad? Wow!! Instead of enjoying ourselves we should instead spend eight hours a day intently studying woodworking & tax policy. The fact that people enjoy talking to each other and looking at cat pictures on social media proves that people will accept fascism and that Western liberal democracy is fated for impotence.
There is a middle ground between woodworking and TikTok, no? People enjoyed talking to each other and had fun before we had technology.
It’s easy to see social media as harmless, and maybe it is, but it also has the potential to act as a powerful tool for serving propaganda and brainwashing.
I’m not suggesting an actual conspiracy theory here but it’s concerning that a few huge companies have the power to broadcast (and control) the flow of information to a majority of population, who will consume that information by and large without suspicion.
If for some reason Facebook or TikTok really wanted to meaningfully shift public opinion, they probably could, and in any direction they might choose.
There wasn't a time "before we had technology". Best to avoid that
line of thinking if you want to escape the determinist (Veblem) trap
and end up like Kaczynski.
Postman is an author we enjoy but seldom acknowledge the wider genre
into which he fits. It's called "tech critique".
You can study it through the ages, comparing the outlooks and
influences of Einstein, Ellul, Freud, Fromm, Heidegger, Illich,
Kaczynski, Marcuse, Mumford, Nietzsche, and Postman, as well as sci-fi
writers like Wells, Forster, Clarke, Gibson, Le Guin, Dick...It makes
a very good companion to a study of the philosophy of science.
Some takeaways (at least ones that stick in my mind):
Technology is inseparable from the human condition, There are no
primitivist escapes, noble savages or gardens of Walden.
By the same token there is not and won't ever be any golden age of
Utopian technology.
Technology most closely resembles a "drug" in all its manifest
functions.
Technology comes with an accumulative maintenance cost.
It is monotonic/directional. There's no easy way back and we can't
uninvent stuff.
Minimising the _harms_ of technology while maximising the benefits and
maintaining human dignity amidst it is the best we can do.
Even if initially excited by new developments all people are
ultimately ambivalent about technology. They fear it, use it
begrudgingly and resent their dependency on it. Iron bridges and steam
locomotives raised the same questions as GPS and iPhones do today.
Many people romanticise and worship technology. It is a secular God.
If we "love" it, it's the sick love of an addict or the sadomasochistic
power glee (tech "dealers" like Ellison, Zuck, and Musk)
A tiny few (that's us) enjoy a curious fascination that makes tech an
"end in itself". Those people get used to create a supply for the
dealers and addicts.
Anyway you gotta love Postman, if only for exquisite use of
"centrifugal bumblepuppy". What he describes in this passage is really
the soporific control/domination effects of technology in the hands of
tyrants/dealers who delight in the subjugation of attention - which I
think is made best by Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America.
Well, this was nothing if not besides the point. Anyone on this site should recognize that when people like the person you responded to use the word "technology", especially in this context, it is typically a colloquialism for information technology, as in television, computers, phones and the like.
Even in colloquial English amongst the public, "technology" hasn't referred to technology in general for several decades, but simply to "information technology". It has become so common that the general public refers to the entire information technology industry simply as "tech" or the "tech industry", which excludes all traditional engineering disciplines outside of electrical, despite all those disciplines working with technology.
Yes, popular parochialism is another common theme discussed in tech
critique. Each generation believes its technology to be an exceptional
pinnacle, disconnected from its antecedents. It starts to see the
world in no other terms. What you're saying feels like a reformulation
of McLuhan's "the medium is the message". People who see their world
only through the TV or smartphone screen can no longer "see" the
technology that undergirds it. Their world gets smaller, into a
Plato's cave if you like.
I disagree that influence is really that malleable. Even if we take the power of selection algorithms for granted it is still constrained and must work with the 'winds' of the content posted. If they tried something 'simple' as promoting non-mammalian meat sources they would only succeed in creating memes mocking the concept.
Besides, the most "effective" influencer does next to nothing because they were going to do that sort of thing already. There is a reason you see music stars doing promotionals for pleasurable to consume caloried drinks as a use for personal funds and not say deferred gratification products like investment banking.
