"I’m talking about the fact that your brain would prefer you look at AI generated ragebait slop on Instagram Reels than hold eye contact with a loved-one. And you know that’s what I mean."
Bullseye. These companies are not interested in improving our lives in any way. Instead, they want us glued to the unending loop of garbage on their platforms that actively makes us less attentive and engaged in the actually meaningful aspects of our lives.
Excellent piece! I think you really get to the crux of the issue here - it's our brains and our biology that have largely driven this, even if technology has been an essential catalyst. To me it feels like an extension of the classic problem of modernity: as we further remove ourselves from the ancestral environment, we move further from the regulation mechanisms that existed to limit maladaptive behavior in the past. But phones are 1) high-fidelity enough to largely substitute for other sensory input, 2) mobile enough to bring more or less anywhere, and 3) essentially universally-adopted (at least in developed countries). And so, the problem becomes increasingly distilled: when you offer humans the ability to create a virtual world that can replace the physical, what does that world look like?
It feels as if we have stumbled into the ability, and need, to write our own culture. For most of our history we could simply allow our culture to evolve, even in the built environment to some degree. The fact that "the phones" (or whatever you want to call "them") have garnered such attention as a nucleus of cultural change, even if there are other factors contributing, show that there are things we can do that are powerful enough as to completely transform our entire way of interacting with the world around us in a short span of time. If many of the effects of this have been harmful, that raises the possibility of bad outcomes and drives a sense of urgency, but the magnitude of the change implies a profound capacity to direct the evolution of our own culture that can be used for our benefit.
Physical and virtual need not be at odds, and adjusting our relationship with technology does not require abandoning it. Those calling for bans and those dismissing the phones alike turn us away from the control of our own destiny. Where we should take ourselves I don't think any can safely say, but we must acknowledge that we are starting to have the power to do that.
Classic problem of modernity, well put. Like how we evolved to want to consume any available calories and then suddenly calories were easily available so we have to fight against our instincts to stay healthy. Or the Amish long ago felt like technology (cars, telephones, television, etc.) was disrupting their community (obviously it did) and decided to turn away from it. I want to join a new kind of Amish community, stuck in 2005, before the rise of social media, smart phones, and AI.
"Phone" is really a pocket computer, connected to the internet, always on, that we always have. "Internet" is really an endless supply of instantly accessible entertainment, news, discourse (mostly with anonymous strangers), and of course porn, as well as an avenue through which people we actually do know might contact us for social or work reasons at any hour of the day, seven days a week.
Impossible to overstate the impact adding these "phones" to our lives has had. In some ways good, mostly bad.
"I’m talking about the fact that your brain would prefer you look at AI generated ragebait slop on Instagram Reels than hold eye contact with a loved-one. And you know that’s what I mean."
Bullseye. These companies are not interested in improving our lives in any way. Instead, they want us glued to the unending loop of garbage on their platforms that actively makes us less attentive and engaged in the actually meaningful aspects of our lives.
It's just capitalism. Same reason restaurants optimize for flavor rather than health.
Excellent piece! I think you really get to the crux of the issue here - it's our brains and our biology that have largely driven this, even if technology has been an essential catalyst. To me it feels like an extension of the classic problem of modernity: as we further remove ourselves from the ancestral environment, we move further from the regulation mechanisms that existed to limit maladaptive behavior in the past. But phones are 1) high-fidelity enough to largely substitute for other sensory input, 2) mobile enough to bring more or less anywhere, and 3) essentially universally-adopted (at least in developed countries). And so, the problem becomes increasingly distilled: when you offer humans the ability to create a virtual world that can replace the physical, what does that world look like?
It feels as if we have stumbled into the ability, and need, to write our own culture. For most of our history we could simply allow our culture to evolve, even in the built environment to some degree. The fact that "the phones" (or whatever you want to call "them") have garnered such attention as a nucleus of cultural change, even if there are other factors contributing, show that there are things we can do that are powerful enough as to completely transform our entire way of interacting with the world around us in a short span of time. If many of the effects of this have been harmful, that raises the possibility of bad outcomes and drives a sense of urgency, but the magnitude of the change implies a profound capacity to direct the evolution of our own culture that can be used for our benefit.
Physical and virtual need not be at odds, and adjusting our relationship with technology does not require abandoning it. Those calling for bans and those dismissing the phones alike turn us away from the control of our own destiny. Where we should take ourselves I don't think any can safely say, but we must acknowledge that we are starting to have the power to do that.
Classic problem of modernity, well put. Like how we evolved to want to consume any available calories and then suddenly calories were easily available so we have to fight against our instincts to stay healthy. Or the Amish long ago felt like technology (cars, telephones, television, etc.) was disrupting their community (obviously it did) and decided to turn away from it. I want to join a new kind of Amish community, stuck in 2005, before the rise of social media, smart phones, and AI.
If there is a moral panic to get rid of phones, it is the smallest, least successful moral panic of all time.
"Phone" is really a pocket computer, connected to the internet, always on, that we always have. "Internet" is really an endless supply of instantly accessible entertainment, news, discourse (mostly with anonymous strangers), and of course porn, as well as an avenue through which people we actually do know might contact us for social or work reasons at any hour of the day, seven days a week.
Impossible to overstate the impact adding these "phones" to our lives has had. In some ways good, mostly bad.