This blog has often been critical of the current state of the tech industry. It has critiqued the negative impact that new technological developments are having on modern society. However, today I would like to discuss the upsides of a wired world.
The generic “smart person’s criticism” of the digital revolution is to say: “We all know that the Internet is great on balance, but a few major problems need to be addressed.” These articles go on to discuss only the problems, without explaining what is so obviously “great.” I often think digital critics are afraid of following their critical beliefs to their conclusion, which is that negative consequences of the digital revolution may have outweighed its positive impacts for society, perhaps out of fear of being perceived as neo-luddites or knee-jerk reactionaries.
This post’s discussion of the wonders of the Internet is not an attempt to prove why the Internet has been more good than bad. The aggregate impact of our technologies may be negative, and the question of how to weigh that impact is quite complicated. Nevertheless, aspects of our wired world have excited me and filled me with wonder during the Internet era.
I was a college student when I joined Facebook. Back then (around 2007) it consisted of closed networks within specific universities. That made me an early adopter, because most people outside the collegiate world found it difficult to join during that era. It was a wonderful time to be a Facebook user. There were groups for people on each floor of my dorm. Someone could look at a page for “Chicago Cubs fans” and see the names of all the people at his college who had joined that group. Using this tool, a seemingly-lone Cubs fan at a liberal arts college in Massachusetts could find the dozen people on campus who loved the Cubbies. It was a great way to learn about your neighbors on campus, and to discover people nearby who shared the same passions and interests as you. In that brief period, Facebook may have actually facilitated many real-world friendships and social connections.
The expansion of Facebook made it worse in many ways. However, it did open up the social network to just about anyone with Internet access. This development allowed users to have their Facebook social networks reflect the majority of people in their real-world social networks. Our current ability to stay in touch with college friends who have graduated and moved across the country can be a great resource. Today’s version of Facebook allows people to announce major life developments, from the triumphant to the tragic, without having to reach out to people individually, or even to dig up possibly outdated contact information in an attempt at a mass e-mail.
When I first discovered Twitter, I fell in love with it. I always felt my interests were diverse and quirky. Twitter allowed me to curate my news so it reflected my individual curiosities, ranging from classic alternative bands to college football to foreign policy to political philosophy to national parks to city planning to professional basketball. It allowed me to follow local news outlets and institutions in all the regions that I have personal ties to, in addition to providing me with the ability to simultaneously monitor national and international sources. To this day, I enjoy the fact that Twitter allows me to have not only the raw factual information about breaking news stories, but the unique reactions and perspectives of some of the most insightful thinkers in the English-speaking world. It also allows me to follow people with a wide range of ideological views, which helps me avoid intellectual tunnel vision (unfortunately, many people curate their feed in the opposite manner, following only people who agree with their own partisan passions).
The digital age has also given us audiobooks, which is one development I see as overwhelmingly positive. Audiobooks are more sophisticated constructions (having gone through an editorial process) than are most talk radio shows or stream-of-consciousness podcasts. I struggle to find time to read all the books that interest me. Being able to listen to them allows me to “read” while working out, driving, or cleaning the apartment. “Books on tape” precede the digital age, of course, but they often only existed for bestsellers, and they were usually significantly more expensive than the paper versions. The invention of the digital file format drove down the cost because vendors no longer had to factor in the cost of producing physical tapes and CDs and packaging. The audiobook has made it easy to access broad library of knowledge without hauling around hundreds of pages.
This Garden of Interconnected Delights was never an Eden or a Utopia. These digital content platforms always contained risks for the consumer, above all by being so compelling that they distracted people from the tangible world. But now there are more snakes and monsters in the garden than ever before. They are the sensationalist advertisers and identity thieves and misinformation entrepreneurs and foreign opinion manipulators and many more. Oh my.
A very diverse group of voices are sounding the alarm. A feminist notes the ways social media algorithm facilitate the humiliation and harassment of women and minorities. A “libertarian transhumanist” observes that social media transmits “viruses of the mind: toxic ideas that spread like wildfire.” A moderate conservative worries that tech companies might be monopolies that maintain their hold on attention spans by addicting users. A scientist and Internet pioneer laments the “proliferation of fake news, propaganda and the web’s increasing polarisation.” Even a former Facebook manager says that the company “needs to be regulated more tightly, or broken up so that no single entity controls all of its data.” Of course, I must admit that I discovered most of these insightful tech-critical articles on the Internet via social media.
It is probably impossible to reverse the digital revolution. Philosophers will probably discuss “was the Internet good for humanity?” for generations. That is an academic question, not an actionable one. The question for concerned citizens and consumers is, “how do we make the digital world better?”