| We apparently have two entirely different observations of reality. I will share a little more of mine: Kay and Papert did fantastic research on computing and education. Apple takes the idea, and turns it into something that Kay describes as: "Think about this. How stupid is this? It’s about as stupid as you can get. But how successful is the iPhone? It’s about as successful as you can get, so that matches you up with something that is the logical equivalent of television in our time." and: "Yeah. We can eliminate the learning curve for reading by getting rid of reading and going to recordings. That’s basically what they’re doing: Basically, let’s revert back to a pre-tool time." Or take the web. Berners-Lee. Smart guy, great intentions. Early days were just plain text or the MS Frontpage goodness rocked by our professoriate. Not pretty, but plenty of actual content that you could learn from. Contrast with today where all of that stuff is buried several pages deep. What's link one? Some bullshit content farm like WebMD full of popovers, dickbars, and ads for pills nobody needs. Then there's the Facebook/Twitter awfulness, where enumerating the breadth-and-depth of it would span several books. Or television. Higher-minded early execs tried to use it as a tool for raising the cultural bar--operas, great authors, polite debates. Those guys got their clocks cleaned by the guy who put on "Gilligan's Island," and that guy would have had his clock cleaned by the assholes who made "Survivor" and "The Apprentice". How long before they just straight-up show porn on broadcast? I do not know. Or automobiles. Very practical inventions. What did we do with them? Urban sprawl, 5-lane highways, white-flight, drunk driving, global warming, etc. Many Europeans lucked-out by lacking either the cash or the empty space to follow us in that particular mistake. Obesity, opioids, mcmansions, etc. pdfernhout nailed it on the scarcity mindset in a post-scarcity world. There is a trajectory here. If you can show me how I'm wrong about that trajectory, I would love to hear it just for the sake of my own sanity. I would also assert that will and analytic brain power are entirely different things. Take Kalanick. Obviously plenty of analytic intelligence. Technology is like steroids for analytic intelligence. It let him become tech-bro master of the universe instead of some two-bit engineer. It did not stop him from becoming a total asshole. |
On "trajectory", books like "The Pleasure Trap" and "Supernormal Stimuli" discuss the theme of our scarcity-shaped inclinations being out-of-date for our world of abundance. http://web.archive.org/web/20160418155513/http://www.drfuhrm... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_Stimuli
The Pleasure Trap in particular was the first book I read that for me connected health issues to scarcity/abundance themes.
Or also "Wired Child: Reclaiming Childhood in a Digital Age" and "The War Play Dilemma" specifically on media and kids.
And also Paul Graham on "The Acceleration of Addictiveness": http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html
Or on insights from "Rat Park" about how social isolation and excess stress are the cause of most addictive behavior: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-real-cause-of...
What to do about that is a big challenge though... There are some ideas in those various resources.