Technology and Social Connection
It's become trendy to say that we've grown lonely because of technology. That it's hard to find people you can have a real conversation with.
But technology isn't to blame. This happened because societies are developing in crooked ways. Our first principles — morality, education, upbringing, public institutions, and much more — have rotted, and this has been happening for a long time. It shakes entire countries and rattles each of us personally. And with time, the amplitude of this shaking just keeps growing.
It's become hard to communicate, hard to make sense of what's going on around us or in the world in general. It feels like there are fewer and fewer people with common sense. But this is mainly because we've lost touch with some kind of core. We've drifted too far apart from each other on too many issues. From early childhood, every part of life we encounter loads us with ideology. Someone else's ideology. Which itself grew out of other ideologies before it. In the past, when people lived closer to nature, they received fewer signals from other people and more directly from the world itself. And the world is physical, just as it is.
Technology, on the other hand, gives us a chance to at least partially counter these effects and gradually reduce the difficulty of adapting to life.
We connect on social media with people far away because there are so few nearby who really understand us. And more and more, we'll find ourselves talking with AI bots — because, in our eyes, they'll seem more reasonable than the vast majority of people around us. Let's not confuse cause and effect though. And let's not confuse the cause of the problem with the tools created to deal with it.
Yes, modern technology may not be the best cure for such deep social distortions, but it's still a step in the right direction.
Here's my allegory (and you know I love these and stick them everywhere): if you find yourself in a disaster, everything's exploding around you, and you're wounded and bleeding, bandages won't solve the problem of explosions. But don't say the explosions are happening because of the bandages. Bandages help soften the blow, keep you from bleeding out, and maybe, once you're patched up, you'll be able to stand up and start addressing the actual root of the problem.
Tags: technology, society, philosophy