Today my thought processes resemble a squashed goose much more than either a supercomputer or a simian... Day of the Roadkill
I'm looking for a narrative arc where your narrator becomes aware of a vibrant and warm community of likeminded human connectivity all around. Please deliver on that hope or else I'll die and you'll be responsible.
"... the mimetic habits break down, and intelligence becomes cognitive, isolated, autistic, sensory averse and emotionally stunted ..."
Not a function of complexity, though, is it?
More like the particular machinery of the moment has this effect.
Atomized, screen-focused, electronically mediated, anti-carnal, anti-IRL, anti-tactile, image and simulation, not immediate presence -- isn't all this a function of the current machinery? And if so, and if people become aware of the offsetting costs (there are some benefits) of the current machinery, won't they take steps to mitigate it?
Steam engines made people look at the world a certain way, and the initial wave of utopian celebration gave way to dealing with practical problems, like trains crushing humans (and geese) at intersections, or sparks from smokestacks setting wayside crops and buildings on fire. Practical measures to deal with real problems.
We have not had this current stuff very long, we are not good at it yet, and the severity of the problems (e.g., adolescent girls hounded to suicide on social media, in the dark, on their phones, in their bedrooms, and their parents don't know anything is going on) are just now reaching mass awareness.
So, maybe this is not a long glide, yet, to a world without biological belonging.
At best, it will be a cautionary episode to people somewhere downstream from us.
All points well taken, I’m pretty much in agreement. The main thing I wanted to suggest as a supplement to all this is that the whole screen absorption phenomenon is somewhat prefigured by a change in scientific understanding, from evolution as social animal adaption to algorithmic and computational process. In economic and political developments as well
Today my thought processes resemble a squashed goose much more than either a supercomputer or a simian... Day of the Roadkill
I'm looking for a narrative arc where your narrator becomes aware of a vibrant and warm community of likeminded human connectivity all around. Please deliver on that hope or else I'll die and you'll be responsible.
Great, responsible for yet more suffering in this blasted world
"... the mimetic habits break down, and intelligence becomes cognitive, isolated, autistic, sensory averse and emotionally stunted ..."
Not a function of complexity, though, is it?
More like the particular machinery of the moment has this effect.
Atomized, screen-focused, electronically mediated, anti-carnal, anti-IRL, anti-tactile, image and simulation, not immediate presence -- isn't all this a function of the current machinery? And if so, and if people become aware of the offsetting costs (there are some benefits) of the current machinery, won't they take steps to mitigate it?
Steam engines made people look at the world a certain way, and the initial wave of utopian celebration gave way to dealing with practical problems, like trains crushing humans (and geese) at intersections, or sparks from smokestacks setting wayside crops and buildings on fire. Practical measures to deal with real problems.
We have not had this current stuff very long, we are not good at it yet, and the severity of the problems (e.g., adolescent girls hounded to suicide on social media, in the dark, on their phones, in their bedrooms, and their parents don't know anything is going on) are just now reaching mass awareness.
So, maybe this is not a long glide, yet, to a world without biological belonging.
At best, it will be a cautionary episode to people somewhere downstream from us.
All points well taken, I’m pretty much in agreement. The main thing I wanted to suggest as a supplement to all this is that the whole screen absorption phenomenon is somewhat prefigured by a change in scientific understanding, from evolution as social animal adaption to algorithmic and computational process. In economic and political developments as well