If all the secrets of adulthood, including sex, illness and death, are opened to children; cynicism, apathy or arrogance replace curiosity for them, short-circuiting education and moral development.
-- Neil Postman (The Disappearance of Childhood)
⬆ #Wisdom #Quotes #NeilPostman #Apathy #Arrogance #Cynicism #Education #Television
⬇ #Photography #Panorama #Panopainting #Kayaks #Everglades #Florida
40 years ago, #NeilPostman wrote the words that become more and more relevant with every decade.
"Contrary to common belief even among the educated, #Huxley and #Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no #BigBrother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history."
1/4
#RussiaWonSurkovWon #SurkovWon /\
#BeyondDenial /\ #FWakeSurkovWon
>>> #NeilPostmanWasRight1985 #NeilPostman #AmusingOurselvesZombies
#AmusingOurselvesToDeath /\
"A protester holds a placard reading "No to Russian propaganda" during a demonstration against the Russian invasion of Ukraine in Milan, Italy, on February 24" 2024 #FWakeY2024
#February24 #FWakeFebruary24
#FWakeARGclips #FWakeNeilPostman #FWakeAmusing
#AmusingOurselvesZombies #NeilPostmanWasRight1985
#NeilPostman #FWakeMMclip /\
#FWakeVisualMedium #VisualMedium /\
#MediumIsTheMessage /\ #MediaEcologyCrisis /\
https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxsIZk7a51bcER2B5b3dg6I9FthNw9LCi6
1985 book by professor Neil Postman on "Amusing Ourselves" via social media machines / HDTV devices
The medium is the metaphor.
-- Neil Postman
⬆ #Wisdom #Quotes #NeilPostman #Publishing
⬇ #Photography #Panorama #Sunrise #SacandagaLake #Adirondacks #NewYork
processus de "#temps volé' quelle que soit "la nature des activités numériques préemptives" + "le degré de nocivité d'un contenu inadapté croît avec la durée d'exposition."
entre 6--18 ans = 14 ans -> conversion 1h quotidien sur écran x 365 x 14 ans = 5 années scolaires sur écran = 2.5 ans d'activité salariée à temps plein.
cf Neil Postman
#MichelDesmurget #digital #teameduc #teamprof #parents #science #education #NeilPostman
Of course, when "weaponized" psychological manipulation is at play... #NeilPostmanWasRight you run into Neil Postman's 1985 book "Amusing Ourselves To Death"... and #cults #FWakeCults
"Most of us, most of the time, are unaware of how language does its work." —Neil Postman, Technopoly
The medium is the metaphor.
-- Neil Postman
⬆ #Wisdom #Quotes #NeilPostman #Publishing
⬇ #Photography #Panorama #ChacoCanyon #PuebloBonito #Ruins #360panorama #NewMexico
The In-Betweeners
https://therealists.org/?p=8116
Capturing Gen Z’s attention
In early December I was invited to give a 30 minute presentation about The Realists for recent graduates of a prestigious business school in Paris. Their teacher told me that the students were already aware of many of the topics I typically write about – Big Tech, surveillance capitalism, behavioral manipulation – especially after watching the documentary The Social Dilemma. My task: to keep my presentation fresh and original to impress an audience that grew up online.
In the days leading up to the lecture, I was really intimidated. I had shown my documentary The Illusionists to auditoriums with over 300 spectators – but presenting to a class of 30 or so Gen Z students felt far more daunting. What could I possibly tell them that would grab and hold their attention?
Until I found an angle – that the audience eventually appreciated.
Meet a Geriatric Millennial
I am a geriatric millennial: I had an analog childhood in the 1980s; discovered the Web 1.0 in my teens, and the birth of social media once I was a university student.
I have this unique perspective of being in between worlds: I experienced socialization away from screens for most of my childhood and early adolescence; and the tidal wave of the internet and the monumental changes it brought to us as humans once I was already a young adult.
My dad worked in technology and would bring home early computer prototypes. Our first laptop, in the late 1980s, came in a heavy grey plastic suitcase that opened to reveal a keyboard on one side and a small orange, low resolution screen on the other. The availability of the internet would be a few years away… all I could do was play around with DOS commands and Paintbrush.
An IBM computer from the 1980s. Source: Wikimedia
At home, I would be engrossed in these new technological tools. At school, none of my classmates could relate to these experiences, as personal computers were still rare and prohibitively expensive in Italy at the time.
While preparing the presentation for the class of business graduates in December, I realized that I have always felt in between worlds. One foot in the digital world; one foot out in the real world. It’s been my normal my entire life. And being an in-betweener can offer a powerful perspective to what is happening to our world today.
An in-betweener doesn’t accept new things as normal; an in-betweener is reminded of what “normal” used to be like and questions every innovation. Maybe this is why I am so drawn to the writings of the late Neil Postman – especially his superb book Technopoly – as he held the same critical attitude towards technology.
The Last Generation
I belong to the last generation that grew up offline. The LAST one. Generations that came after me experienced the internet and social media from middle school… or even earlier. The only people who could relate to this are my late grandparents. They were born in a world without television… and then, in their adult years, they discovered this “magical” box that would bring the outside world in their living room.
As a geriatric millennial I distinctly remember what friendships used to be like – nurtured in the real world, away from screens. Sure, I would spend hours on the phone talking to friends in high school, once I got home from school. But there weren’t technological companies involved in mediating our communications, gamifying our interactions with hearts and likes and visible metrics. I am not saying one way is better than the other. Do not mistake this as nostalgia for a time now gone. Mine is just the testimony of someone who remembers what it was like to hang out for hours with friends in the afternoon, after school, in the absence of the internet, social media and the walled gardens of Big Tech.
I was an in-betweener as a child and adolescent, dipping in and out of two worlds. And I am still an in-betweener today, in 2024. How? You may wonder.
Half the day online; half the day offline
I wake up at around 6am every day. I immediately go online to read the news (bad habit, I know) or resume reading a book on my Kindle. Then I have coffee, get ready, and wake up my little one at around 8am. As soon as my child is with me, the phone goes in my back pocket… and stays there until I drop her off at daycare. I go home to work, power up my computer and tablet and dip back in the digital world for about 6 hours. When, at 3:30pm, it’s time to go pick her up from daycare, the computer and tablet shut off for the rest of the day and the phone returns in my back pocket… where it will stay for the next 5 hours, until my child is asleep.
I’ve been putting away my smartphone when I’m with my child ever since she was born: I never wanted to give her the impression that whatever appeared on this small black rectangle was more important than her. My number one priority has been – for 3 years now – to give her my undivided attention.
It’s fascinating to see how we model behaviors to our little ones and how much they learn by observing us.
Ever since my child’s toddlerhood, she has often yearned to imitate what mommy does. At home, we have had an unplugged, inactive cordless phone lying around in the living room. I explained to my child that that black object is a phone. Next time I caught her playing with it, she was trying to shove it in her back pocket – even if her pants that day didn’t have one. So she simply took the phone and sat on it. And then looked up at me and said “phone pocket.” It was hilarious. And incredibly endearing and powerful. When it happened my girl wasn’t even 2 yet… maybe she was 18 months old. And yet, she knew what I kept in my back pocket was a phone. And that it belonged there when we were together.
Takeaways from a tech-free, TV-free life
What happens when a 3 year old doesn’t have access to television, smartphones or tablets for “entertainment”? The entire world around them is an object of wonder, to be observed with the utmost curiosity and vigilance. A 360° interactive playground.
For example, on the way to daycare in the morning, she often screams “Mom! The moon!” The first time it happened I thought to myself: “what is she talking about it’s daytime” But then I looked up to the sky and saw a banana-shaped tiny sliver of light. Sure enough, there was a crescent moon barely visible behind some fluffy clouds.
It takes my girl less than 5 seconds to spot the moon on a clear morning, whenever we leave our apartment building. The moon… planes… cats perched on a windowsill… my offline, screen-free toddler spots interesting things all the time – an inspires me to be present, in the real world, and to notice interesting things too, so I can point them out to her.
Conversely, on the way to daycare, we often come across people walking while staring down at their phones, completely oblivious to the world around them. How many crashes have I averted! When I’m in a rush, pushing her stroller, I often feel like I’m playing a real life video game. Think: Frogger, but the obstacles and dangers are not cars and trucks… they are fast-walking humans whose eyes are hypnotized by cell phones and who do not notice incoming pedestrians.
It’s a bit awkward to be with my toddler and observe her observe these people who are completely engrossed in their screens. Whenever I get on public transportation with her, we are often the only people not staring down at a screen during the journey. She often tries to smile and establish eye contact with people – especially if someone is dressed in her favorite color – but it’s rare to have people look up and smile back. Fellow moms and dads, or people over the age of 70… but that’s about it. Luckily I always pack books, so we can read stories… and I can pull her attention away from this new normal of disconnection. My explanation to her “they’re probably writing to or reading a message from their mom.” Ha!
The Pursuit of Human Happiness
Seeing what makes my child tick, what she needs to be happy (attention! love! safety! her favorite stories!) is the biggest drive for me to make a documentary on technology and how it is changing us as humans.
Kids a decade older than my child are witnessing an epidemic of depression and anxiety – that has coincided with the introduction of smartphones and gamified social media platforms.
The idea that my child’s happiness will one day depend on social media metrics and online popularity – subject to an opaque algorithm – just about breaks my heart and infuriates me at the same time. I intend to fiercely protect her from this ugly digital world for as long as I can… and when she’s old enough, educate her about the mechanisms driving it and teach her to question everything and to follow the money.
My child may one day see me as an out of touch dinosaur, but I will be in the position to remind her that there used to be another way. And that there still is another way – if she chooses it. The Realists’ way. Informed, aware, and keen on using tech in a mindful way, instead of being used by it.
Thanks for being here.
#digitalLiteracy #GenX #GenZ #geriatricMillennial #millennials #NeilPostman #parenting #personalHistory #screenFree #socialMedia
Lesenswert. „Die natürliche Ordnung der Dinge. bzw. 5 Punkte die wir über technologische Dinge wissen sollte.“ Dank #NeilPostman https://internetobservatorium.substack.com/p/aus-dem-internet-observatorium-119
#FWakeNeilPostman #NeilPostmanWasRight
"Building a bridge to the 18th century" by #NeilPostman #FWakeY1999 #FWakeYear1999
#MediaEcologyBridge #BuildingMediaBridge //\\
#FWakeCoreConcepts #WakeIndraCores #FWakeCores
#FWakeMediaEcology
#FWakeBridge #FWakeRiver //\\
Visions of the Future: How to Be a Realist in a Techno-Optimist World
https://therealists.org/?p=8080
We are on the cusp of a new era.
Apple – the world’s second largest company by market cap ($2.85 trillion as of Feb. 1, 2024) – is putting significant R&D and marketing efforts in the promotion of a new product (Vision Pro) and a new tech category: spatial computing – as in, a computer you wear on your face that blends the physical and digital worlds.
a still image from Apple’s video introducing Vision Pro
Tremendous cultural and societal changes are potentially on the horizon. The risk? The real world seeming too boring to experience without tech overlayed on top of it.
An even bigger risk: the invasion of our private moments for advertising purposes – where every second of our lives become an opportunity by Big Tech to sell us something. Ubiquitous, micro-targeted, constant advertising.
I think we don’t realize how lucky we are this very moment, when opportunities to be exposed to microtargeted ads are limited to the time we spend on our computers and smartphones (if we don’t have adblock or a pi-hole turned on).
“A tech fentanyl dealer posing as a rehab provider”
The digital cover of the Vanity Fair issue with a profile of Tim Cook and Apple’s Vision Pro
Journalist Nick Bilton recently wrote a feature for Vanity Fair about Apple’s Vision Pro and the Cupertino-based company’s big bet on spatial computing: “Why Tim Cook Is Going All In on the Apple Vision Pro.“
This is how Bilton felt after taking off Vision Pro and experiencing the world as it is:
When I take it off, every other device feels flat and boring: My 75-inch OLED TV feels like a CRT from the ’90s; my iPhone feels like a flip phone from yesteryear, and even the real world around me feels surprisingly flat. And this is the problem. In the same way that I can’t imagine driving a car without a stereo, in the same way I can’t imagine not having a phone to communicate with people or take pictures of my children, in the same way I can’t imagine trying to work without a computer, I can see a day when we all can’t imagine living without an augmented reality. When we’re enveloped more and more by technology, to the point that we crave these glasses like a drug, like we crave our iPhones today but with more desire for the dopamine hit this resolution of AR can deliver. I know deep down that the Apple Vision Pro is too immersive, and yet all I want to do is see the world through it.
I’ve been haunted by Bilton’s testimony ever since I’ve read this article. Even more chilling is what followed:
“I’m sure the technology is terrific. I still think and hope it fails,” one Silicon Valley investor said to me. “Apple feels more and more like a tech fentanyl dealer that poses as a rehab provider.” Harsh words, but he feels what we all feel, a slave to our smartphone, and he’s seen this play before and he knows what the first act is like, and the second act, and he knows how it ends.
I read Bilton’s article as I was in public transportation last weekend while I was out running errands. As I stepped on a crowded subway platform, waiting for a train that would take me to a restaurant, where my husband and my daughter were waiting for me, I could not stop thinking about Bilton’s words. My first thought was: it’s really nice to see other people’s faces. Am I witnessing the last days and months of an old world, before Vision Pro and copycat spatial computing goggles go mainstream? What will the world look like for my daughter 10 years from now? Will most people be moving around with a VR headset strapped on their faces? Or will these remain a niche product like Google Glass and Snap Spectacles and Oculus headsets?
This technology will surely evolve over the years, making spatial computing devices lighter and less obtrusive. I wouldn’t be surprised if a decade from now this technology will be incorporated in contact lenses or elegant glasses – impossible to notice by a casual observer.
Why is this a problem? Through spatial computing, Big Tech will surely be able to mine even more personal data and exploit uncharted parts of our lives for commercial purposes. 24/7 surveillance and data mining that will potentially rob us of our privacy and lead to behavioral changes in service of commerce and consumerism. Advertising may become even more embedded in our everyday lives, with exposure to ads a constant in augmented reality spaces. Just think about the film Minority Report and the future it envisioned (watch a short excerpt on YouTube).
The Future is Unwritten: Knowledge + Action = Power
Earlier this week, as I was walking through central Paris after a meeting, I spotted a giant mural that left me speechless for its powerful message and its timeliness. I immediately recognized the style of Shepard Fairey, who has created other iconic murals in Paris (in addition to Obama’s famous campaign poster). This work – on a wall near the Stravinsky Fountain, next to a Jef Aerosol giant pochoir – shows two women, depicted in Art Nouveau style, each standing on a pile of books and stretching their arms, as if they’re holding a lotus flower. An open book at their feet says “The Future is Unwritten” and below there’s the sentence “Knowledge + Action = Power.”
Murals in Paris: right, Shepard Farey’s “The Future is Unwritten”
We live in a techno-optimist world, where technological change is heavily promoted by companies who reap large profits from it, without much thought about societal consequences.
Remember the quasi-religious fervor the world witnessed after Steve Jobs introduced the first ever iPhone in 2007? The device was quickly nicknamed the “Jesus phone” and even Apple’s own advertising played on this. My pet peeve during the 2000s-2010s? Introductions of new platforms and devices by Big Tech, followed by fawning articles by tech reporters. Articles that read like glorified press releases, without much critical thought put into them.
The first ever ad for Apple’s iPhone with the slogan “Touching is believing”
Well, the tides have turned. I am feeling a glimmer of hope following the introduction of Apple’s Vision Pro: from The Verge to Wired to the New York Times, the most shared sentiment in reaction to the release of this device was skepticism and head-scratching regarding its usefulness.
A future where we walk around with a device our face that blends the real world with the digital world is not inevitable.
The future is still unwritten.
We can object to such a future – like people did 10 years ago with the introduction of Google Glass. Remember that people who wore Google Glasses out in public where called “Glassholes”?
According to Wikipedia:
Google started selling a prototype of Google Glass to qualified “Glass Explorers” in the US on April 15, 2013, for a limited period for $1,500, before it became available to the public on May 15, 2014. It had an integral 5 megapixel still/720p video camera. The headset received a great deal of criticism amid concerns that its use could violate existing privacy laws. On January 15, 2015, Google announced that it would stop producing the Google Glass prototype. The prototype was succeeded by two Enterprise Editions, whose sales were suspended on March 15, 2023.
Winners and Losers
The introduction of this new product category inspired me to rewatch an iconic lecture by the late Neil Postman: “Six Questions about Technology” (held at Calvin College in 1998).
Postman said:
[Only] a fool doesn’t know that new technology always produce winners and losers and there is nothing irrational about loser resistance. Bill Gates who is of course a winner knows this and because he is no fool, his propaganda continuously implies that computer technology can bring harm to no one. Well that’s the way of winners – they want losers to be grateful… and enthusiastic… and especially – best of all – to be unaware that they are losers.
This is such a powerful concept worth repeating: “they want losers to be grateful… and enthusiastic… and especially – best of all – to be unaware that they are losers.”
Later he continued:
Television gives power to some, while it deprives others and that is true of every important medium and this fact has always been understood by intelligent entrepreneurs who see opportunities emerging from the creation of new media. And that that’s why media entrepreneurs are the most radical force in culture. They are interested in maximizing profits of new media and do not usually give much thought to large scale cultural effects. America’s greatest radicals have always been our entrepreneurs: (Samuel) Morse, (Alexander Graham) Bell, (Thomas) Edison, (David) Sarnoff, (Walt) Disney. These men created the 20th century as Bill Gates and others are creating the 21st. I don’t know if much can be done to moderate the cultural changes that media entrepreneurs will enforce. But citizens ought to know about what is happening and keep an attentive eye on such people.
Knowledge: Postman’s Six Questions
Here are the six questions cultural critic Neil Postman said we should always ask ourselves when a new technology is introduced.
Keep in mind Apple’s Vision Pro and the new field of spatial computing when reading them:
Action: Resist
Similarly with what happened with Google Glass 10 years ago, we can reject and label as creepy recording devices that sits on one’s face – when one is out in public. I’m sure there can be interesting use cases at home, while watching movies for example. But we don’t need to see people in these recording headsets out in the street.
We collectively rejected Google Glass 10 years ago – and the product went bust.
In this case outright rejecting Apple’s Vision Pro will prove to be a challenge because of Apple’s cool factor and the fact Vision Pro is mostly touted to be used in the privacy of our homes or offices. But remember: the ultimate goal of Apple is to normalize and make spatial computing go mainstream – making us embrace this technology so that 5 or 10 years from now, we won’t be able to live without it.
The future envisioned by Minority Report is incredibly attractive to Big Tech for the opportunity to mine our personal lives and data for their profit.
It’s up to us to resist to this future – now. Before the technology becomes too embedded in our daily lives.
Power
Ultimately, the power rests within us.
We don’t have to accept VR headsets or spatial computing as the new normal. Resistance – especially outspoken resistance – is an empowering option available now. Before it’s too late.
#Apple #attentionEconomy #digitalLiteracy #dystopia #films #future #MinorityReport #NeilPostman #resistance #ShepardFarey #spatialComputing #technoOptimism #technoOptimist #VisionPro
5 stories about Big Tech to improve your digital literacy skills
https://therealists.org/?p=8077
If you were to ask me what is my favorite book on the subject of technology and digital mindfulness, I wouldn’t hesitate for a second: it is, without doubt, Neil Postman’s Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology – published in 1993 but still extremely relevant today.
Acclaimed cultural critic Neil Postman wrote:
Technopoly is a state of culture. It is also a state of mind. It consists in the deification of technology, which means that the culture seeks its authorization in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology.
To the late Postman (he passed away in 2003), education is the best remedy to counteract the negative effects of this “technopoly.” Postmas wrote: “education as an excellent corrective to the antihistorical, information-saturated, technology-loving character of Technopoly.“
As a Realist, if I had one wish, it would be for everyone to be more media savvy, to be better versed in media literacy – and especially digital literacy. I notice how we often take new announcements by Big Tech at face value, never questioning the agenda behind innovations and new product launches. The current AI hype is a perfect representation of what Postman warned about.
Here are five stories about Big Tech to increase your digital literacy skills.
1: Amazon’s AI Lies
Have you ever heard of Amazon’s Mechanical Turks? According to Wikipedia:
Amazon Mechanical Turk is a crowdsourcing website with which businesses can hire remotely located “crowdworkers” to perform discrete on-demand tasks that computers are currently unable to do as economically. It is operated under Amazon Web Services, and is owned by Amazon.
Well, as it turns out, the service takes its name from an elaborate hoax from the late 1770s: a chess playing machine that was touted to play a game of chess against a human opponent. It wowed royals and crowds in Austria and then in tours across Europe and the United States. After 8 decades of public demonstrations, it was ultimately revealed to be a fraud: a human operator hid inside of it to play against an opponent.
It’s supremely ironic that the term “Mechanical Turk” has been made widely known by Amazon. Because this week the company was embroiled in a mechanical turk-like scandal that made headline news around the world. From MSN: “Amazon’s ‘Just Walk Out’ tech relied on low-paid Indian workers, not AI“. In case you are not familiar with Amazon Fresh stores, they are modern grocery stores that allow people to walk around, add items to their carts and leave without passing by a checkout line or paying a cashier – thanks to a technology called “Just Walk Out” which was supposedly powered by cameras and artificial intelligence.
The MSN article explains:
The Information reported that even though Amazon claimed that it used a host of cameras and sensors around the store to track what customers grabbed, hundreds of Indian workers were used by the company to track customers instead of relying completely on AI and technology.
Yes, you read that correctly. An awe-inducing technology heavily promoted by Amazon turned out to be 1,000 low-paid workers in India, watching and labeling videos of customers shopping in Amazon Fresh stores.
2: Google and its Fake AI Demo
On the subject of AI hype and faking the capabilities of an “artificial intelligence” system, there is this December 2023 story about Google. The company was caught red-handed, faking a demo of its new AI system. From TechCrunch: “Google’s best Gemini demo was faked”.
Google’s new Gemini AI model is getting a mixed reception after its big debut yesterday, but users may have less confidence in the company’s tech or integrity after finding out that the most impressive demo of Gemini was pretty much faked.
If you are curious, you can watch the faked demo on YouTube – which included heavy editing to create the illusion of a brilliant AI system.
3: Microsoft’s New Data Collection Service
If you use Microsoft Outlook as an email client, it’s time to reconsider your options. This detailed report by Proton Mail is a must read: “Outlook is Microsoft’s new data collection service”.
Proton’s Edward Komenda writes:
Everyone talks about the privacy-washing campaigns of Google and Apple as they mine your online data to generate advertising revenue. But now it looks like Outlook is no longer simply an email service; it’s a data collection mechanism for Microsoft’s 801 external partners and an ad delivery system for Microsoft itself.
The company is also now storing email passwords from external clients, granting unprecedented access:
When you sync third-party email accounts from services like Yahoo or Gmail with the new Outlook, you risk granting Microsoft access to the IMAP and SMTP credentials, emails, contacts, and events associated with those accounts, according to the German IT blog Heise Online.
Komenda explains:
A deeper dive into Microsoft’s privacy policy shows what personal data it may extract:
Name and contact data
Passwords
Demographic data
Payment data
Subscription and licensing data
Search queries
Device and usage data
Error reports and performance data
Voice data
Text, inking, and typing data
Images
Location data
Content
Feedback and ratings
Traffic data
Bonus digital literacy points: it’s worth pointing out that this exposé about Microsoft comes from ProtonMail – a Swiss end-to-end encrypted email service that is one of its competitors. While the evidence Proton shared is accurate, it’s important to remember it’s in their vested interest to get Microsoft users interested in ProtonMail services.
4: Facebook snoops on Snap users with “Project Ghostbusters”
From TechCrunch reporter Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai:
Meta tried to gain a competitive advantage over its competitors, including Snapchat and later Amazon and YouTube, by analyzing the network traffic of how its users were interacting with Meta’s competitors. Given these apps’ use of encryption, Facebook needed to develop special technology to get around it. […] Facebook’s engineers solution was to use Onavo, a VPN-like service that Facebook acquired in 2013. In 2019, Facebook shut down Onavo after a TechCrunch investigation revealed that Facebook had been secretly paying teenagers to use Onavo so the company could access all of their web activity.
This story is a routine reminder to check the trustworthiness of your VPN service – if you are using one. If you are using a free VPN, there is a high likelihood that the service is tracking, profiling (and possibly reselling) your traffic data. This story from The Next Web may be 6 years old but is as relevant as ever: “Be cautious, free VPNs are selling your data to 3rd parties.”
5: Apple’s Gatekeeping
The Daily Show host Jon Stewart invited Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan to appear on his show. He revealed to her how, when he was hosting his (now cancelled) Apple TV talk show The Problem with Jon Stewart he had expressed an interest in interviewing FTC chair Khan – but Apple TV turned down his request, openly asking him to refrain from interviewing her.
From Variety:
Considering Khan’s work at the FTC targets tech giants’ monopolistic practices, Apple allegedly did not want Stewart bringing her on the program to presumably talk about such topics. […] Stewart went one step further and said Apple didn’t even want him talking about the perils of AI on his podcast. He said “they wouldn’t let us do even that dumb thing we just did in the first act on AI,” referring to a near 15-minute segment Stewart did earlier in the show in which he criticized the rise of AI and spoke about how it’s making human workers obsolete.
Stewart said to Khan on his Daily Show: “Like, what is that sensitivity? Why are they so afraid to even have these conversations out in the public sphere?” And Khan responded: “I think it just shows the danger of what happens when you concentrate so much power and so much decision making in a small number of companies.”
It should not be surprising that Apple didn’t want an episode about the perils of AI on Apple TV – considering that Apple is now trying to catch up with OpenAI, Google Gemini and Anthropic. The company is expected to reveal its AI plans at his developer conference in June 2024.
Is there any story that surprised you about the state of tech or the hype surrounding AI? Share your thoughts in the comments.
As always, thanks for being here.
Elena
#AI #AIHype #Amazon #Apple #BigTech #digitalLiteracy #Facebook #Google #hoax #mechanicalTurk #mediaLiteracy #Microsoft #NeilPostman #privacy #Technopoly
L' Addiction au Divertissement : La Cause du Déclin Intellectuel et Culturel - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rd2W9NRlR2s #philosophie #neilpostman #divertissement #culture #addiction #spiritualité #télévision #journal_télévisé #neil_postman #déclin #civilisation #intellect #journalisme #journaltélévisé #intellectuel #médias
"It means misleading information--misplace, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information--information that creates the illusion of knowing something but which in fact leads one away from knowing." #NeilPostman
#FrontPageReddit #AntiEducation "Anti Education"
December 17, 2024 - kittens are an ideal reason to skip education and learning. Because you know, social media is full of kitten images and other pets. #FUBAR1712
Kids stand up for simulacra and images. Glued to their smartphone making a video or watching a video. #NeilPostman #EndOfEducationOpera
Instead of actually using social media to criticize society with reason thinking, embrace of entertainment. Parents too.
Our infinite appetite for distractions: yesterday, today and tomorrow
Dear Realists,
Today I’d like to share with you words from brilliant writers and thinkers whose books – published decades ago – were incredibly prophetic in predicting our current cultural climate… and our fragmented attention.
George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” (1949) is quoted extensively as a premonition of surveillance capitalism and the stripping of privacy by Big Tech. And yet, Neil Postman, in the foreword of his brilliant book “Amusing Ourselves to Death” (published in 1985), astutely remarked that another book turned out to be a more accurate prophecy for the state of things in the late 20th century: Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” (1932).
Amusing Ourselves to Death: what we love will ruin us
Postman writes:
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture […]. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.
“Amusing Ourselves to Death” is a sharp critique of show business and how television and its codes altered public discourse:
Today, we must look to the city of Las Vegas, Nevada, as a metaphor of our national character and aspiration, its symbol a thirty-foot-high cardboard picture of a slot machine and a chorus girl. For Las Vegas is a city entirely devoted to the idea of entertainment, and as such proclaims the spirit of a culture in which all public discourse increasingly takes the form of entertainment. Our politics, religion, news, athletics, education and commerce have been transformed into congenial adjuncts of show business, largely without protest or even much popular notice. The result is that we are a people on the verge of amusing ourselves to death.
This argument perfectly applies to the internet and especially to the most popular social media app of the 2020s: TikTok. Short clips, lasting a handful of seconds, are commanding the attention of over a billion people worldwide.
NYU business professor Scott Galloway recently wrote on his blog a post titled “TikTok: Trojan Stallion” remarking about TikTok’s wide – and free – talent pool:
Fifty-five percent of its users are also creators, meaning there are approximately 700 times as many creators working for TikTok than there are professionals producing content in film and TV across the globe. Most aren’t as talented, but many are.
TikTok revenues are dwarfing those by Netflix. Yes, you read that right. And while the latter is spending 17 billion dollars in content creation this year, TikTok’s users are creating content for the company for free.
Rapid-fire media is destroying our attention
Galloway writes in another post:
Compare the TikTok doomscroll to the Netflix experience, where you skim infinite thumbnails trying to figure out what to watch. Then you have to focus for 40 minutes. A big commitment these days. Parents report their kids can’t sit through feature-length films because they’re too slow. I notice with my 10 year-old, when he’s exposed to uninterrupted, quick-hit media, he has a difficult time afterward doing anything that requires focus … including being civil to his parents. Expect an emerging field of academic research looking at the effects on behavior, and the developing brain, of rapid-fire media.
Decades before the arrival of smartphone and social media, Neil Postman had written in “Amusing Ourselves to Death“:
Tyrants of all varieties have always known about the value of providing the masses with amusements as a means of pacifying discontent. But most of them could not have even hoped for a situation in which the masses would ignore that which does not amuse.
Doesn’t this apply perfectly to our current social media landscape? TikTok especially?
It’s fascinating how the app’s success has inspired rivals YouTube, Instagram and Facebook to radically change their products, imitating it, in an effort to recapture their users’ attention. (If you’re interested in learning more about this, just yesterday the New York Times published the article: “Meta tweaks Facebook app to act more like TikTok”).
4000 Weeks
In 1985, Postman warned:
When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility. In America, Orwell’s prophecies are of small relevance, but Huxley’s are well under way toward being realized. For America is engaged in the world’s most ambitious experiment to accommodate itself to the technological distractions made possible by the electric plug.
It’s worth repeating that Postman wrote this in 1985 about television. Decades before the arrival of smartphones, social media, and addictive, AI-driven recommendation platforms like TikTok. And this phenomenon is not limited to America. One could say the same about any other country.
Apologies for the doom and gloom of this post. Where may one look for causes and solutions? I have been reading Oliver Burkeman’s “Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals.” The title of the book refers to the average life span: 4,000 weeks or 76.7 years.
Burkeman addresses head-on our “infinite appetite for distraction”:
[…] whenever we succumb to distraction, we’re attempting to flee a painful encounter with our finitude – with the human predicament of having limited time, and more especially, in the case of distraction, limited control over that time, which makes it impossible to feel certain about how things will turn out.
He continues:
No wonder we seek out distractions online, where it feels as though no limits apply – where you can update yourself instantaneously on events taking place a continent away, present yourself however you like, and keep scrolling forever through infinite newsfeeds, drifting through ‘a realm in which space doesn’t matter and time spreads out into an endless present’, to quote the critic James Duesterberg. It’s true that killing time on the internet often doesn’t feel especially fun, these days. But it doesn’t need to feel fun. In order to dull the pain of finitude, it just needs to make you feel unconstrained.
I can’t stop thinking about what Galloway said about the behavior of his 10 year old son. This has been on my mind a lot lately, as a filmmaker.
I’ll share this again:
I notice with my 10 year-old, when he’s exposed to uninterrupted, quick-hit media, he has a difficult time afterward doing anything that requires focus … including being civil to his parents. Expect an emerging field of academic research looking at the effects on behavior, and the developing brain, of rapid-fire media.
It feels like hundreds of millions of people are being conditioned every day to be as distracted as possible. To amuse themselves to death, in the words of Postman. Entire creative professions are being made irrelevant by the rise of certain tools and social media platforms.
And there is a stark difference between the media we have discussed so far. Television programming is the same for every viewer. Smartphone content is personalized and tweaked to each user. Burkeman recalled the words of Center for Humane Technology founder Tristan Harris:
[…] Each time you open a social media app, there are ‘a thousand people on the other side of the screen’ paid to keep you there – and so it’s unrealistic to expect users to resist the assault on their time and attention by willpower alone.
I think – I hope – the tide will turn at some point. That we will experience a global reckoning. That these conversations will become mainstream and that people will start actively resisting – and steering away from products that destroy their attention.
When I was researching and writing my documentary The Illusionists back in the day, very few people were talking about the influence of media and advertising on body image. There was one single body standard – white, thin women with big breasts, airbrushed to perfection – in billboard ads the world over. There has been incredible change in this field – now global brands are constantly striving for diversity and inclusion, of even older women, who used to be invisible in advertising. It took about a decade for change to happen. There are obviously still unattainable beauty ideals on display everywhere, but there is real consciousness, on the part of consumers, about what is happening and what to look out for.
I hope, with The Realists, to see something similar happen regarding our relationship to technology. Maybe Realists are pioneers of a new age of consciousness, of a more mindful approach to technology.
Our future generations deserve a better world – and more control over their attention, away from distractions. It may be easy to blame technological devices and platforms, but real change happens at home – and in schools, for younger kids. We need to start modeling a different behavior. Parents and grandparents have a big responsibility in this – digital literacy should be a topic they address head-on. And for adults with no kids, there are many burgeoning resources, books, and tools to reclaim focus and attention. I will include links to organizations at the bottom of the post.
We got this.
Resources for parents and kids:
Resources for adults:
If this post speaks to you, please share it with friends and loved ones. And let me know in the comments how I can improve this newsletter or if you have requests for future issues.
Thank you!
– Elena
#4000Weeks #AldousHuxley #Books #digitalLiteracy #GeorgeOrwell #NeilPostman #OliverBurkeman #resources #ScottGalloway
