I’m not saying your wrong, or really trying to make an argument, but the book “bowling alone” came out in 2000 and it was describing the fall into social isolation and alienation before social media or the balkanization of news and entertainment. To go further back Marx was talking about the alienation of labor as far back as 1844. Like capitalism is killing us, the increased view/reach of technology is just making it obvious.
This is ancillary but perhaps contributing to it due to a lack of shared context. (For example, if someone asks me about a funny commercial I won’t have seen it and can’t relate.)
I’m thinking more like the zeitgeist has fractured.
I’d argue it’s being diluted by noise. There have always been conflicting narratives. History is so hard to untangle (for me at least), because most of us come out a bit brainwashed from the system.
I think we are seeing the ends of the safeties this form of democracy has to provide. We are all in it together, everyone hallucinating to some extent. The big difference today is that you don’t talk about tv around the watercooler. You send cat pics and talk about Will Smith AI spaghetti videos, digitally or in meat space.
The problem usually isn’t lack of shared context, I believe, especially when we have so much in our pockets. It’s signal dilution with some plain old ill-intent under the hood (i.e. ‘advanced’ marketing).
I agree with a lot of what you said, and maybe “fractured” wasn’t the right word to use. It’s more like “shattered”
Take advertising, for example. Back in the days of broadcast media they had to make broadly appealing ads. Ads people would talk about around the water cooler.
Now we can target ads very specifically, so I may never see an ad that you see.
People are still talking about inane things because that’s how we do, but there’s more niches and communities than before, and they’re more siloed.
I especially agree with this part:
I think we are seeing the ends of the safeties this form of democracy has to provide
The printing press brought down hereditary monarchies. The Internet may bring down nationalist liberal democracy.
Let’s hope what replaces it is as much of an improvement.
I’m not saying your wrong, or really trying to make an argument, but the book “bowling alone” came out in 2000 and it was describing the fall into social isolation and alienation before social media or the balkanization of news and entertainment. To go further back Marx was talking about the alienation of labor as far back as 1844. Like capitalism is killing us, the increased view/reach of technology is just making it obvious.
This is ancillary but perhaps contributing to it due to a lack of shared context. (For example, if someone asks me about a funny commercial I won’t have seen it and can’t relate.)
I’m thinking more like the zeitgeist has fractured.
I’d argue it’s being diluted by noise. There have always been conflicting narratives. History is so hard to untangle (for me at least), because most of us come out a bit brainwashed from the system.
I think we are seeing the ends of the safeties this form of democracy has to provide. We are all in it together, everyone hallucinating to some extent. The big difference today is that you don’t talk about tv around the watercooler. You send cat pics and talk about Will Smith AI spaghetti videos, digitally or in meat space.
The problem usually isn’t lack of shared context, I believe, especially when we have so much in our pockets. It’s signal dilution with some plain old ill-intent under the hood (i.e. ‘advanced’ marketing).
I agree with a lot of what you said, and maybe “fractured” wasn’t the right word to use. It’s more like “shattered”
Take advertising, for example. Back in the days of broadcast media they had to make broadly appealing ads. Ads people would talk about around the water cooler.
Now we can target ads very specifically, so I may never see an ad that you see.
People are still talking about inane things because that’s how we do, but there’s more niches and communities than before, and they’re more siloed.
I especially agree with this part:
The printing press brought down hereditary monarchies. The Internet may bring down nationalist liberal democracy.
Let’s hope what replaces it is as much of an improvement.