Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Guest&nbsp; 85555" data-source="post: 8125989"><p>I don't thin it is squeamish at all. It is an accurate one. And I am not talking about "any technology" (like vaccines for example). I am talking specifically about advances in communication technology, in particular rapid, widespread, and cheap communication. Like I said if you look at any massive change in communication technology, that produces good and bad. Does it produce them in equal measure? No. But just look at the printing press. I think we can all agree that was a good development, that it is something we are thankful for now. But when it first emerged it was incredibly disruptive, at least in Europe. Now perhaps that disruption was needed. And there were obviously other reasons why that disruption occurred to. But it broke apart religious consensus and helped produce the protestant reformation, and eventually that leads to violent religious conflict. Again, not saying these developments didn't eventually lead to better things. But that kind of upheaval should at least give us pause in moments like this to ask ourselves what kind of world are we stepping into, and how should we deal with the ways this technology is going to impact us. I think with the internet and social media, it is very clear there is a lot of bad things that come along with it. That doesn't make it mostly bad, nor does it mean it should be stopped in its tracks. But anyone who has lived through this transition can see it has changed a number of things (including stuff like our attention span, how we deal with other people, how we operate creatively, etc). It is worth examining, and and it is worth looking at what aspects of the internet are producing negative results in ones own creative life and making decisions about to do about that. For me, that meant realizing that a lot of the 'consensus' I was perceiving online was an illusion, and that I needed to start tuning out large swaths of social media because they were stifling me and making me feel paralyzed creatively.</p></blockquote><p></p>

Verification