Interesting article about the effect of technology, the ways it has been used and its effect upon the population, in particular regarding polarization. There are some thing I agree with and some things I disagree with in the article. The tail end of the article in which it discusses the improving efficiency of bots is truly scary and something I think we should all be concerned about.
It’s not just a phase.
www.theatlantic.com
I don't think any of this is as shocking if you look at how advances in printing technology led to the spread of broadsheets and newspapers, which led to the American revolution. The lithographic revolution directly led to the invention of what we recognize today as national party systems, which eventually caused the Civil War. The very concept of a national party can't fully exist until a mass medium is invented first. As papers and parties spread, so did mass hysterias, and conspiracy nuts, and the great awakening, along with all the magical thinking that went along with it. There was a Dunning-Kruger effect, from a critical mass of people who thought they were geniuses because they got more information than anybody else in history, because they read a newspaper every now and then. We had the know nothing party, and the anti-masonic party, for example. Those guys were the Alex Jones and Q anon nutballs of their day. Later on, when when film first started getting big (another direct effect of the lithographic revolution), the government tried to get ahead of things this time, and control people with it, by making instructional films on everything from how to date to how to use modern technology in a kitchen. Of course, we rebelled at such overt attempts at control from the government, especially in a medium that first got big in rowdy vaudeville shows. The government using it like this was like Thatcher trying to campaign along side the Sex Pistols. Part of the people's rebellion against the government 'educational' reeels led to things like the rise of post-modernism. Nowadays, we have 'influencers' trying to tell us how to do things like that. They're influencers, rather than marketers, because you have to pay marketers more. They're a small part of how they want to control us right now, though. They don't want to preach at us, they want to infect us with their ideas so we repeat them to each other. That's a bit overly ambitious, I think, but their trans-humanist AI cult seems to have enough faith in magical AI that they won't quit trying any time soon.
The point behind all of this is, any time there's a new technology, the powers that be will try to use it to control the masses, and those projects usually end up with mass hysteria.
In the end, the powers that be usually end up settling for some kind of gatekeeping role, rather than the command and control role that they dream of. So you get things like film codes, FCC speech regulations, parental advisory stickers, and so on. These gatekeeping systems are usually built on monopolies and cartels that the government deliberately allows to exist, even if they are technically illegal. Nobody is sure how to gatekeep the internet well, though. The law has failed. Even the MPAA has given up on suing individual pirates. The monopolies and cartels seem like they are in place online. Their control algorithms are not working, though. Human moderators are usually too expensive, corrupt, and incompetent, to properly control all our conversations for the interests of the powers that be. Human moderators are still deployed, troll farm style, on some platforms, but they aren't common enough to have a meaningful impact. Government licensure of all coders is unthinkable. Maybe with more consolidation? How do you consolidate farther? Rebuild Ma Bell / IBM, and have them purchase all the FAANG companies? Unthinkable. I just don't know where they go from here.
arstechnica.com
futurism.com
