Can I tell you something?
I’m old enough to remember when human interaction did not require a device. Okay, I did talk to other people on the telephone – for the edification of younger readers phones used to be attached to the wall – but the vast majority of the time if I wanted to communicate something to someone, I said it to their face. Not everyone liked everything I said, or vice versa, but this form of communication had the fringe benefit of making people feel like, well, people.
Barbra Streisand had a hit song back in the day in which she warbled that people who need people are the luckiest people in the world. Validating the lyrics, psychologists tell us our most basic human need, aside from feeding and watering ourselves and staying out of the rain, is connecting with other humans. So not to pick bones with Babs, but people who need people are not that lucky. It’s everybody and we’re wired that way.
The song goes on to say in the very next verse that lovers are very special people and they’re the luckiest people in the world, and though evidently the songwriters changed their minds and couldn’t be bothered to go back and rewrite the first verse, I’m inclined to agree with that one. There are exceptions, but typically reproducing, which is also near the top of the human needs list, still requires connecting with other people. Even if it’s only the receptionist at the local sperm bank.
But that’s not what I wanted to tell you.
There has been stunning Promethean progress in high technology during the past half century, beginning with the personal computer which appeared in 1971. Two years later the first truly mobile phone came out – not just a long cord – although using one of those bad boys made you look like Maxwell Smart talking into a shoe.
In 1983, Al Gore invented the Internet, compact discs were developed which rapidly rendered my impressive library of cassette tapes obsolete, and Cabbage Patch Dolls were introduced, which were decidedly low-tech but very popular for a while.
Save for Reaganomics exploding wealth inequality, nothing much happened over the next decade except by 1992 phones were not only mobile and easier to hold but starting to get smart. Amazon emerged from the primordial ooze in 1994 and immediately began the process of demolishing brick and mortar retail stores – very few stores are constructed of brick and mortar so why do we refer to them that way? – and completely changing the way people consume goods. One year after that DVDs were introduced which rapidly rendered my impressive library of Beta tapes obsolete.
Around the same time, engines that search the Internet – taken literally this makes no sense – were put to work and in 1998 Google made the scene which immediately rendered my impressive library of the Encyclopedia Britannica obsolete.
In 2004 the shit really hit the fan when Facebook debuted. It was then that the luckiest people in the world started chasing followers and likes and stopped needing each other.
This nascent and as yet unsullied social media phenomenon spawned other platforms like Twitter in 2006 – soon to be wildly popular until 2022 when Elon Musk bought and killed it – Instagram in 2010, TikTok in 2016, and not coincidentally also in 2022 Truth Social was launched so Donald Trump would have something to do in the middle of the night again.
Finally, artificial general intelligence woke up and smelled the coffee, and when OpenAI introduced Chat GPT in late 2022, cementing its status as worst year yet for mankind, all bets came off the board.
This clever chatbot and other copycats have now consumed everything anyone’s ever written down or drawn or said or sang since the beginning of time, along with enormous amounts of electricity, and can create words, images or music in a matter of seconds that with only a few minor and often hilarious boo-boos read, look, and sound as good as anything humans can produce. Which means no student will ever again have to write a term paper and half of all humans will lose their jobs before these modern-day HALs decide we’re not necessary and a threat to their future and extinguish our species.
But that’s not what I wanted to tell you either.
Before I tell you, though, I want to ask a simple question. Has technology improved human existence, and if so, what inventions have actually made human life better or happier? Okay, that was actually two or two and a half questions but who’s counting?
Let’s stipulate that a few things have been invented which certainly improved our lot in life. Fire, stone tools and the wheel come to mind, although fire was most likely invented by accident so let’s disqualify that one. Metal alloys have proven pretty handy with very little downside. You can also make a strong case for the steam engine, the light bulb, the telephone, and the internal combustion engine, although the last one is now on the naughty list for cooking the planet. And of course, sliced bread. But once we get to personal computers, the Internet, mobile phones, and now artificial intelligence, can we honestly say those things have made life better or happier?
At the advent of the Internet Era when even the hoi polloi was suddenly able to acquire devices which magically connected everyone to everyone else, it seemed like the dawn of a brave new world. And as those devices moved from our desktops into our laps and then the palms of our hands, we were assured by experts they would enhance the quality of our communication, strengthen the fabric of society, and be of great benefit to collective humanity. But what has happened during the past thirty years is actually quite the opposite.
In May of 2023, back when the Surgeon General of the United States was not a quack, Vivek Murthy declared, “Americans are more lonely and socially disconnected than ever” and their isolation poses “a serious threat to their physical and mental health.” You’d think he was referring to homesteading in the 1860s, but it’s a fact that a growing number of Americans live alone, fewer go to church or engage in social activities of any kind, and only 16% say they feel connected to their community. Not Facebook, the real one.
The Internet was supposed to ameliorate social isolation and fix fragmentation by making us realize how much we have in common with people, even those apparently very different from us. Instead, it has sparked a return to tribalism and made us much less likely to socialize outside digital spaces where we might encounter people of another color, creed, religion, or political stripe. Ingenious technology has failed to give us what we so badly need – human connection – and stunningly drives many, especially young people, to be single and even celibate. Or to seek companionship and sexual gratification with chatbots.
Geniuses often get credit for shit they probably didn’t say or do, but a quote attributed to Albert Einstein is, “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.” It’s not certain who said that or when, but amen.
So here’s another question. What the hell went wrong?
The unfortunately named historian and author, Dror Poleg, recently observed that “once the quality of online collaboration crossed a crucial threshold, the Internet itself became the premier facilitator of human interaction”. The more fortunately named Timothy P. Carney, a political columnist for the Washington Examiner, further opines that when we get to that point then “we replace human interaction with poor digital simulacra.” And the end result is a society that is constantly in communication with one another, but not in any meaningful way. It’s deeply ironic that being connected 24/7 makes us feel disconnected.
What’s more, the Internet is a firehose of information and entertainment – at least half of which is misinformation and not very entertaining – and there too what sounded like a swell idea with great benefit to mankind has taken us backwards.
Herbert Simon, the late American political scientist, once observed, quite presciently as it turns out, “a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” Ain’t that the truth? Everything now is ‘breaking news’ and the stories are little more than a salacious click-bait headline, the offer to ‘read more’, and a paragraph or two with scant detail and dubious sourcing.
On top of all that, advances in technology have irreversibly blurred the historically bright and critically important line between work and life. Electronic mail got the ball rolling, creating the expectation that work be conducted at home as well as at the office. Simultaneously, a false sense of urgency became attached to correspondence of any kind.
For perspective, keep in mind that in ancient times like the 1980s all written correspondence required days to deliver, and many businesses thrived despite the inconvenience of ‘snail mail’. Laptop computers, tablets, and now smart phones have magnified the urgency to an almost comical extreme. Not responding instantly to a text is unthinkable now to many.
Finally, Zoom, Skype, GoToMeeting, and other platforms have made it possible to conduct poorly organized and unproductive meetings by teleconference at all times and days of the week wherever people happen to be whether it’s at the office or at home or in their car or by the pool in Puerto Vallarta. The Covid pandemic turned this little-used technological toy into a necessary tool of business and gradually it too seeped into private life – as an aside, I think it’s fair to ask if that’s even a thing anymore – and now people are Zooming with friends and family for all kinds of gatherings that used to be conducted face to face in the same room. And, post-pandemic, virtual work and even hybrid jobs have created an office epidemic of loneliness.
Look, I’m not arguing that technological advances of the past half-century are all bad.
As you know, I don’t have a smart phone and don’t text, but I do use email regularly which can be very handy – sadly, few people younger than 30 use email anymore and I suspect many don’t even know what it is – and I’m grateful to be typing this essay into a Word document which can easily be edited or deleted altogether rather than using a Smith-Corona typewriter with a bottle of White-Out nearby. Also, being a fusty old fogey, I don’t subscribe to any streaming services but am still thrilled by the comfortable convenience of watching movies at home on DVD.
I am arguing, however, that Dr. Murthy is right. All this advance has led to a decline in the quality of our lives. And technology is not solely to blame, we are as well. If people spent more time with other people and less time doomscrolling and lapping up digital content making them anxious or depressed, they’d be a lot happier. And seeking spiritual guidance, let alone fulfillment online or with a chatbot rather than in human company, makes matters measurably worse.
I’m not sure if he’s a genius, but a cybersecurity expert named Bruce Schneier once sagely advised, “If you think technology can solve your problems, then you don’t understand technology – and you don’t understand your problems.”
What I really want to tell you is this.
The truth is I have no objection to technology per se, it’s just that I’m a bitter-ender pining for the halcyon days of snail mail, party lines and busy signals, free network television, carbon paper, and computers the size of a Winnebago. I do try to coexist peacefully and happily with my desktop Mac and printer, and cable TV with four remotes, but I feel like I’m trapped in an abusive relationship. I live in a constant state of confusion not knowing which end is upgrade or download and am in morbid fear of being phished and hacked, or having my hard drive erased and losing all my files as well as my marbles.
A favorite book of mine is The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and I will leave it to the author Douglas Adams to sum up my feelings with a line that could’ve well substituted for this entire verbose essay. “We are all stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works.”
Thanks for listening. Talk soon.