We’re Drifting Toward Monopoly, Conformism, and Machines
By Franklin Foer on 13/09/17 at the Literary Hub
Extracts:
Discussão livro em papel X kindle e redes sociais
“(...) My turn away from the Kindle wasn’t an idiosyncrasy, but part of
a widespread tendency. My hunch is that a good portion of the reading public
wants an escape from the intense flow of the Internet; they want silent
reading, private contemplation—and there’s a nagging sense that paper, and
only paper, can induce such a state. (...)
We choose to read in private to escape, but also because of the
intellectual possibilities that this escape creates. During the early Middle
Ages, the book was quite literally a miracle. It was the means by which a
priest conveyed the word of God. Literacy was sparse. In Europe, maybe one in
one hundred people could read. As the historian Steven Roger Fischer puts it,
“to read” was to read aloud. Silent reading was a highly unusual practice.
(...) Storytellers read to the market, priests read to their congregations,
lecturers read to university students, the literate read aloud to themselves.
(...)
It took several hundred years for the changes to fully register, for
public reading to give way to silent reading. It was one of the most profound
transformations in human history. Reading ceased to be a passive, collective
experience. It became active and private. Silent reading changed thinking; it
brought the individual to the fore. The act of private reading—in beds, in
libraries—provided the space for heretical thought. (...)
There’s a strong impulse in our culture to run away from these little
corners. We’re told that society’s winners will be the thinkers who network, collaborate,
create, and strategize in concert with others. (...)
There’s no doubting the creative power of conversation, the intellectual
potential of humbly learning from our peers, the necessity of groups working
together to solve problems. Yet none of this should replace contemplation,
moments of isolation, where the mind can follow its own course to its own
conclusions. (...)
If the tech companies hope to absorb the totality of human existence
into their corporate fold, then reading on paper is one of the few slivers of
life that they can’t fully integrate. (...)
Surveillance on the Internet is far different from the monitoring of the
totalitarian state. The Soviet Union and its family of nations watched citizens
to breed paranoia, to enforce the dogmas of the party, and ultimately to
preserve a small elite’s undemocratic hold on power. We’re watched on the
Internet so that companies can more effectively sell us goods.
The fact that Internet surveillance isn’t totalitarian, however, doesn’t
mean that it does us no harm. We’re watched so that we can be manipulated.
Some of this manipulation is welcome. We might revel in algorithmic
recommendations of music, we’re pleased to be shown an advertisement for
sneakers, we need computer help sifting through the mass of information. But
there’s another way to describe the convenience of the machine: It is the
surrender of free will—algorithms make choices for us. This isn’t so
terrible, because our submission to manipulation is largely willing. Yet we
rightly have a sense that we’re surrendering far more than we intend and that
we’re being manipulated far more than we know.
Our digital future may be as glorious as advertised, or it could be a
dystopian hell. But as citizens and readers, there’s good reason to throw sand
in the machine. Only government policy can really dent the monopolies that
increasingly control the world of ideas. But we can find moments when we
willfully remove ourselves from the orbit of these companies and their
ecosystems. It’s not a matter of dropping out, but of giving ourselves moments
to ourselves. (...)
Our faith in technology is no longer fully consistent with our belief in
liberty. (...) Privacy can’t survive the present trajectory of technology.
Our ideas about the competitive marketplace are at risk. The proliferation of
falsehood and conspiracy through social media, the dissipation of our common
basis for fact, is creating conditions ripe for authoritarianism. Over
time, the long merger of man and machine has worked out pretty well for man.
But we’re pulling into a new era, when that merger threatens the individual.
(...)
Right now, we’re not steering our course. We’re drifting without
countervailing pressure from the political system, from media, or from the
intelligentsia. We’re drifting toward monopoly, conformism, their
machines. (...)
We have deluded ourselves into caring more deeply about convenience and efficiency than about the things that last. Compared to the sustaining nourishment of the contemplative life and the deep commitment to text, many of the promiscuous pleasures of the Web are vanishing. The contemplative life remains freely available to us through our choices — what we read and buy, how we commit to leisure and self-improvement, the passing over of empty temptation, our preservation of the quiet spaces, an intentional striving to become the masters of our mastery.”
No comments:
Post a Comment