The bourgeoning critique of the internet is just the start of the full, deep critique of our lifeways
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/17/opinion/biden-voting-rights-social-media.html
Bret: I was really struck by our colleague David Brooks’s column last week. He cataloged all the ways in which socially destructive behavior has been on the rise: reckless driving, hate crimes, drug overdoses, homicides, you name it. Obviously the pandemic has a lot to do with this, but there’s got to be more at work here. Any ideas?
Gail: You know my theory that the internet has changed human relations in a way that we can’t compare to anything since the Postal Service started bringing people letters and newspapers from far away. The pandemic is obviously making everybody crazy. But the overall, long-term loony politics also has to do with the outside world in which folks can now communicate in so many new and frequently awful ways.
Some of us were able to critique the internet phenomenon early on because we saw it within a context of the overall problematic civilizational trajectories.
Fifth Estate, during the 1980s and ‘90s, immediately related the prescient 1850s quote from Thoreau: “In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post office. You may depend on it, that the poor fellow who walks away with the greatest number of letters, proud of his extensive correspondence, has not heard from himself this long while.”
And they tied in his quote: “We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us.” And, of course, the sentiment of the Luddites.
. . . early nineteenth century sentiments with an intuition of the horrors of industrialism and mass society.
https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/306-july-1981/
“We are all trapped within the technological labyrinth, and at its center awaits our annihilation.”
