I sometimes wonder if it's only those of us who came of age before the Internet who can really see this. Are Millenials and Gen Z just too plugged into technology to be able to appreciate that it's possible to live without so much of it -- or at least so many of the platforms that are such a part of our lives? And social media provides a kind of daily dose of narcissism and self-obsession (and not just among the young) that I think it's got to be very hard to break free from.
A more human-centred approach to living is definitely worth fighting for, but is it possible if so many are unable to even appreciate that such a way of life is possible?
As a millennial I only started using a mobile when I was 20 and only owned a laptop at 23, and I ‘ve often felt puzzled about how quickly we’ve gone from doing things without technology to panicking if we forget our phone at home. I’m with you on building, and fighting for, a more human approach to our lives and relationships.
Good question. Only anecdotal but both my teenage daughters, 18 and 15, who got their phones at 9 and 8 respectively and basically no restrictions (man that sounds terrible in hindsight), totally see social media for what it truly is. They see the pitfalls. Even they say kids shouldn’t have a phone until at least 15. And my high schooler is very happy that phones are no longer allowed at school. Maybe there’s hope.
There is hope for sure! My 14 and 12 year old also desperately looking for screen-free kids. We need to reach out to each other and start forming communities.
The counterpoint to this is that Millennials and Gen Z are now becoming parents, and there is a lot of awareness that tech is something that should be limited in childhood. Believe me, we don't want the next generation to be as tech dependent as we are/were.
Yes, this. I recently heard a podcast with an historian who believes that every tech innovation was at first disruptive to society in ways that were generally negative for the status quo citizenry, but which all over time found their equilibrium with society.
Of course we can and should do what we can to hasten that equilibrium, but it comforts me that we will eventually find our way back to health (until we cycle back to disease for a while again)…
I'm Gen X and people told us we spent too much time watching TV when we were kids. As soon as I left home though my interest in TV started to wane and I spent much of my twenties living without one in the house. I know young people who are trying similar things with modern tech. Yes it's more embedded in our lives but if I had to bet money it would go on young people being better at change than us oldies.
Another angle to view this: take a look at the cess-pit that is Facebook where the older generations hangout. Despite the bad news stories on legacy media, Instagram and tik tok are much nicer places to hang out.
Yeah I'm an old millennial, who identifies as Gen X, and I was glued to the TV as a kid. I don't regret that actually, TV was a communal experience and I would laugh with my brother at what we watched.
But when I moved out didn't have one I don't want to spend my money on a TV licence.
But I'm not sure Instagram is any nicer than Facebook, I think your just shown different things, plus it's more image based rather than word based so it offers different problems.
I grew up in the early 90's and as a kid, I watched a ton of TV and played a lot of Nintendo. But I still also met with my friends in real life almost daily and spent tons of time outside. I spent time creating and drawing and writing.
Kids today spend all their time online and on social media and it's not the same. Some rarely see their friend face-to-face.
It's self-fulfilling. Especially when you can't afford a house or car.
"No one's willing to spend an hour on the bus to come over? No one's got the money or energy to get out somewhere with me? No one's got the space or resources to entertain at my place? Fine. I guess I'm making due with video games and YouTube again this week..."
I disagree that tech addition is generational. Every generation has its fiends, just check the comment section of any article. Many of my fellow Millennials remember an era before social media (if not before the internet itself), and we’ve realized these platforms are bottomless pits of joylessness.
I am an elder Millennial and I consider myself very fortunate to be part of the last generation to grow up with social media and pervasive technology. I did not start using the internet until I was in high school.
I think that that gives us a different perspective than today's youth and twenty-somethings who have never known life without the internet and social media. They are not even aware they are being manipulated because to them that is just a part of life.
In a Substack world, the mountain would become a metaphor for the obstacles that writers must overcome in order to have enough stats to share in a growth post.
Seriously though, this is one of the most compelling analyses of our current culture that I've seen on Substack or anywhere. It deserves many readings.
Ted mentioned once in the comments that he has qualms about Doctorow, but wouldn't elaborate. Maybe it's because Doctorow's critique is from within the tech field and fundamentally advocates for reform from within the technocracy. Ted's more culturally minded, so my best guest is he'd prefer the push-back to come from within the social and cultural spheres: he wants to see civil society reject the new technologies and seems skeptical that the technology itself can be improved and humanized.
As I see it, a coalition against it's a coalition, and I'm not too picky about my comrades. Moreover, I think Doctorow has a much better understanding of the technology itself.
He also lays out a compelling analysis of the business models and dynamics. I don't see any of that as mutually exclusive from a cultural analysis. It would seem to me to be a both/and or yes/and situation. But Corey is an activist who picks fights, takes sides, and calls names, and that's not the space Ted wants to occupy in his model of the "honest broker" and the origin story he has attached to it. Personally, truth telling is truth telling to me, and I'm fine with swearing and activist shaming, as a semi-retired practitioner myself. There are times to take sides and be impolite, to say the least.
You've raised an interesting point about different approaches to resistance. Do you think it's more effective to reform systems from within, like Doctorow suggests, or should the focus be on cultural pushback, as Ted seems to prefer?
I'm a psychologist, so that informs my perspective.
A cultural movement that transforms itself into a social movement will engage and involve diverse temperaments. Those temperaments will tends to find each other, associate, and then organize themselves like among like. If the movement advances and these diverse mindsets and approaches organize, they will sometimes be in conflict.
And yet. . .
There is no collaboration between LBJ and MLK without Malcolm and the Nation of Islam out there as a kind of cultural good cop/bad cop. There is no Social Security from FDR without the more aggressive and sometimes even violent worker revolts and socialist activists of the day. Etc.
It takes a noisy, sometimes chaotic, sometimes fractious village. Otherwise it's not a substantial cultural movement.
For durable and systemic social change, breaking and then transforming the status quo requires both people who make things and people who break things, and lots of people in between.
Ted has a particular temperament. He's at heart a jazz guy. He listens, he blends, he riffs, and collaborates. Jazz is yes/and. Jazz of course can break things, but not the way punk rock does. Thelonious Monk is not Sid Vicious.
But just as there is room for all kinds of musical creativity and expression, to me, I find the reciprocal sneering that often happens between the incremental establishmentarians and the activist firebrands to be inevitable but pointless, as they all need each other to accomplish change. On a deeper level, they are manifestations of the same cultural currents and turning wheels.
I'm older now. There were times in my life when I operated within both of these spheres, both tribes. Now I'm mostly just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round, with sidetrips to conversations like this and an occasional musical protest: https://open.spotify.com/album/1ZLkV15VVVH0gI5u1DFvyB?si=ahYKYSCKSeGJ8LcthThhgA
That's a difficult question to answer since the relationship between institutions and culture is complicated. The people in a society's institutions are also in it's culture. I think that, almost by definition, cultures can't be planned, or guided - anything you can point to capable of such a change is an institution, like governments, churches, the media, or technology. And the problem there is that few intentions work out in practice. Soviet culture certainly wasn't what it aspired to be. Even in American culture, you had things like research into drugs by an anti-communist intelligence service eventually migrate into the psychedelic New Left counter culture.
Consider this: after the invention of the automobile, was that ever going to be an optional technology? Transportation, commerce, and communication are too important to put such a genie back in the bottle - and once you have automobiles, you have automobile culture. North America, Europe, the Soviet Block, and Japan all had very different policies and therefore different results in terms of transporation - but human settlements almost everywhere are now necessarily built to accommodate cars. If we'd invented Star Trek style transporters, our cultures would be very different. In as much as we can change things, it's the tedious, boring, unremarkable things like laws, policies, regulations, education, the media, and trade connections and so on that bring that change about. But of course, it's culture that steers those institutions out of their inertia.
Look at Americans taking a sudden interest in building semi-conductors and electric cars after decades of off-shoring. That didn't happen because some academic complained about "Neo-Liberalism," nor even just because of lobbying. The political tensions around the dwindling middle class, the rise of China, and the experience of COVID changed how government, business, and the media see those issue. Right now, everyone who's getting elected benefits from things like social media, to say nothing of the tech companies themselves, or their ocean of screen junkies. My bet is that what change we get will be the result of tech elites fighting each other, like the way the American firms are trying to fight Byte-Dance - they'll built a coalition of tech-skeptical people, politicians, and lawyers, and then maybe lose control of it.
You’re a philosopher at heart seeking truth. “Never before in human history has the fake been given such precedence over the authentic.”
Socrates was scapegoated. Truth tellers are resented until others also see the light.
We need healing. People are numbing themselves rather than building coping skills. It makes me sad sometimes because we could do amazing things if people stopped exploiting others and worked together. We are all connected. I loathe this society’s lack of willingness to experience the grey areas of life.
Not quite sure Substack is an exception to the points you're making, Ted. However, they're new enough for the cracks not to show as of yet, but any platform that offers a service for free makes money from its users. In case no one has seen the interview of Marc Andreessen (from the VC Andreessen Horowitz) with Christ Best, Co-founder and CEO of Substack, I would suggest having a look here - https://cb.substack.com/p/marc-andreessen-on-the-front-foot?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
The reason why it's important, considering the subject matter of this post on how technology is regressing, is because Andreessen predicts that AI would lead to a creative renaissance. It's funny considering that Andreessen Horowitz were very much against copyright back in November, when the VC stated that new rules around regulation on the content used to trained AI models could decrease the value of AI investments if companies have to pay for copyrighted data. So saying AI is a revolutionary tool that’s going to transform arts and culture thanks to the work others have produced, which hopefully will not be subjected to copyright, and therefore won’t have to be retributed for it, it's one way in which technology is failing us.
VC Andreessen Horowitz invested on Substack in 2019 to support their growth but that kind of funding usually comes with conditions. Although Substack shifted to equity crowdfunding in its latest investment round in 2023, if the platform keeps growing and expanding and needs to rise capital again, crowdfunding won't be enough. With the rapid rise of AI, and with so many VCs worried about copyright protection hindering their returns, I'd say we haven't yet seen the dark side of Substack, but I'd be surprised if the platform remained the same (without ads, free for users, easy to navigate and get used to) for the foreseeable future. Instagram had very noble ideas in its inception until it was bought by Facebook to be exploited first, and then became the only tool Meta had to compete again TikTok. That's when users started to complain and eventually are transitioning to here. Same with Twitter. It's part of the evolution of every platform. Not sure when the day Substack will start shifting will arrive, but like I said it's naive to think it'll always be this oasis of calm.
An important distinguishing feature of SS is that the creator owns the email adresses of his subscribers, and thus can move his newsletter to another platform, or to his owm website easily. The creator is therefore not beholden to SS. All this might change of course.
That is of course a great advantage. Out of all the social media/content creation platforms out there, I really enjoy Substack the most and I'm glad it exists. And while I don't want to sound too pessimistic here nor predict its downfall, I think in 3-5 years it'll evolve.
For what is worth, I do hope Substack stays the same for a very long time. I love discovering new writers, interacting with people like we're doing here, which by the way I love as most people are interested in having a conversation rather than arguing, and all that it's truly refreshing : )
Thank you for an excellent piece. I should append that many of the "upgrades" and "improvements" (e.g., on the cell phone; with various computer softwares; et al.) actually make things worse for the user. Most recently, I have had the repeated joys -- sometimes three times in a single work day -- of getting knocked out of all five gmail accounts: thanks to some or other "improvement" by the geniuses at Google.
"(8) So much wealth is concentrated in the hands of the winners in these processes, that they literally become more powerful than nation states."
Daniel Silva recently noted that the richest people in the world use offshore tax havens, shell corporations, and other means to avoid paying taxes on legitimate and illegitimate earnings alike.
The result of all this is not just that wealth is concentrated in the hands of the wealthiest but tax revenues decline and services available to citizens are reduced.
It is a vicious circle and of course politicians become complicit through accepting donations,
I'm about as far left as they come but I agree that money is indeed speech. If I want to print out anti-Trump posters that cost $1 apiece how is it not a violation of the 1st Amendment for the government to forbid me to spend the money? Or forbid Michael Moore's production company from spending money to promote one of his films?
As per Justice Steven's dissent in Citizens United the argument isn't that money isn't speech but that the 1st Amendment rights need to be balanced against the competing need for fair elections.
As a Canadian, I am SO glad for campaign spending limits. The last things I want is a democracy based on an inane billion-dollar advertising war. It's better for free speech not to have Billionaires silencing you with a bullhorn in your face.
I read a lot of writing from David Solway and Jordan Peterson; I'm sure you're aware they are Canadians. I'm aware about the decrepit conditions in Canada's government, primarily because they point out the dissolution of freedom in your country. So how's the restriction of advertising working out for you?
If you read Jordan Peterson, you're not learning about Canada, you're learning about his benzo-binge fantasy of Canada. Believe me, Canada has it's problems. Not enough advertisers telling us what to think isn't one them. I'd not even going to pretend to care what freedoms an ignorant foreigner thinks my country lacks, because I've already had to hear enough Fox News style conspiracy theories about my country.
I agree with you, but we indeed do have tech-bro billionaires and Fortune 500 companies buying elections, which is all that I ever cared about. What I should have said was "the richest shouldn't be able to buy Congress or the presidency." When I read a bunch of versions of publicly-funded election ideas back in the 1980s, when I was a kid, I thought something like this must happen. It never did, and the problems are sooooo much worse now.
So: if you want to attack me as being against the 1st Amendment, go right ahead. But I think we're fooling ourselves if we think we can be free speech "purists" and maybe our political process will just sort of magically sort itself out in some other way.
As the bard wrote "Money doesn't talk, it swears". I have no interest in being a free speech absolutist and totally agree that our 1st Amendment rights need to be balanced against the need to maintain a government that's not for sale to the highest bidder.
I'm currently reading Jonathan Turley's "The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage." It's a reflection on free speech in the US following its history from before the revolution. I'm only a third of the way through, so I've only gotten to the early 1800s and can't comment on his conclusions. But having read that much, I'd recommend you read it, or listen to it. There's a history of people and politicians who've tried limiting speech, and it's never worked out well. We're currently in "An Age of Rage," so it might provide some perspective.
So you think child pornography should be legal? How about threatening someone? What if I showed up outside your house at 3am with a loudspeaker? Or do you understand that 1st Amendment rights aren't absolute and that there are reasonable limitations?
So you're the King of non sequitur? Please try to pay attention and actually read my comment (and Turley's book) before making inane comments. And, finally, who determines what "reasonable" is? I suppose you should be in charge of that.
Another important consideration here is that the modern Tech Industry didn't actually _invent_ very many of the things that it popularized. It has been riding on the long coattails of the last true wave of government (military)-funded innovation that brought us the Internet, GPS, etc. - all the things that people actually found useful when they were streamlined and productized and put in our pockets. As those decades-old innovations have been played out to their logical conclusions, the tech industry has begun to eat itself, because when the government stopped paying for that kind of research nobody else picked up the torch.
"Users are not the real customers—so billions of people must suffer to advance the interests of a tiny group of stakeholders." Exactly! Most Average Joe users can't afford to become them. And Hollywood is turning what were once creatively viable IPs into complete shit because the stakeholders want that!
This is not news. Early technologies like radio, television, even print and billboards (we can call the last two “analog technologies) operated on the same principles: own the consumer, make it popular, habitual, and even necessary to use your product. Advertising, while it seems to be a simple, sometimes entertaining diversion from your sports or news interest was very effective in pushing gasoline, alcohol, tobacco and Barbie. This marketing shower of desire definitely changed the way people lived their lives and profoundly enriched the lives of the owners and stockholders of Exxon, Phillip Morris and GM. The tech of today? It is real and will change our lives radically, but is that a bad thing? Electricity was a new and frightening technology as was commercial flight and motor vehices. We survived. Will our lives be ruined by new technologies? Our lives are brief. If you’re a certain age, accustomed to living a certain way, you’re entitled to complain. But those who survive you, being born into it, won’t so much.
Your list does have a thread of truth running through it, though: greed. Billionaires shouldn’t exist. The only way to become an oligarch is to exploit resources and people.
The Frankenstein metaphor is apropos. Musicians were always seeking new sounds even if it meant replacing the instrument they spent a lifetime mastering. “Ageism” also drove us here. You didn’t want to be the old guy in the meeting not accepting the new sound, or look. And then there’s the money. CO2 emitting bodies in a room aren’t as cost efficient as fixing it in post. The post modernists never imagined the AI, Gates / Zuck soulless takeover by ones and zeros. The incentives to turn it around are obvious to most humans with hearts. The incentives to stay the course are in the hands of the techs controlling the switch. Some good news: a friend at Apple tells me they’re feeling a new scorn at parties from jobless youth.
Well, look what happened to Standard Oil…or Ma Bell: those monopolies were fractured but continued faithfully reaming their customers for many years to come.
I sometimes wonder if it's only those of us who came of age before the Internet who can really see this. Are Millenials and Gen Z just too plugged into technology to be able to appreciate that it's possible to live without so much of it -- or at least so many of the platforms that are such a part of our lives? And social media provides a kind of daily dose of narcissism and self-obsession (and not just among the young) that I think it's got to be very hard to break free from.
A more human-centred approach to living is definitely worth fighting for, but is it possible if so many are unable to even appreciate that such a way of life is possible?
As a millennial I only started using a mobile when I was 20 and only owned a laptop at 23, and I ‘ve often felt puzzled about how quickly we’ve gone from doing things without technology to panicking if we forget our phone at home. I’m with you on building, and fighting for, a more human approach to our lives and relationships.
Yes, but what about the humans in politics?
https://solhn.substack.com/p/ill-be-damned-understanding-the-modern
Good question. Only anecdotal but both my teenage daughters, 18 and 15, who got their phones at 9 and 8 respectively and basically no restrictions (man that sounds terrible in hindsight), totally see social media for what it truly is. They see the pitfalls. Even they say kids shouldn’t have a phone until at least 15. And my high schooler is very happy that phones are no longer allowed at school. Maybe there’s hope.
There is hope for sure! My 14 and 12 year old also desperately looking for screen-free kids. We need to reach out to each other and start forming communities.
Same. My 12 year old is happy that they lock up the phones in a yondr pouch now. And she’s pretty much aware of the toxic environment online.
The counterpoint to this is that Millennials and Gen Z are now becoming parents, and there is a lot of awareness that tech is something that should be limited in childhood. Believe me, we don't want the next generation to be as tech dependent as we are/were.
Yes, this. I recently heard a podcast with an historian who believes that every tech innovation was at first disruptive to society in ways that were generally negative for the status quo citizenry, but which all over time found their equilibrium with society.
Of course we can and should do what we can to hasten that equilibrium, but it comforts me that we will eventually find our way back to health (until we cycle back to disease for a while again)…
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2FKWMJQYTd6QqxjiYjQdCY?si=MmICJj-2STCjzkjJqDN3Cg
I'm afraid it's inevitable. We are addiction machines.
I'm Gen X and people told us we spent too much time watching TV when we were kids. As soon as I left home though my interest in TV started to wane and I spent much of my twenties living without one in the house. I know young people who are trying similar things with modern tech. Yes it's more embedded in our lives but if I had to bet money it would go on young people being better at change than us oldies.
Another angle to view this: take a look at the cess-pit that is Facebook where the older generations hangout. Despite the bad news stories on legacy media, Instagram and tik tok are much nicer places to hang out.
Yeah I'm an old millennial, who identifies as Gen X, and I was glued to the TV as a kid. I don't regret that actually, TV was a communal experience and I would laugh with my brother at what we watched.
But when I moved out didn't have one I don't want to spend my money on a TV licence.
But I'm not sure Instagram is any nicer than Facebook, I think your just shown different things, plus it's more image based rather than word based so it offers different problems.
I grew up in the early 90's and as a kid, I watched a ton of TV and played a lot of Nintendo. But I still also met with my friends in real life almost daily and spent tons of time outside. I spent time creating and drawing and writing.
Kids today spend all their time online and on social media and it's not the same. Some rarely see their friend face-to-face.
YES! Loads of that from playing football for hours and watched TV with friends!
It's self-fulfilling. Especially when you can't afford a house or car.
"No one's willing to spend an hour on the bus to come over? No one's got the money or energy to get out somewhere with me? No one's got the space or resources to entertain at my place? Fine. I guess I'm making due with video games and YouTube again this week..."
Yep.
I disagree that tech addition is generational. Every generation has its fiends, just check the comment section of any article. Many of my fellow Millennials remember an era before social media (if not before the internet itself), and we’ve realized these platforms are bottomless pits of joylessness.
They are drunk, stoned, or shooting each other. Poor things.
I am an elder Millennial and I consider myself very fortunate to be part of the last generation to grow up with social media and pervasive technology. I did not start using the internet until I was in high school.
I think that that gives us a different perspective than today's youth and twenty-somethings who have never known life without the internet and social media. They are not even aware they are being manipulated because to them that is just a part of life.
In a Substack world, the mountain would become a metaphor for the obstacles that writers must overcome in order to have enough stats to share in a growth post.
Seriously though, this is one of the most compelling analyses of our current culture that I've seen on Substack or anywhere. It deserves many readings.
I second what you just wrote.
Why climb a mountain when you can take a helicopter?
I wish! A helicopter would be joining Substack with thousands of followers ..
Like Substack has done with “content creators” from video platforms.
To walk up a mountain is free to go up in a helicopter is expensive.
Also relevant is Corey Doctorow's recent speech at Defcon 32.
As he points out, even when you are paying for the product, like a $1k iPhone, you are STILL the product. https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/17/hack-the-planet/#how-about-a-nice-game-of-chess
You beat me to it regarding Cory Doctorow. He’s been writing about Big Tech “enshittification” for some time now.
Ted mentioned once in the comments that he has qualms about Doctorow, but wouldn't elaborate. Maybe it's because Doctorow's critique is from within the tech field and fundamentally advocates for reform from within the technocracy. Ted's more culturally minded, so my best guest is he'd prefer the push-back to come from within the social and cultural spheres: he wants to see civil society reject the new technologies and seems skeptical that the technology itself can be improved and humanized.
As I see it, a coalition against it's a coalition, and I'm not too picky about my comrades. Moreover, I think Doctorow has a much better understanding of the technology itself.
He also lays out a compelling analysis of the business models and dynamics. I don't see any of that as mutually exclusive from a cultural analysis. It would seem to me to be a both/and or yes/and situation. But Corey is an activist who picks fights, takes sides, and calls names, and that's not the space Ted wants to occupy in his model of the "honest broker" and the origin story he has attached to it. Personally, truth telling is truth telling to me, and I'm fine with swearing and activist shaming, as a semi-retired practitioner myself. There are times to take sides and be impolite, to say the least.
You've raised an interesting point about different approaches to resistance. Do you think it's more effective to reform systems from within, like Doctorow suggests, or should the focus be on cultural pushback, as Ted seems to prefer?
I'm a psychologist, so that informs my perspective.
A cultural movement that transforms itself into a social movement will engage and involve diverse temperaments. Those temperaments will tends to find each other, associate, and then organize themselves like among like. If the movement advances and these diverse mindsets and approaches organize, they will sometimes be in conflict.
And yet. . .
There is no collaboration between LBJ and MLK without Malcolm and the Nation of Islam out there as a kind of cultural good cop/bad cop. There is no Social Security from FDR without the more aggressive and sometimes even violent worker revolts and socialist activists of the day. Etc.
It takes a noisy, sometimes chaotic, sometimes fractious village. Otherwise it's not a substantial cultural movement.
For durable and systemic social change, breaking and then transforming the status quo requires both people who make things and people who break things, and lots of people in between.
The academic representation of these ideas falls under the heading "diversity of tactics." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity_of_tactics#:~:text=Diversity%20of%20tactics%20is%20a,stopping%20short%20of%20total%20militarization.
Ted has a particular temperament. He's at heart a jazz guy. He listens, he blends, he riffs, and collaborates. Jazz is yes/and. Jazz of course can break things, but not the way punk rock does. Thelonious Monk is not Sid Vicious.
But just as there is room for all kinds of musical creativity and expression, to me, I find the reciprocal sneering that often happens between the incremental establishmentarians and the activist firebrands to be inevitable but pointless, as they all need each other to accomplish change. On a deeper level, they are manifestations of the same cultural currents and turning wheels.
I'm older now. There were times in my life when I operated within both of these spheres, both tribes. Now I'm mostly just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round, with sidetrips to conversations like this and an occasional musical protest: https://open.spotify.com/album/1ZLkV15VVVH0gI5u1DFvyB?si=ahYKYSCKSeGJ8LcthThhgA
That's a difficult question to answer since the relationship between institutions and culture is complicated. The people in a society's institutions are also in it's culture. I think that, almost by definition, cultures can't be planned, or guided - anything you can point to capable of such a change is an institution, like governments, churches, the media, or technology. And the problem there is that few intentions work out in practice. Soviet culture certainly wasn't what it aspired to be. Even in American culture, you had things like research into drugs by an anti-communist intelligence service eventually migrate into the psychedelic New Left counter culture.
Consider this: after the invention of the automobile, was that ever going to be an optional technology? Transportation, commerce, and communication are too important to put such a genie back in the bottle - and once you have automobiles, you have automobile culture. North America, Europe, the Soviet Block, and Japan all had very different policies and therefore different results in terms of transporation - but human settlements almost everywhere are now necessarily built to accommodate cars. If we'd invented Star Trek style transporters, our cultures would be very different. In as much as we can change things, it's the tedious, boring, unremarkable things like laws, policies, regulations, education, the media, and trade connections and so on that bring that change about. But of course, it's culture that steers those institutions out of their inertia.
Look at Americans taking a sudden interest in building semi-conductors and electric cars after decades of off-shoring. That didn't happen because some academic complained about "Neo-Liberalism," nor even just because of lobbying. The political tensions around the dwindling middle class, the rise of China, and the experience of COVID changed how government, business, and the media see those issue. Right now, everyone who's getting elected benefits from things like social media, to say nothing of the tech companies themselves, or their ocean of screen junkies. My bet is that what change we get will be the result of tech elites fighting each other, like the way the American firms are trying to fight Byte-Dance - they'll built a coalition of tech-skeptical people, politicians, and lawyers, and then maybe lose control of it.
Came here to see if someone else had posted this: definitely worth a read - for both his description of the problem and potential solutions.
It seems like we are taking on the vibe of The Prisoner
Yes, yes we are.
https://solhn.substack.com/p/ill-be-damned-understanding-the-modern
You’re a philosopher at heart seeking truth. “Never before in human history has the fake been given such precedence over the authentic.”
Socrates was scapegoated. Truth tellers are resented until others also see the light.
We need healing. People are numbing themselves rather than building coping skills. It makes me sad sometimes because we could do amazing things if people stopped exploiting others and worked together. We are all connected. I loathe this society’s lack of willingness to experience the grey areas of life.
Substack is full of the fake and makes a lot of money out of fake
And yet you have your own substack... I'll go ahead and classify you by your comment.
Well said! I agree!!!
Not quite sure Substack is an exception to the points you're making, Ted. However, they're new enough for the cracks not to show as of yet, but any platform that offers a service for free makes money from its users. In case no one has seen the interview of Marc Andreessen (from the VC Andreessen Horowitz) with Christ Best, Co-founder and CEO of Substack, I would suggest having a look here - https://cb.substack.com/p/marc-andreessen-on-the-front-foot?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
The reason why it's important, considering the subject matter of this post on how technology is regressing, is because Andreessen predicts that AI would lead to a creative renaissance. It's funny considering that Andreessen Horowitz were very much against copyright back in November, when the VC stated that new rules around regulation on the content used to trained AI models could decrease the value of AI investments if companies have to pay for copyrighted data. So saying AI is a revolutionary tool that’s going to transform arts and culture thanks to the work others have produced, which hopefully will not be subjected to copyright, and therefore won’t have to be retributed for it, it's one way in which technology is failing us.
Not sure how substack is the exception to the points you are making....is my thought too....
VC Andreessen Horowitz invested on Substack in 2019 to support their growth but that kind of funding usually comes with conditions. Although Substack shifted to equity crowdfunding in its latest investment round in 2023, if the platform keeps growing and expanding and needs to rise capital again, crowdfunding won't be enough. With the rapid rise of AI, and with so many VCs worried about copyright protection hindering their returns, I'd say we haven't yet seen the dark side of Substack, but I'd be surprised if the platform remained the same (without ads, free for users, easy to navigate and get used to) for the foreseeable future. Instagram had very noble ideas in its inception until it was bought by Facebook to be exploited first, and then became the only tool Meta had to compete again TikTok. That's when users started to complain and eventually are transitioning to here. Same with Twitter. It's part of the evolution of every platform. Not sure when the day Substack will start shifting will arrive, but like I said it's naive to think it'll always be this oasis of calm.
An important distinguishing feature of SS is that the creator owns the email adresses of his subscribers, and thus can move his newsletter to another platform, or to his owm website easily. The creator is therefore not beholden to SS. All this might change of course.
That is of course a great advantage. Out of all the social media/content creation platforms out there, I really enjoy Substack the most and I'm glad it exists. And while I don't want to sound too pessimistic here nor predict its downfall, I think in 3-5 years it'll evolve.
Thank you for your insights. I'll be interested to see how it all evolves over time.
As a result of the originalpost and comments, today I've held a lengthy conversation regarding issues raised.
For what is worth, I do hope Substack stays the same for a very long time. I love discovering new writers, interacting with people like we're doing here, which by the way I love as most people are interested in having a conversation rather than arguing, and all that it's truly refreshing : )
it's not the exception.
If you aren’t paying for the product, that means you probably are the product ::>_<::
Profound!
What an illuminating and frightening post. Thanks Ted.
Thank you for an excellent piece. I should append that many of the "upgrades" and "improvements" (e.g., on the cell phone; with various computer softwares; et al.) actually make things worse for the user. Most recently, I have had the repeated joys -- sometimes three times in a single work day -- of getting knocked out of all five gmail accounts: thanks to some or other "improvement" by the geniuses at Google.
"(8) So much wealth is concentrated in the hands of the winners in these processes, that they literally become more powerful than nation states."
Daniel Silva recently noted that the richest people in the world use offshore tax havens, shell corporations, and other means to avoid paying taxes on legitimate and illegitimate earnings alike.
The result of all this is not just that wealth is concentrated in the hands of the wealthiest but tax revenues decline and services available to citizens are reduced.
It is a vicious circle and of course politicians become complicit through accepting donations,
Let us not forget chief SCOTUS Roberts and "money IS speech."
I'm about as far left as they come but I agree that money is indeed speech. If I want to print out anti-Trump posters that cost $1 apiece how is it not a violation of the 1st Amendment for the government to forbid me to spend the money? Or forbid Michael Moore's production company from spending money to promote one of his films?
As per Justice Steven's dissent in Citizens United the argument isn't that money isn't speech but that the 1st Amendment rights need to be balanced against the competing need for fair elections.
As a Canadian, I am SO glad for campaign spending limits. The last things I want is a democracy based on an inane billion-dollar advertising war. It's better for free speech not to have Billionaires silencing you with a bullhorn in your face.
I read a lot of writing from David Solway and Jordan Peterson; I'm sure you're aware they are Canadians. I'm aware about the decrepit conditions in Canada's government, primarily because they point out the dissolution of freedom in your country. So how's the restriction of advertising working out for you?
If you read Jordan Peterson, you're not learning about Canada, you're learning about his benzo-binge fantasy of Canada. Believe me, Canada has it's problems. Not enough advertisers telling us what to think isn't one them. I'd not even going to pretend to care what freedoms an ignorant foreigner thinks my country lacks, because I've already had to hear enough Fox News style conspiracy theories about my country.
I'm all for campaign spending limits or finding some way of maintaining election integrity. My issue is entirely with the argument not the goal.
I agree with you, but we indeed do have tech-bro billionaires and Fortune 500 companies buying elections, which is all that I ever cared about. What I should have said was "the richest shouldn't be able to buy Congress or the presidency." When I read a bunch of versions of publicly-funded election ideas back in the 1980s, when I was a kid, I thought something like this must happen. It never did, and the problems are sooooo much worse now.
So: if you want to attack me as being against the 1st Amendment, go right ahead. But I think we're fooling ourselves if we think we can be free speech "purists" and maybe our political process will just sort of magically sort itself out in some other way.
As the bard wrote "Money doesn't talk, it swears". I have no interest in being a free speech absolutist and totally agree that our 1st Amendment rights need to be balanced against the need to maintain a government that's not for sale to the highest bidder.
You've made similar comments above; please see my response to Robert Johnson on this thread.
You're quoting Jordan Peterson and expect to be taken seriously? LOL
I'm currently reading Jonathan Turley's "The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage." It's a reflection on free speech in the US following its history from before the revolution. I'm only a third of the way through, so I've only gotten to the early 1800s and can't comment on his conclusions. But having read that much, I'd recommend you read it, or listen to it. There's a history of people and politicians who've tried limiting speech, and it's never worked out well. We're currently in "An Age of Rage," so it might provide some perspective.
So you think child pornography should be legal? How about threatening someone? What if I showed up outside your house at 3am with a loudspeaker? Or do you understand that 1st Amendment rights aren't absolute and that there are reasonable limitations?
So you're the King of non sequitur? Please try to pay attention and actually read my comment (and Turley's book) before making inane comments. And, finally, who determines what "reasonable" is? I suppose you should be in charge of that.
Another important consideration here is that the modern Tech Industry didn't actually _invent_ very many of the things that it popularized. It has been riding on the long coattails of the last true wave of government (military)-funded innovation that brought us the Internet, GPS, etc. - all the things that people actually found useful when they were streamlined and productized and put in our pockets. As those decades-old innovations have been played out to their logical conclusions, the tech industry has begun to eat itself, because when the government stopped paying for that kind of research nobody else picked up the torch.
"Users are not the real customers—so billions of people must suffer to advance the interests of a tiny group of stakeholders." Exactly! Most Average Joe users can't afford to become them. And Hollywood is turning what were once creatively viable IPs into complete shit because the stakeholders want that!
Which is one of several reasons why the movie business is dying.
It's the happiest corpse I've ever seen.
All anyone needs to do is see the 1973 movie, Soylent Green. That's where we're heading.
This is not news. Early technologies like radio, television, even print and billboards (we can call the last two “analog technologies) operated on the same principles: own the consumer, make it popular, habitual, and even necessary to use your product. Advertising, while it seems to be a simple, sometimes entertaining diversion from your sports or news interest was very effective in pushing gasoline, alcohol, tobacco and Barbie. This marketing shower of desire definitely changed the way people lived their lives and profoundly enriched the lives of the owners and stockholders of Exxon, Phillip Morris and GM. The tech of today? It is real and will change our lives radically, but is that a bad thing? Electricity was a new and frightening technology as was commercial flight and motor vehices. We survived. Will our lives be ruined by new technologies? Our lives are brief. If you’re a certain age, accustomed to living a certain way, you’re entitled to complain. But those who survive you, being born into it, won’t so much.
Your list does have a thread of truth running through it, though: greed. Billionaires shouldn’t exist. The only way to become an oligarch is to exploit resources and people.
This gent has nailed it: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C-ZuKGNMqnQ/?igsh=MWdyeHh6ZnlzNzl4aQ==
Thank you, Thomas. That gentleman's billionaire rant was quite entertaining.
It was a welcome distraction!
The Frankenstein metaphor is apropos. Musicians were always seeking new sounds even if it meant replacing the instrument they spent a lifetime mastering. “Ageism” also drove us here. You didn’t want to be the old guy in the meeting not accepting the new sound, or look. And then there’s the money. CO2 emitting bodies in a room aren’t as cost efficient as fixing it in post. The post modernists never imagined the AI, Gates / Zuck soulless takeover by ones and zeros. The incentives to turn it around are obvious to most humans with hearts. The incentives to stay the course are in the hands of the techs controlling the switch. Some good news: a friend at Apple tells me they’re feeling a new scorn at parties from jobless youth.
I wonder what will happen if the talk of splitting up Google with anti trust legislation becomes a reality.
They will become many little Googles with the revenue still flowing to Mr. Googleburg.
Well, look what happened to Standard Oil…or Ma Bell: those monopolies were fractured but continued faithfully reaming their customers for many years to come.