Reading Neil Postman's The Disappearance of Childhood and part of his argument is how the invention of the printing press created a new form of adulthood, one that had to be earned through learning and engagement with printed words. He quotes Lewis Mumford in talking about how print shifted people's focus away from what was right in front of them,

"More than any other device, the printed book released people from the domination of the immediate and the local… print made a greater impression than actual events… To exist was to exist in print: the rest of the world tended gradually to become more shadowy.

I find it interesting how when you compare this with today, obviously the digital world now dominates our focus. The immediate is what is happening online. It's become a new social existence that has pulled people's attention away from both deeper learning through written material and local things. We have become less engaged with what's going on right around us and the needs of our own community.

I assume the overall point of this book is going to be about establishing how the distinction between childhood and adulthood that was created with the advent of the printed word has disappeared as a result of new media (TV in this case). It's worth noting that childhood, in this understanding, would have been hyper-local. Kids were somewhat forced to be in place and interact with what was immediately happening around them. Now, the digital world has coopted that and we are seeing the negative effects playing out all over the world.

"As our understanding of the history of technology increases, it becomes clear that a new device merely opens a door; it does not compel one to enter. The acceptance or rejection of an invention, or the extent to which its implications are realized if it is accepted, depends quite as much upon the condition of a society, and upon the imagination of its leaders, as upon the nature of the technological item itself."

From Lynn White Jr's Medieval Technology and Social Change (1957-64)

I've been thinking quite a bit about how we discover and engage with media over the last few days (see my previous thoughts on this here), and it got me reflecting about my personal collection of books that is scattered, with varying degrees of intentionality, around my home. I'm pretty sure every room contains a small (or large) assortment of books in some corner, cabinet, shelf, or carefully stacked atop surfaces to catch the interest of someone sitting nearby. As I took some time to pay attention to these piles, I realized just how strange my book collection really has become.

There's the shelf in my bedroom that holds everything from fantasy series to Russian classics to short story anthologies to folklore. There's the pile on my subwoofer of deep dives into specific albums I like (including one on Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love). There's a bookshelf in my living room with bird and animal studies, oral histories, essay collections, and bordering on what might be considered too many books on mushrooms and foraging. My office (which is only about the size of a large closet) contains all my so-called higher interest books (read: boring), ranging from history, theology, sociology, tech-criticism, economics, urbanism, design, and more. There's even a small collection of various editions/translations of The Hobbit sitting above my record player.

My tastes in books are wide and eccentric, and they have arrived here in all manner of ways. I have haphazardly picked up books from places I have visited and deliberately tracked down certain books because they piqued my interest at a certain time. Friends and family members have gifted me books they thought seemed like something I'd like. Other books hold sentimental value in some way (like a couple I was given from a professor who made an impact on me).

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't think an algorithm can ever really capture this sort of collecting. While it can distill all of this into suggestions for me to buy something else, it can never replicate the various motivations behind the acquiring of those books. It can't replace human thoughtfulness.

Was listening to the Big Ideas Podcast while making breakfast/lunch for my kids this morning. It was an episode on data privacy and it had a really important takeaway to it that I don't often hear enough of in these conversations; that protecting your data is both a personal responsibility and a systemic one. Usually, I only hear this framed around the individual steps that you can do to keep yourself safe online: use a password manager, use 2FA, manage your privacy settings, etc... Rarely do I hear it said that all of this is simply not enough to keep you safe and that if we want protection, it requires regulations from the government.

"We need reform that reflects community expectations of privacy, that understands that privacy choices you make are not necessarily the choices about your privacy that are made, that others make them for you. This is a collective responsibility that needs to be regulated at a societal level, not something that we can offload to individuals. Unless we do that, companies and governments will continue to exploit this moment of sophisticated technology..." (Lizzie O'Shea, Founder & Chair of Digital Rights Watch)

It's just so important that we keep in mind that these big tech companies continue to spend significant amounts of money to lobby the government to stay out of their way. We should also maintain a healthy skepticism towards content amplified on their platforms that criticizes the governments that do challenge them. Oversight has been successfully rebranded as 'red tape' by the Libertarians and we need to be asking what we're giving up when we let Big Tech (and Big Business) have unimpeded access to our lives.

Is the digital town hall a dying dream?

This morning I'm reading this article on some of the shifts taking place in social media, particularly the way the bigger, centralized platforms have been splintering into multiple decentralized, politically homogenous platforms. The general framing is that users are increasingly moving to platforms that align with their political beliefs rather than staying in spaces that attempt to adhere to a more neutral set of community standards.

“It was once novel features, like Facebook’s photo tagging or Twitter’s quote tweets, that drew users to social media sites. Now, it’s frequently ideological alignment that seduces users. People are decamping to platforms that they believe match their norms and values — and, in an increasingly polarized America, there is a chasm between the two sides.”

It's all very interesting, but it's also touching on something I've been thinking about a lot over the last few years: the relationship between diversity and working towards a common good. It's also a thought process that is still very unformed in my head. So as always, we'll see where this goes...

One of the markers of the post-modern turn was the deconstruction of a the (Western) idea that a singular experience/truth/viewpoint that was somehow more right or true than others. You might say we are now living in the post-post-modern turn. It's sort of like a tube of toothpaste that has been emptied; there are a lot of people invested in trying to put that toothpaste back, but it's kind of too late. It's all over the counter already.

This all ties back to my question around seeking a common good amidst an increasingly diverse society. The old, dominant narrative took us there via eliminating difference. It's sort of like that melting pot vision of America; one leaves behind where they came from in order to become something new—an American(†). But this is where the toothpaste comes in. That narrative has been cracked wide open and shown to be shallow, reductive, and (frankly) racist. There are lots of reasons to point to in order to understand the extreme polarization of everything right now, but I think this is a part of it. This relationship between diversity and finding a shared life together. It's playing out in more extreme ways online because the internet reduces us to our opinions/ideologies/alignments In a way, these homogenous online communities are a way for us to feel like the toothpaste is still in the tube.

As I said, I'm still working through this question but I think we need to explore other postures for how to form community if we have any hope of finding a way forward. Off the top of my head, I'm advocating for models built around cooperation and hospitality. I'm open to hearing about others though.

† Just want to be clear that this is not an American problem only. The American melting pot analogy is just a very clear picture of the problem.