Knowledge is power. We know this through experience, through history, and sometimes through corruption. It feels like the idea of "propaganda" and of partisan- or biased-news would be something that is from a bygone age, thanks largely to the Internet. At least, that's how it was positioned in my view growing up. Jonathan Haidt put it well:
"The internet came into our lives in the mid-1990s, soon after the fall of the Soviet Union. By the end of that decade, it was widely thought that the web would be an ally of democracy and a slayer of tyrants. When people are connected to each other, and to all the information in the world, how could any dictator keep them down?"
—Jonathan Haidt, The Terrible Costs of a Phone-Based Childhood
Even before the Internet, we had many assumptions about what a connected world could do for humanity. Consider what Alonzo Jackman predicted about the impacts of the telegraph in 1846:
"...all inhabitants of the earth would be brought into one intellectual neighbourhood and be at the same time perfectly freed from these contaminants which might under other circumstances be received."
If we can do research, fact-check, and stay connected to all indexed knowledge that humanity has to offer, how are we still not in eutopia—a good or perfect place?
Illusion of Place
I still am generally a technology-optimist. I've spent my entire professional career building websites—virtual places where information or other interactions are available. There are so many delightful experiences that I've had online whether finding niche treasure troves of helpful information or even just browsing ancient documents and images that I could never access by myself.
The vastness and the creative potential of the Internet is so attractive that it's easy to forget that these technotopias that I spend my time on aren't the only use-cases available—nor are they the most popular. Putting aside the websites you spend time on for work, where do you go for the majority of your Internet experiences? Social media would be my guess for the vast majority of our leisure-time online, and it certainly lines up with my experience lately.
Making your own website can be complicated and technical, in stark contrast to making a social media post. The simplicity of posting to Facebook, for example, has helped draw in and retain vast user bases. This also means that people can use these platforms to grow their content footprint—a body of work, in some sense—which then benefits both the platform and the creator. It is within this system that has, in large part, contributed to a separation of realities among all of us.
According to the Center for Humane Technology, social media was our first large-scale interaction with artificial intelligence (AI). As an attempt to solve the problem of drowning in the exponentially growing amount of content generated by the users of social media platforms, AI was made to sort through the mess and identify the things that you, individually, would like to see. People say they have to cater to "The Algorithm," and they're right. The AI is constantly looking to be fed more data and more content so that it can then serve it to you, hot and fresh (yes, all food puns intended).
As technology has progressed and monetary incentives have solidified for the companies running the social media platforms, we've ended up with a utopia. Not to be confused with eutopia (a good place), utopia means "not a place," and indeed, the Internet is no place, despite how much it feels like it is.
When we experience a place by walking around it, soaking in whatever stimuli is available to our senses, we develop a kind of the reality that the location encapsulates. As we see other people in our surroundings, it's natural to guess that they are also inhabiting the same sensory reality that we are. I think this is the same in abstract locations, like knowledge or spirituality. Our ideas and beliefs can construct realities almost as tangible as a stone pillar or a soft canvas tent. The Internet is rife with ideologies, opinions, beliefs, and knowledge, awaiting visitors to come inhabit that space for a moment or to frequently return.
That's where it gets difficult.
The algorithms at work trying to predict what content we will most enjoy seeing next are also constructing realities around us. Perhaps it has built a large room where many of your friends can sit with you in the shared understanding. When you encounter a friend who has never even seen this building that you've grown so familiar with, it can be jarring.
"How have you not seen this?" you might ask.
"How can you stand to be in there?" they might reply.
There are groups with malicious intent that can subtly infiltrate our digital spaces and as we become more and more comfortable with their messages which eventually surround us as algorithms boost their content, we can slip into delusion. Take QAnon, a highly successful community built on conspiracy theories, for example. With masterful manipulation techniques, QAnon has targeted vulnerable people looking for validation or for comfort amidst powerlessness, chaos, confusion, or political turmoil.
"Beneath these kinds of delusional beliefs, in many instances, is not a desire to be accurately informed, but a need to be internally comforted."
—Jesselyn Cook, The Quiet Damage, pg. 230
So much for our "intellectual neighborhood" being able to free us from contaminants, if we are all at risk of manipulation with something as simple as the track of content being fed to us.
There is such a striking difference of realities that we're all subjected to through our utopias, that I've even felt disoriented in the real world as I've moved between various friend groups.
That is not to say we have no benefit from our digital realities. The Internet has helped challenge oppressive systems, connect people in constructive ways, and enabled transparency across organizations, governments, and other groups. The paradox of benefit and harm resulting from the virtual world is one that we'll have to hold onto, no matter how uncomfortable.
Another Place
Without many policies and regulations to help us, we're severely limited in what we are able to do about the realities that are constructed around us. If our technotopia really is like a place, then we may find value in keeping with the metaphor and trying out some tested methods from the real world.
As Mark Twain said in, The Innocents Abroad / Roughing It:
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”
Homogeneity, as we explored last week, is insufficient and stifling in real-world attempts at building eutopias, so perhaps we must also fight against it in our sphere of knowledge and virtual experience. However, the sameness of venue is also concerning. I worry that the draw to digital spaces has overpowered our human need to meet in physical spaces. So much of my interactions with my friends are virtual—through texts, shared Instagram reels, etc.—that I am losing not only my social skills, but my ability to connect with people when we are face-to-face. It feels very much like the following observation made by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki back in 1933:
"Japanese music is, above all, a music of reticence, of atmosphere. When recorded or amplified by loudspeaker, the greatest part of its charm is lost...Most important of all, are the pauses. Yet the phonograph and the radio render these moments of silence utterly lifeless."
—In Praise of Shadows
Has the technology that was supposed to unite us, actually chipped away at our humanity? Or at least dulled the vitality of our connections with each other? Are the manipulated realities to blame for taking us to a place we didn't intend to arrive at?
I grew up in a culture that was highly averse to differing perspectives. In fact, there were intellectual walls constructed intentionally to ward off the possibility of exploring human experiences, social critiques, and especially any kind of introspection of religious institutions. As a result, I have been stunted in my growth as a human, I have made racist proclamations (always with good intentions—and where does that path lead again?), I have perpetuated harmful beliefs and practices. The amount of actual pain that I have contributed to is immeasurable, but it is finally catching up to me as I have broken free from the restraints that were inflicted on me. Clawing my way out from behind the intellectual walls that prevented me from seeing Others as humans, I'm realizing now that it is vital to seek out different views, different ideas, and different experiences.
Although I have become a much more regular digital traveller, there is still more to do. Our emotional and mental health must become a priority (both individually and collectively). Since our digital utopias inhabit no real space but our own minds, taking care to clean up will help us be more discerning when confronted with manipulation. My life took an incredibly gigantic turn when I made mental health my main focus. Coming from more than twenty years of homogeneity, manipulation, and rage redirected internally, I was at a lowest-of-lows, easily swayed by any idea, as long as it lined up with what was familiar to me, even though it was hurting me.
Getting out of utopia and into another place is neither easy nor fun, but it is vital—as in life-giving. My country's deep emotional and mental wounds are now manifesting in even greater harm as the current administration is lashing out at groups of people it has determined are monsters, or at least a lower-class of human. Oh, how things might be different if we could reconnect instead of disconnect?
In all thy travels, never forget humanity.