A Friend to Culture

Lately, my friend the Universe is bringing invisible structures to my attention. And I'm grateful, though this leads to the feeling of falling down a deep hole, not knowing how (or if?) to land.

But also, suddenly, it's like I put on some magic goggles that make the bullshit all around me visible in glorious neon, like this.

My father, a college professor, had an ink pad with a "Bullshit" stamp (that he'd actually use on student papers!). It's with my sister these days, but I'm feeling like maybe I need to take a turn with it.

Neil Postman's book Amusing Ourselves to Death is probably one of the most enlightening reads I've encountered since I don't know when. Written 40 years ago, he's issuing a strong warning that we must interrogate new technologies and understand the specifics of what is gained and lost by adopting them.

Though I'm not sure he could have predicted AI, I am sort of crushed knowing that if he could visit 2026, he'd see that the American public didn't hear him, even a little. But I am grateful that the book called out to me, by chance, from a shelf at the Book Exchange. It's quite a gift.

Here's an extended excerpt from the book's conclusion:

"What is happening in America is not the design of an articulated ideology... It comes as the unintended consequence of a dramatic change in our modes of public conversation. But it is an ideology nonetheless, for it imposes a way of life, a set of relations among people and ideas, about which there has been no consensus, no discussion, and no opposition. Only compliance. Public consciousness has not yet assimilated the point that technology is ideology. This, in spite of the fact that before our very eyes technology has altered every aspect in American life during the past eighty (now 120) years.

[...]To be unaware that a technology comes equipped with a program for social change, to maintain that technology is neutral, to make the assumption that technology is always a friend to culture is, at this late hour, stupidity plain and simple.

Postman's point about "no consensus, no discussion, and no opposition. Only compliance..." speaks to that yucky feeling I have every time my iPhone software updates (and changes evertything!), or I catch myself mindlessly scrolling through inane animal videos, or I'm expected to adapt to the next tech innovation because not doing so will bump me over the hill into non-adopter obscurity.

I remember how eye-opening it was when, working at Harvard and attending dinners with faculty (a potentially intimidating proposition), I discovered that table conversation often tended toward the common denominator of popular TV shows. Being able to carry oneself in a witty convo about Game of Thrones was all that was required to survive dinner with political philosophers, theologians, sociologists, and historians. I think this example from the 2010s would continue to prove Postman's 1986 point about media's impact on public discourse.

But even Postman recognized the impossibility of a reversal. Few people will be able to turn off the TV, leave social media, or halt the forward march of AI after reading his critique. But they will have a better framework for understanding the history of human communications technologies and how these shape every aspect of our lives.

And maybe it can help us consider whether we have to continue to comply, comply, comply...or whether we can insist on alternative movements, cultures, and social communities--and call "bullshit" once in a while. We do need to insist upon viable ways to opt out, to live by choice rather than continual de facto compliance, without falling of the edge of humanity.