HT to Tim Ferris and his weekly email 5 bullet Friday for pointing out this recent essay from David Byrne on MIT Tech review. I’ve been sensing this for a while now, resulting in more time journaling, meditating and going out in the world to be with other people and spending less time on my phone, blogging more than facebooking and being more conscientious about taking what seems to be the path of least resistance doing things online.
Here is one of the key quotes:
When interaction becomes a strange and unfamiliar thing, then we will have changed who and what we are as a species. Often our rational thinking convinces us that much of our interaction can be reduced to a series of logical decisions—but we are not even aware of many of the layers and subtleties of those interactions. As behavioral economists will tell us, we don’t behave rationally, even though we think we do. And Bayesians will tell us that interaction is how we revise our picture of what is going on and what will happen next.
I’d argue there is a danger to democracy as well. Less interaction, even casual interaction, means one can live in a tribal bubble—and we know where that leads.
via Eliminating the Human
It seems to me we (the royal we = the human race) have to figure out how to have a better conversation about the costs in addition to the benefits of all these new technologies.
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