Are we facing an ‘information crisis’?

Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

by Jaron Lanier, with a new afterword (Vintage, £9.99 / €12.60)

The author of this book would, I think, regard this ambition as the start of a race to the bottom.

Jaron Lanier is a Jeremiah of the internet who has emerged directly from Silicon Valley. And as one of the original proponents of ‘digital reality’ who is steeped in the tech culture that has been transforming our lives over the last quarter of a century, he knows what he is talking about.

The difference that sets him apart is that Lanier is an artist, a musician of an advanced kind of modern classical forms, whose work has been much admired.

Reliance

Reportedly he is worried too that reliance on social media platforms is reducing people’s capacity for spirituality; or as The New York Times put it awhile ago, the pressing need to ‘click delete to save your soul’.

This book, while not perhaps new, is bang up to date. So what are his arguments for deleting you social media? You are losing your free will; leaving is a striking way to resist the insanity of our times; social media is undermining truth; social media is making what you say meaningless; it is destroying your capacity for empathy; it is making you unhappy; it does not want you to have economic dignity; it is making politics impossible. And tenthly and finally, ‘Social media hates your soul’.

The evidence already suggests that social media is making us sadder, angrier, less empathetic, more fearful, more isolated and more tribal. It is driving 12-year-olds to suicide”

This is a short book, it can be read in an hour or two not devoted to idly searching the web. These might be the best-spent two hours this year if you do so.

The social media that people, especially young people, are overmuch engaged on serves only to make them essential ‘automated extension of the platform’.

There is a serious problem facing parishes, Church communities and religious organisations of all kinds: should you stay with X ‘formerly known as Twitter’.

It may be the fifth most visited site in the world, but should your parish or community be there? Would your intentions and your community not be better served by establishing a well-maintained website of your own?  A site free from all the madness you might hope all could avoid.

In summary the evidence already suggests that social media is making us sadder, angrier, less empathetic, more fearful, more isolated and more tribal. It is driving 12-year-olds to suicide.

But I began with Elon Musk. As I finish these thoughts, my morning news survey tells me that Musk’s company Neuralink has implanted a wireless brain chip inside a person’s brain through intrusive surgery. It will make it easier for the person to communicate with computers and AI.

Entities

Or rather for those entities to communicate with them and so control them. A professor at King’s College London refers to “the brain implant community”: just who are they one wonders.

This advance must mark a sinister landmark on the way to our complete dehumanisation. Where will ‘free will’ be in a fully developed ‘information world’ controlled by the likes of Elon Musk?