OnlySubs Episode 78: Questioning Digital Dependence is now available exclusively for New Discourses contributors on the following platforms:
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It’s a little strange and a little personal to talk about, I suppose, but I had a weird dream recently that I wanted to share with you. I dreamed I was out in the wilderness, maybe the desert somewhere, and suddenly realized I didn’t have my smartphone with me. At first, I panicked. Then I relaxed, remembering that until quite recently, nobody had smartphones, and people usually found their way just fine nonetheless. In this episode of my subscribers-only podcast, James Lindsay OnlySubs, I use this dream and some stories from my past to raise the question of where we might find the line between technology being something that facilitates our freedom and something that makes us dependent. I wanted to share it because I think it’s a bigger and more important question than many of us realize. I hope you’ll join me as I dig into it.
Additional episodes of OnlySubs can be found here.
2 comments
Actually all new forms of technology create all-the-way-down-the-line cultural consequences.
Especially language media which alters our sense of self via changes in our neurological patterning and how we thus relate to other human beings, the natural world.
One of my favorite books is the The Alphabet Versus the Goddess The Conflict Between Word and Image by Leonard Shlain. Among other things he describes the cultural disturbances (even madness) when left-brained printing was introduced to modern cultures.
Leonard was a brain surgeon and a teaching professor.
http://www.alphabetvsgoddess.com
He was also the author of the book Art and Physics which provides a very interesting understanding of the relation between modern art (beginning in the 1850’s) and the paradoxical nature of quantum reality,
http://www.artandphysics.com
Creating digital dependence has been the the principal feature of our culture ever since TV become the primary media for brain-washing every body.
How many billions of people are now watching and being entranced/brain-washed by TV, computer screens and I-phones at any given time on the planet.
These three authors provide interesting perspectives on this very important topic.
http://www.roughtype.com/?p=9080 Nicholas Carr the author of The Shallows
An author who describes how TV creates faithful consumers.
This Little Kiddy Went To Market The Corporate Capture of Childhood
http://www.herinst.org/sbeder/Books/kiddy.html
A book by Susan Thomas titled Buy Baby Buy How Consumer Culture Manipulates Parents and Harms Young Minds – two year olds are able to recognize dozens of brand name logos and ask/pester their parents to buy them when they see them.
Did you know that in the USA there are cable TV channels specifically designs for TWO year olds.
An speaking of electronic media , electricity and more importantly micro-electronic radiation especially the now being introduced 5G network check out the disturbing book by Arthur Firstenberg titled The Invisible Rainbow A History of Electricity and Life – the last chapter In the Land of the Blind is truly disturbing. This 500 page book features a 130 page bibliography which contains 20,000 references.