Friday snuck up on me! Tonight will go to Maggiano's piano bar with Bob Solone rather than Schaller's. Schaller's by myself is too solitary - sitting by myself waiting to sing. I don't get to sing as much at Maggiano's but the crowd is lively and I have new friends there. This weekend will find me working on my show, maybe seeing a few movies (want to see Lincoln and Les Mis), then singing at 12 West Elm Sunday night.
These days waking up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, eager to live well - firing well on most cylinders these days. Last evening found me home alone rolling dolmades (stuffed grape leaves). I make them Persian style with tiny currants and pine nuts in addition to the rice and all the other stuff. I nailed them - absolutely perfect. And because I had no one to show my cooking off to, I jumped in the car and delivered Carla and Alan a container of them. Got the satisfaction/feedback I craved when Carla rolled her eyes and said, "these are the best grape leaves I've every had!" Yes!!
This morning I'm finding myself interested in a groundswell of discussion/dissent on social media/Internet community. Maybe you've read or seen articles that advise giving up a reliance on social media and an umbilical attachment to your phone for the new year. (See, it's not just me - others are concerned about it too!)
Read an article worth reading this morning as I sipped my coffee - in Smithsonian magazine, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold 2.0. - "how one pioneer turned against the very culture he helped to create". Guy's name is Jaron Lanier and he is/was a big shot - "one of the creators of our current digital reality" - on a first name basis with Steve Jobs of Apple and Sergey Brin of Google. So, we're not talking about a disgruntled fringe kind of guy - we should listen to what he has to say.
What he's extremely concerned about is the capacity of "hive mind to engulf us all, destroy political discourse economic stability, the dignity of personhood and the capacity for it to lead to social catastrophe"!!!! There's this belief among Internet intellectuals that free information is the foundation for "wisdom of the crowd", and that wisdom of the crowd "results in ever upward enlightenment." Lanier was one of these Internet intellectuals - "was born among a small circle of first-generation Silicon Valley utopians and artificial intelligence visionaries. Now he's like the spy who came in from the cold. He is now the "fiercest and weightiest critic of the new digital world precisely because he came from the Inside."
"I think we changed the world", he says, "but this notion that we shouldn't be self-critical and that we shouldn't be hard on ourselves is irresponsible."The things that keep him awake at night and give him pause is the thought that the democratization that should have occurred by making information free has actually had the opposite effect. It is destroying our middle class. Wealth is accruing to the ones with the biggest computers (think Google and the like). A simple example he gives is Google Translator. Seems magical that you can punch in a passage in a foreign language and your computer instantly translates it into English. The way that's accomplished is that Google has sampled translations from real live translators. It produces a result "that looks magical but in the meantime, the original translators aren't paid for their work - their work was just appropriated." He says that, not only are you stealing from people but you are also shrinking the economy in the process. Same with the world of finance - big computers pitted against even larger computers, victory to the fastest. It's a concentration of wealth and power to the owners of those machines. No need for people in the middle. No need for the middle class. "We are destroying the economy!" he maintains. "We are outsourcing ourselves into insignificant advertising fodder. Nanobytes of Big Data that diminish our personhood, our dignity."
Lanier is also very concerned about political discourse. What has seemed like a key benefit to the web culture is the free exchange of ideas. It's a new phenomenon that casual readers can comment on what they're reading and their comments become part of the larger discussion. Lanier argues that anonymous commentators and social networking sites pose a big risk to our democracy (counter-intuitive, right?). He describes the anonymity of the Internet as a poison seed. "brandishing the ugliness of human nature beneath the anonymous screen-name masks...turning us into a nation of hate-filled trolls." He is very concerned that we have created a new powerful weapon - "social lasers of cruelty." Take the thinking a little further. Information and ideas are spread emotionally and virally in minutes on sites like Facebook. Be a bit afraid - it's a tinder box. He says:
Look what we're setting up here in the world today. We have economic fear combined with everybody joined together on these instant twitchy social networks which are designed to create mass action....it sounds to me like the prequel to potential social catastrophe.Lanier is especially touchy about lynch mobs. He is only one generation away from genocide; one parent's family destroyed by the Nazi's the other's by Russian pogroms. Throughout history, the capacity and willingness of people to congeal to hurt each other has been a consistent human theme - it just looks a little different with each generation.
Challenge today is thinking about this concept and your participation in "hive mind". There will be those of us who decide not to be lemmings (actually that's not fair to lemmings because contrary to popular wisdom they don't actually follow each other into the sea). Remember, just because the technology exists, doesn't mean it has to be embraced without wisdom and an appreciation of the potential consequences. There's probably no going back to paper-based days and vinyl but if you find yourself being a troll, anonymously posting hurtful comments, or allowing yourself knee-jerk reactions to viral Facebook messages (like the recent call to action to put armed guards in schools that showed up on everyone's wall), just step back. I'm not sure what the solution here is other than using the technology carefully and judiciously. Lanier is telling us it's a two edged sword - one side, cutting edge, the other side with the capacity to sever us from our humanity.
Peace,
Sarah
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