Internet Stupidity
Technologies which are vectors for the transmission of information -narratives or datasets or social communication- inform human thought as surely as does language itself.
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Wisdom and happiness
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I believe that David Foster Wallace was a better essayist and thinker than a writer of fiction, and I like his oft-quoted Kenyon commencement address very much; in it, he suggests that controlling one’s attention is integral to happiness, to real wisdom, and to meaningful freedom:
I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience […] The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.
That entire multi-billion dollar industries exist solely to wrest your attention from you, using whatever pretext they can -“news is important,” “this is a community of your friends,” “you are creating things right now,” “this is vital information,” “this is sex,” “this is where culture is happening”- is proof of attention’s value and its profound connection to will. Attention permits us to control our minds, direct our thoughts, and orient our wills in accordance with what we think is best.
The Internet and television alike are primarily concerned with exploiting weaknesses in our processes for directing attention so that our will can be influenced. And whereas we might hope for, say, health, happiness, and the capacity to love and be loved, businesses want other things from us: “the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing,” and the corresponding will to buy it back from them.
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This essay expresses my own unease with the internet very, very well. I think it’s a valuable piece of writing and deserves a careful read through, whether you end up agreeing with it or not.
I’ve only been trying to write for a short time. In that short time, though, I’ve started to become much more conscious of my attention - web browsers are not opened while writing, not even to look things up, because suddenly I’m on Wikipedia and it’s all over. Even a site like Wikipedia, which is made by people who want us to know more and be better, is built to exploit our reward mechanisms and our weakness of will. Instead, I make a note to confirm, or research, or expand upon something and do all of those things later, in a concentrated burst.
Our attention is the most valuable thing we have. Let’s spend it on things that matter: each other.
