Modern Innovations That Are Destroying the World
Modern Innovations that are destroying the world is actually a series. Well, it was inteded originally to be one article, and then the list just grew and grew like that patch of weeds in my back yard I thought wouldn't get out of control. Well it did. In reality these were always there, its just that as I dove into this I started finding so many and had so many thoughts for each I just had to break it down. So here we go. Beginning with good old #1. Chatrooms and online comments.
Chatrooms and Comments
Have you ever been to a chatroom or scrolled to the end of a article or youtube video to see the comments left behind? If so then you know that within 3 or 4 posts there is a 99.99% chance that something intentionally offensive or derrogotry will be found. It takes no time at all to find the most sinister and eruptive verbage online. Listening to it all you would think people are terrible, hateful, anger-filled, bigots who want nothing but to eliminate anyone who doesn't think like them. Take these comments for what they say or imply and you get a world ready to kill each other. The only thing is, that's not how people talk in public.
Although it is true that people will say things among friends without thinking, they are tame in comparison to the scope and volume online. You may think your radical friends or hopeless family members are pretty extreme and offensive with their tongue, but allow me to explain how online comments and chatrooms take the most extreme and offensive part of human nature and give it a place of absolute cultural acceptance and free range. Much like a newly painted fence in a duststorm is going to attract every kind of inexplicible nastiness, so is an online chatroom. The reasons why are below.
Anonymity - No Consequences
The first issue that anonymity causes is the ability to not be held accountable for your words. For instance, a comment expressing dangerous views such as, "they should all be rounded up and shot," is quite worrisome and someone saying that in public would earn observation or ostracization from friends or family. But online that is not occuring because someone is hidden behind an unattached online identity. Knowing you can say whatever you want without being held accountable obviously removes a filter from people that they normally operate with. The danger is that people will associate word-vomitting without a filter with imminent action. If all things ever said in any context were translated to immediate action...well, the world becomes a lot more untrustworthy than it actually is, and would quickly become a very dark place heading into the acpocolypse.
The overall consequence is people registering other's as a threat and being exposed to them. There are unfortunate consequences to this ever growing state of untrustworthiness our world is falling into. A lot of society's pillars and positive cultural norms rely on good will or opennesss. The net effect of losing trust in that good will is those things going away as people lose confidence they will be well received. This crushes more positive movement and cultural innovation than you can imagine. If you don't believe me, just wait to see how a negative comment takes the life right out of a group the next time your at a party or a meeting. It's that easy. On the flipside, they can cause unjust responses of overreaction where people respond to things that have never been acted on. Reacting radically to a percieved radical threat causes another radical reaction causing activity to escalate needlessly. Words are powerful, and unfiltered words are about as helpful as unfiltered gas in your engine. Yes they will break the whole thing down. What has kept that in check for forver is social accountability. Without that accountability, there is nothing checking that behavior. In the macro scheme of things there is a lack of trust, understanding, and reciprocated good will. Overreaction in the public sphere is an unintentional result of these symptoms and leads to less honest discourse and more closed off anonymous discourse. One is more productive to society than the other, guess which.
Anonymity - No context
Anonymity causes another issue that I just tapped into. Because people don't understand the true context or situation causing the online verbage, they react poorly. This issue is not having context for things said. It is said that email is a poor communicator because you can't fully relay yourself with written words. In your every day dialogue you are accustom to speaking in you will use verbage that can be interpreted very offensively without context. Example; an old freind sees you in a restaurant. Passing by you on his way out he calls your name exitedly and asks where you have been, reaching out his hand. You resond with a laugh and a smile, "what are you talking about? I've been here this whole time!"
Now take that conversation and make it a text message or email punctuated poorly (like a youtube comment). "John Smith. I haven't seen you in ages, where have you been?"
"What are you talking about? I've been here this whole time!"
It sounds angry doesn't it? At least it certainly can. That's my point. You have no idea what context words are said in online. That's actually the tip of the iceberg. There's a lot more influencers of context you may not understand. What if the person is drunk? What if its a 9 year old kid? What if this person was just hurt severely by someone who matches the description of your subject matter? What if its a person born and raised in a culture where its okay to punish your daughter by throwing acid on her face?
There are so many unkowns that, in all honesty, that comment means literally nothing. At least it should mean nothing. The problem is that people read those comments and react to them in whatever context they envision. A lot of times that is simply whatever they want them to be. Don't agree with conservatives? It's probably a conservative saying the country is full and doesn't need any more immigrants. Don't like socialists? It's probably a socialist stepping on that flag. It's pretty easy to put the face that makes you feel good on something unknown. The only problem is that it hides the truth and you would be surprised how often your assumptions are wrong. My learning that lesson is a primary inspiration leading to me even writing an article such as this.
Trolls
This issue is in part caused by anonymity as well, but its a social phonomenon so old didn't need the modern term "troll" to create it. Trolling is the act of causing disruption, chaos, or harm intentionally; just for the sake of seeing what happens or to harm a targeted person. It can also have a milder definition that pertains to aggravating someone, pranking them, or monitoring them excessively. This behavior is actually a developmental paradigm of human psychology and usually gets worked out with growth, maturity, and understanding. However, things that nuture those developments; such as discipline, accountability, and morality are things not valued by more and more people in modern western civilization. This in combination with the staging ground the internet creates, makes trolling easy and rampant.
Trolling is something that happens in real life. Often it amounts to bullying, shaming, censoring, and posturing. Usually, people can step in and help stop this behavior. Not always of course, but for a lot of ill-mannered individuals, bullying is simply how things get done, to the destruction of others around them. But often bullies are found out and get their cummupins. Online, however, that is not the case. There is no consequence to bullying and trolling other than in the most aggregious cases being banned from a site or person's page. Unfortunatley Trolls account for a significant amount of negative speech online and are fueled by the thought that everyone is taking them seriously. At times in history, poorly spoken words have caused wars. Wielding the sharp sword of the tongue carelessly for your own entertainment has about the same impact as walking into pulic swinging a knife at people to see how they react. Only in public you'd be beaten to a pulp and handcuffed in short order. Not so on the internet, leaving many people (metaphorically speaking) bleeding, hurt, and pining for vengeance. A feeling that may cause a reaction toward others and continue the cycle as bullying does.
Hidden Agenda
Since the advent of time it has been a back-handed political practice to pay an operative to dress up like an ally of your opponent's and be offensive. That hasn't gone away. In fact, its alive and well. Why else would a democrat professor dress up like a neo-nazi and show up at a Tea Party rally? Then recruit and encourage hundreds nationwide to do so? This happens online as well. Shielded by obscurity and anonymity, political operatives, and just regular idealists, have a blank check to assume an online identity and play the part of the opposition. Representing them at best as a staw-man argument, or at worst an evil villain.
This is so regular now its almost impossible to take anyone seriously. People like this tend to find high profile places to make their mark. It's all in the name of painting their perceived opposition as the bad guy that no one can trust. Online forums simply make it easier and give them an audience that could possibly be worldwide. That's a lot of power for someone with no other purpose than to frame someone else with a lie.
Easy Access
For all of human history, up until recently, if you wanted to talk to multiple people or a crowd, you needed one of two things. 1) Enough earned respect to get people to come and pay attention to you, or 2) the permission of others who had such respect to gather a crowd for you. But with the innovation of the internet, that is no longer the case. Literally anyone from anywhere in the world may contact your or grab your attention. Literally, everyone has a voice and part of your ear. Don't believe me? Surf the internet for a brief period of time and see how many pop up ads come at you. Or better yet, check your oldest email account for SPAM. Convinced yet? If not, then I won't even try to convince you Deflategate wasn't due to the direct actions of Congress. But seriously back to the innovation of global access...
This is an innovation the world wasn't quite ready for (as evidenced by all those Nigerian Princes with money sitting in foreign accounts being so successful). The immediate impact of this access is that you no longer have control over who grabs your attention. It is true that individual companies like Facebook and Google can and do censor content and ideas, but by and large chatrooms and vast swafts of hard to monitor media comment arenas bring the most aggressive people as well as those with ill-intent, right into your living room. This wonder of technology is both a miracle and a curse that has drastically changed the behavior and content of human life. Since it is very easy to speak rashly and harder to be constructive, age old restrictions on who speaks to you made it easier to filter them to the mainly constructed. With the filter gone, the consequences can be self-evident.
Of course technology is an avenue for good intentioned people as well and can evolve like all other things to meet this threat. It is no doubt, however, that all of these steps are a part of the big development in human interaction, in that we are losing it. At least in quality. People are designed to address threats and also avoid them. The constant barrage of threats coming at the psyche from this festering pool of word vomitting has side effects. People have less purposeful, real communication, and more disengaged, dishonest, unproductive communication. Like most technological innovations, the problem is people and how they treat it. It just so happens to be easier to tear something down than build it up.
Chatrooms and Comments
Have you ever been to a chatroom or scrolled to the end of a article or youtube video to see the comments left behind? If so then you know that within 3 or 4 posts there is a 99.99% chance that something intentionally offensive or derrogotry will be found. It takes no time at all to find the most sinister and eruptive verbage online. Listening to it all you would think people are terrible, hateful, anger-filled, bigots who want nothing but to eliminate anyone who doesn't think like them. Take these comments for what they say or imply and you get a world ready to kill each other. The only thing is, that's not how people talk in public.
Although it is true that people will say things among friends without thinking, they are tame in comparison to the scope and volume online. You may think your radical friends or hopeless family members are pretty extreme and offensive with their tongue, but allow me to explain how online comments and chatrooms take the most extreme and offensive part of human nature and give it a place of absolute cultural acceptance and free range. Much like a newly painted fence in a duststorm is going to attract every kind of inexplicible nastiness, so is an online chatroom. The reasons why are below.
Anonymity - No Consequences
The first issue that anonymity causes is the ability to not be held accountable for your words. For instance, a comment expressing dangerous views such as, "they should all be rounded up and shot," is quite worrisome and someone saying that in public would earn observation or ostracization from friends or family. But online that is not occuring because someone is hidden behind an unattached online identity. Knowing you can say whatever you want without being held accountable obviously removes a filter from people that they normally operate with. The danger is that people will associate word-vomitting without a filter with imminent action. If all things ever said in any context were translated to immediate action...well, the world becomes a lot more untrustworthy than it actually is, and would quickly become a very dark place heading into the acpocolypse.
The overall consequence is people registering other's as a threat and being exposed to them. There are unfortunate consequences to this ever growing state of untrustworthiness our world is falling into. A lot of society's pillars and positive cultural norms rely on good will or opennesss. The net effect of losing trust in that good will is those things going away as people lose confidence they will be well received. This crushes more positive movement and cultural innovation than you can imagine. If you don't believe me, just wait to see how a negative comment takes the life right out of a group the next time your at a party or a meeting. It's that easy. On the flipside, they can cause unjust responses of overreaction where people respond to things that have never been acted on. Reacting radically to a percieved radical threat causes another radical reaction causing activity to escalate needlessly. Words are powerful, and unfiltered words are about as helpful as unfiltered gas in your engine. Yes they will break the whole thing down. What has kept that in check for forver is social accountability. Without that accountability, there is nothing checking that behavior. In the macro scheme of things there is a lack of trust, understanding, and reciprocated good will. Overreaction in the public sphere is an unintentional result of these symptoms and leads to less honest discourse and more closed off anonymous discourse. One is more productive to society than the other, guess which.
Anonymity - No context
Anonymity causes another issue that I just tapped into. Because people don't understand the true context or situation causing the online verbage, they react poorly. This issue is not having context for things said. It is said that email is a poor communicator because you can't fully relay yourself with written words. In your every day dialogue you are accustom to speaking in you will use verbage that can be interpreted very offensively without context. Example; an old freind sees you in a restaurant. Passing by you on his way out he calls your name exitedly and asks where you have been, reaching out his hand. You resond with a laugh and a smile, "what are you talking about? I've been here this whole time!"
Now take that conversation and make it a text message or email punctuated poorly (like a youtube comment). "John Smith. I haven't seen you in ages, where have you been?"
"What are you talking about? I've been here this whole time!"
It sounds angry doesn't it? At least it certainly can. That's my point. You have no idea what context words are said in online. That's actually the tip of the iceberg. There's a lot more influencers of context you may not understand. What if the person is drunk? What if its a 9 year old kid? What if this person was just hurt severely by someone who matches the description of your subject matter? What if its a person born and raised in a culture where its okay to punish your daughter by throwing acid on her face?
There are so many unkowns that, in all honesty, that comment means literally nothing. At least it should mean nothing. The problem is that people read those comments and react to them in whatever context they envision. A lot of times that is simply whatever they want them to be. Don't agree with conservatives? It's probably a conservative saying the country is full and doesn't need any more immigrants. Don't like socialists? It's probably a socialist stepping on that flag. It's pretty easy to put the face that makes you feel good on something unknown. The only problem is that it hides the truth and you would be surprised how often your assumptions are wrong. My learning that lesson is a primary inspiration leading to me even writing an article such as this.
Trolls
This issue is in part caused by anonymity as well, but its a social phonomenon so old didn't need the modern term "troll" to create it. Trolling is the act of causing disruption, chaos, or harm intentionally; just for the sake of seeing what happens or to harm a targeted person. It can also have a milder definition that pertains to aggravating someone, pranking them, or monitoring them excessively. This behavior is actually a developmental paradigm of human psychology and usually gets worked out with growth, maturity, and understanding. However, things that nuture those developments; such as discipline, accountability, and morality are things not valued by more and more people in modern western civilization. This in combination with the staging ground the internet creates, makes trolling easy and rampant.
Trolling is something that happens in real life. Often it amounts to bullying, shaming, censoring, and posturing. Usually, people can step in and help stop this behavior. Not always of course, but for a lot of ill-mannered individuals, bullying is simply how things get done, to the destruction of others around them. But often bullies are found out and get their cummupins. Online, however, that is not the case. There is no consequence to bullying and trolling other than in the most aggregious cases being banned from a site or person's page. Unfortunatley Trolls account for a significant amount of negative speech online and are fueled by the thought that everyone is taking them seriously. At times in history, poorly spoken words have caused wars. Wielding the sharp sword of the tongue carelessly for your own entertainment has about the same impact as walking into pulic swinging a knife at people to see how they react. Only in public you'd be beaten to a pulp and handcuffed in short order. Not so on the internet, leaving many people (metaphorically speaking) bleeding, hurt, and pining for vengeance. A feeling that may cause a reaction toward others and continue the cycle as bullying does.
Hidden Agenda
Since the advent of time it has been a back-handed political practice to pay an operative to dress up like an ally of your opponent's and be offensive. That hasn't gone away. In fact, its alive and well. Why else would a democrat professor dress up like a neo-nazi and show up at a Tea Party rally? Then recruit and encourage hundreds nationwide to do so? This happens online as well. Shielded by obscurity and anonymity, political operatives, and just regular idealists, have a blank check to assume an online identity and play the part of the opposition. Representing them at best as a staw-man argument, or at worst an evil villain.
This is so regular now its almost impossible to take anyone seriously. People like this tend to find high profile places to make their mark. It's all in the name of painting their perceived opposition as the bad guy that no one can trust. Online forums simply make it easier and give them an audience that could possibly be worldwide. That's a lot of power for someone with no other purpose than to frame someone else with a lie.
Easy Access
For all of human history, up until recently, if you wanted to talk to multiple people or a crowd, you needed one of two things. 1) Enough earned respect to get people to come and pay attention to you, or 2) the permission of others who had such respect to gather a crowd for you. But with the innovation of the internet, that is no longer the case. Literally anyone from anywhere in the world may contact your or grab your attention. Literally, everyone has a voice and part of your ear. Don't believe me? Surf the internet for a brief period of time and see how many pop up ads come at you. Or better yet, check your oldest email account for SPAM. Convinced yet? If not, then I won't even try to convince you Deflategate wasn't due to the direct actions of Congress. But seriously back to the innovation of global access...
This is an innovation the world wasn't quite ready for (as evidenced by all those Nigerian Princes with money sitting in foreign accounts being so successful). The immediate impact of this access is that you no longer have control over who grabs your attention. It is true that individual companies like Facebook and Google can and do censor content and ideas, but by and large chatrooms and vast swafts of hard to monitor media comment arenas bring the most aggressive people as well as those with ill-intent, right into your living room. This wonder of technology is both a miracle and a curse that has drastically changed the behavior and content of human life. Since it is very easy to speak rashly and harder to be constructive, age old restrictions on who speaks to you made it easier to filter them to the mainly constructed. With the filter gone, the consequences can be self-evident.
Of course technology is an avenue for good intentioned people as well and can evolve like all other things to meet this threat. It is no doubt, however, that all of these steps are a part of the big development in human interaction, in that we are losing it. At least in quality. People are designed to address threats and also avoid them. The constant barrage of threats coming at the psyche from this festering pool of word vomitting has side effects. People have less purposeful, real communication, and more disengaged, dishonest, unproductive communication. Like most technological innovations, the problem is people and how they treat it. It just so happens to be easier to tear something down than build it up.
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