Quickies: Too “Informed” Too Fast

     It’s still rather early, I didn’t get much sleep, and I’m coping with a fair amount of pain, but duty calls with an iron voice...and an observation that deserves wider reflection:

     People should know better by now, yet they seem to fall for the hype every time—including many conservatives. The promise of the tech age and the ubiquity of smartphones and the internet was that it would arm people with relevant information and rational courses of action. Rather, it has done the opposite—magnifying doubts and fears about everything and everyone.

     In most cases, the only thing that information technology has done is cause people to become less tethered to reality. Screens now replace people’s senses, and the algorithms embedded in social media do people’s thinking for them.

     The author, Auguste Meyrat, is talking about public reactions to the Wuhan virus and developments in its propagation and remediation. While the virus itself is a problem of note, the problem Meyrat cites above is also significant.

     Yes: our senses, and information propagated by pre-Internet / pre-smartphone means, can mislead. However, the new informational realm, with its continuous “news cycle” and utter ubiquity, can do that plus instigate surges and panics. That danger was less before the current era simply because the pre-digital mechanisms were less prompt and (dare I say it) less efficient.

     While we are capable of turning it off, few choose to do so for very long.

     There’s already been a lot of talk about the effect of the smartphone on the cohesion of the microscopic societies of our families. My opinions are on record. The larger question of whether today’s hyper-intensified communications media are destabilizing macroscopic society is harder to address.

     I’m certainly not going to advocate being less informed. But leavening our communications gestalt with plenty of direct interaction with others seems imperative. The stubbornly persistent characteristics of “real life” are a sovereign antidote for fast-moving rumors, wild theories, and ominous speculations that can knock our thinking caps askew.

     Just now, owing to “social distancing” – which really must end soon if we’re going to have an economy and a society worth having after all this is over – it’s hard to get even a dollop of the “real life” I’ve prescribed. Indeed, our “real lives” are what the “social distancing” regimen is intended to thwart...and in that lies a seed that could easily blossom into a conspiracy theory of breadth, depth, and power. Once again, it’s time to call the Buddha macro:

     Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it – no matter if I have said it! – except it agree with your own reason and your own common sense. – Siddhartha Gautama, a.k.a. the Buddha