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Technology is about to enable telepathy… a few decades maybe: little more than the blink of an eye in terms of human history!
We’ll be able to connect to one another’s experiences, senses, feelings, thoughts and emotions like we connect to a livecam today, and humanity will be entirely redefined in the process.
Everything you believe is false.
Not a conspiracy theory.
Not the revival of some anti systemic website motto from 2005.
This post is more trivially an observation on how we perceive reality in a world that’s been dominated by mass communication for about a century.
The impact of this on how we perceive reality is a much bigger distortion than we’d be willing to admit.
While this can be a great boost for ambition, it’s probably not the best for self-esteem.
An influencer -by definition- is someone who is able to influence others.
Typically the word is used to signify an influence on opinions, however there was a perfectly suitable pre-existing word for this: Opinion Leader.
What is so different between an opinion leader and an influencer, that we chose two use two entirely different names and categories?
Our current communication system is essentially a trolls paradise. I discussed before here and here, how division is nurtured by the algorithms underlying social media and how likeocracy influences more traditional media cornering them into following suit to stay relevant.
When we recognize that the king is naked, we made the first and most important step to find a solution.
What is the social cost of a Like?
I wrote about Social Media before, but this post is about traditional online newspapers and how they are following the same footprints, using new techniques such as click baits and trying to “go viral” in a bid to gain visibility or simply survive.
One meaningful example form the Guardian: Subsidised tenants are excluded from pool and gym in London block .
A bit of background here: in UK, at least 30% of the newly built apartments should by law be under the “social housing” scheme, with lower rent prices subsidised by tax payers.
Whatever is your take on the matter, this article will likely leave you angered at either:
a) the people who wants to use the subsidised pool and gym by bundling it with the social housing scheme and exploiting the system, or
b) the people who are supporting segregation and even a form of social cleansing, as proposed in the article.
This is the divide et impera at work again! Not because someone is conspiring in that direction: our Digital Media are simply tuned to rank something better if it causes a reaction, likes, shares, engagement!
There are in the world some principles that are universally accepted: human rights, not killing innocents, a good portion of the Ginevra convention are just examples.
If you live your life according to such a principle and neither you nor anyone around you ever challenges that principle, you will likely end up thinking that your principle is actually a universal principle, an objectively just principle that must never be challenged.
Social Media creates many basins of like-minded users, by feeding us more of what we like, and therefore shielding us from any line of thought that diverges from our own, effectively creating Multiple Universal Principles.
Feminism is one of the defining concepts of our era, one that is challenging patriarchy, the prevailing paradigm for thousands of years. One that has sprung from the very unique technological, social and economical conditions we lived in for the last few decades. One that seems inevitably going to advance with time until the final goal is reached to grant equal rights and opportunities across genders.
I argued before that our current communication system is dividing and weakening our society. This isn’t about that type of division: it is more subtle and we didn’t even noticed it spreading, beginning to divide the two founding halves of our society and species: two halves that should really come together as one. Continue reading “Gender Divide et Impera”
Divide et Impera is an old latin saying. It was -over a thousand year ago- a very successful war tactic in which the enemies were divided, pushed against each other, weakened as a result, and ultimately more easily conquered.
Zooming in to the last decade or so, internet first and social media later tweaked ever so slightly the concept of human relationships, and in the process they ignited a revolution of our our communication system in such a way that we are now giving a new modern meaning to that old adage.
A quick chat with friends, and a couple of overheard conversations sparkled it all.
The chat was about how no one wants to be dragged into the downward vortex of negativity, we all heard it hundreds of times, I have been actively portraying the idea for like 20 years now, and yet, hearing it back chewed and served as a mainstreamized concept, scared me, for the first time in 20 years.