Laughing at our Losses

As Prof. Michael Saler observes in a recent book review, Silicon Valley is the seedbed of a 21st-century ideology that's more readily mocked than negated. In To Save Everything, Click Here, Evgeny Morozov, dubbed by Saler today's H.L.Mencken, punctures the cyber-sect's banal platitudes in the most hard-hitting and sardonic critique published to date.

Laughter is often the last freedom of the vanquished, but considering the stakes at hand, it is no time for defeatism for defenders of a more human and humane culture. As a college basketball coach might urge his players, read and react!

Marking Facebook's Face

Websites reflect the values that inform them. “Everything in it is reduced to the size of its founder,” Zadie Smith wrote of Facebook. “Poking, because that's what shy boys do to girls they're scare to talk to. Preoccupied with personal trivia, because Mark Zuckerberg thinks the exchange of personal trivia is what friendship is.” Adrien Chen brings us up to date. Everything wrong Facebook, from its cavalier treatment of privacy to its narrow view of Facebook friendship stems from the fact that it models human relations on Zuckerberg's “social graph,” a model of human relationships based on computer logic, he writes. Deo gratias, we aren't mere machines.  

Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall

The narcissistic queen's mirror of vanities hung on her castle wall. Many today indulge their fantasies via online walls. According to researchers at Berlin's Humboldt University and Darmstadt's Technical University, viewing photos of Facebook “friends” oft evokes envy, misery, and loneliness. The scientists, who studied users logging on the ubiquitous social network, found that one in three felt worse after visiting the site. “The most common cause of Facebook frustration came from users comparing themselves socially to their peers,” Time reports. As so often, the Bard puts it best, “comparisons are odorous.” Why Facebook Makes You Feel Bad About Yourself

Search . . . for the Motive

In a day in which “Google” has assumed the status of a verb, the increasing role of search engines is readily apparent. Less well known is the significance of the ongoing shift from keyword to semantic search. Yet, as physicist and computer scientist W. Daniel Hillis points out, with semantic search results are determined not by data but by the proprietor's Weltanshauung. Thus, search engines have moved from indicators of what is important to arbiters of truth. “From now on, search engines will have an editorial point of view, and search results will reflect that viewpoint,” he concludes. “We can no longer ignore the assumptions behind the results.” Nor Hillis' analysis. The Opinions of Search Engines

What We Read Shapes Who We Are

Since broadband began its rapid expanse at the millennium's start, Internet use has skyrocketed. In 2012, users topped 2.4 billion, more than one in three of Earth's inhabitants. Time spent online averaged 16 hours a week globally (double that in high-use countries). “We have changed how we interact,” the New York Times confirms. “Are we also changing what we are?” The question was posed to three knowledgeable observers. Their responses raise others. Are We Becoming Cyborgs?

Tempus Non Fugit

Time waits for no man, they say, but will man wait for time? “If we assume that networks will continue to get faster,” cyber analyst Nicholas Carr writes in response to Edge's 2013 inquiry, “we can also conclude that we'll become more and more impatient, more and more intolerant of even microseconds of delay.” Accordingly, Carr continues “we'll be less likely to experience anything that requires us to wait, that doesn't provide us with instant gratification.” In short, grown men shall act as peevish toddlers throwing temper tantrums when their appetites are not sated immediately.  The Patience Deficit

Word Inflation Drives Devaluation

“If we have a million photos, we tend to value each one less than if we only had ten,” Yale University computer scientist David Galertner opens his reply to Edge's 2013 question: What should we be worried about? “The Internet forces a general devaluation of the written word: a global deflation in the average word's value,” he continues. As each word attracts less time and money from readers, it garners less time and effort from writers. As investment by writers and readers declines, society's ability to communicate decays, delivering what Galertner aptly describes as a “body blow to science, scholarship, the arts—to nearly everything, in fact, that is distinctively human.”  Worry About Internet Drivel