In the early days of the Web, as we were all discovering how easy it suddenly was to rediscover each other, many of us became fascinated by the few degrees of separation that connected us one to another.
Like many others, I reconnected with friends from college who I had not been in touch with for decades. As we compared notes, it turned out that on occasion we’d actually been within a few blocks of each other at times but never knew that at the time.
Social media brought all of this connecting to a new level. Now we could not only connect with everyone we’d ever known, we could expand our social networks many times over.
My students at Stanford made sure I got on Facebook very early. When Twitter and LinkedIn came along, I was covering the tech industry for BNET and almost without effort I builtd large numbers of connections there as well.
All of this was fine in most ways, though I never became a regular user of any of the social networks, personally or professionally.
Then came Covid.
Suddenly we were forced into physical isolation from each other and social media became almost our only option for staying in touch. Zoom calls emerged, mostly for business usage, but I was part of at least three reunions with large circles of friends during the pandemic, including former colleagues from Rolling Stone.
Now things are settling back to pre-pandemic normal and people are socializing again, but it’s my view that the disruption of the past few years has damaged us in many ways, especially social.
We were all informed that we had to be cautious around one another in ways we’d previously not been aware of. We became a society of agoraphobics, which is to say, pathologically anti-social beings.
To this day, the extremes still are apparent among us. You know, the kind of person when walking their dog will cross to the other side of the street rather than pass too closely to you on the sidewalk.
People who when they greet you won’t shake hands, let alone hug you.
All of this depresses me greatly. People need each other, and being so afraid of other people is itself a disease that destroys society just like war.
It’s called disconnection.
LINKS:
US debt ceiling bill passes House with broad bipartisan support (Reuters)
Manchin could get a gas pipeline out of the debt ceiling deal, and environmental advocates are livid (CNN)
Chris Christie to announce GOP presidential campaign next week (Axios)
Mom Who Got Amanda Gorman’s Poetry Restricted Has Ties To Proud Boys, Antisemitism (Yahoo)
Drones attack Russian oil refineries; Medvedev says British officials aiding Ukraine can be military targets (CNBC)
Putin’s war in Ukraine has now reached his doorstep – what does that mean for Russia? (Independent)
Drone attacks on Moscow and Kyiv escalate tensions in warring capitals (WP)
Qatar prime minister, Taliban chief hold secret Afghan talks (Reuters)
EU accused of ‘staggering neglect’ after just 271 Afghans resettled across bloc (Guardian)
Fueled by AI, Nvidia joins the $1 trillion club (CNN)
AI 'godfather' Yoshua Bengio feels 'lost' over life's work (BBC)
China warns of artificial intelligence risks, calls for beefed-up national security measures (NBC)
Roll– Make Professional Videos in Minutes using AI (NewsShooter)
Sunak and Biden to discuss AI after ‘extinction risk’ warning (Politico)
I Asked AI Chatbots to Help Me Shop. They All Failed (Wired)
China Is Flirting With AI Catastrophe (FA)
A Week With the Wild Children of the A.I. Boom (NYT)
What’s new in robots? An AI-powered humanoid machine that writes poems (AP)
Twitter Is Now Worth Just 33% of Elon Musk’s Purchase Price, Fidelity Says (Bloomberg)
We Asked Workers Why They’re Not Coming Back to the Office (WSJ)
Chesa Boudin is taking a new job at UC Berkeley (SFC)
Semi-Retirees Know the Key to Work-Life Balance — More and more older adults are working—in large part because they want to. (Atlantic)
NASA’s UFO Research Team Briefs the Public (WSJ)
Earth is ‘really quite sick now’ and in danger zone in nearly all ecological ways, study says (AP)
Energized Chris Christie Ready For Next Chapter Of Humiliation (The Onion)
No comments:
Post a Comment