Old Ideas, New Visions

By Benny Donalds

            Yes, I am posting online my objections to being online.  I haven’t any choice. Everyone who needs to read these words is online. One of the most chilling lines in my favorite Will Smith movie, I, Robot, is when the CEO suggests the hero might be one of those people who would shut down the Internet to save the libraries; I especially appreciated how he spoke with the disdain of those who think technological progress is justified by its inevitability. Well, Mr. CEO, I would shut down the Internet to save the libraries, and maybe if you read more books you would have realized you were living in an updated Frankenstein.

            I’m not a knee jerk Luddite. I thought the Internet was great at first. Yes, spending too much time online arguing politics sucked some joy out of life, but I had friends and a job I liked, so not a big deal. But then came the trolls, the bullying, the corporate gaslighting, and a new generation of conspiracy theorists who don’t even go to the trouble of finding evidence for their theories. Then came Amazon bulldozing its way through our marketplaces, wiping out physical stores like a 21st Century Walmart, and massive social media systems prioritizing our worst natures.

            The Internet is especially bad for kids and teens. Playing a pick-up game outside is better for social development than playing video games. Having a small group of friends in real life provides more emotional support than a hundred times as many friends online. They will gain access to videos they have no business watching. They will constantly be told by implication that other people have better lives than they do so theirs aren’t good enough. 

            I find fiction magazines one of the less objectionable uses of the Internet. Since the Internet is just a bunch of ones and zeroes that, for all you know, is nonsense, why not publish short fiction and poetry there? No one makes their living that way anyway, except perhaps the brilliant Ted Chiang who already had a movie adaptation (Arrival). I can only hope if you read a book review, that you go and read the book. Studies keep showing you will retain more information reading a book than reading online. The nature of the Internet encourages distraction and speed. Our editors encourage me to keep my objections under a thousand words because they worry about the short attention spans of Internet addicts, or maybe my shrill rejection of the world we are creating is better taken in smaller doses.

            Picking books at random in the library would be a better guide to wisdom than computer algorithms leading you down rabbit holes of increasingly bad faith articles and videos. Home schooling standards have become so lax, thanks to the influence of corporations profiting off it, that if I had kids in this red state where I live, I would just teach them to read and give them a library card. 

            Spending too much time online leads to increasing rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide. Who wouldn’t be more depressed as the Internet pushes images of those prettier, wealthier, and more successful than we are?  So many people putting their best foot forward and hiding the mud on the other one, while we are prone to doing the reverse to ourselves.  Who wouldn’t be anxious reading article after article about how much the world sucks? Sometimes I think people on the political right are more prone to believe in bizarre conspiracies because if they believed the real conspiracies of corporations corrupting every branch of government they could only fight back by voting for progressive candidates. It’s only going to get worse, as deep fakes become more convincing with each technological generation.

            Looking online for knowledge is worse than your own subjective experience. Your subjectivity has your real world experiences as a foundation, while the Web captures you in everyone else’s subjectivity, which wouldn’t be so bad if not for all the dishonest pundits.  Online news distracts you from local knowledge. You probably know more about the corruption of government officials in Washington D.C. than you know about your local city council. Can you name the mayor where you live? This is why my “local” DMV where we take our drivers’ tests is a half hour outside of town; a relative of the board making the decision owned the lot.            

Go for a walk, the most natural form of exercise in the world. Breath the air in a park.  Meet actual people and get to know them in their life instead of the uncontextualized words they type. Play RPG around a table with the flexibility and spontaneity of imagination and good humor. Save the Internet for posting funny memes and pictures of your kids, a little break on the side. The best defense against assimilation is simply logging off.