Replying to Avatar Tim Bouma

Marshall McLuhan rightly observed that the invention of the phonetic alphabet (and by extension written literature) enabled the individual to escape the collective tribal experience to read and internalize experiences on their own. This gave rise to the sense of individual self upon which Western civilization is built.

Intended or not, this sense of individual self is under full scale attack, especially by digital platforms, which if we don’t preserve our sense of self, we’ll lose what has been built over the last 2500 years.

If you don’t agree, that’s ok; at least I know where you stand.
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Ross 7mo ago

Dunno man. You could argue that we’ve spent 2500 years cultivating the individual, and what McLuhan was observing with mass media was just the beginning of technology being used to accelerate this.

Digital platforms use hyper-personalization to cater specifically to each psyche, resulting in 8 billion lonely world views. It might be cohesion which is at risk, not the individual.

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Ross 7mo ago

Also, while I think this is the trajectory we are on from a cosmic scale - I maintain an optimistic view on the outcome. At some point all of the deep individual introspection hits a threshold and we pop out the other side.

Progress in systems with artificial consciousness could assist in this process by helping people understand the detrimental effects of living entirely in our own minds.