On a day in which #nostr seems to be trending and getting (very deservedly) more attention, I think it’s worth thinking about some of the ways in which traditional social media has rapidly diminished our capacity for citizenship.

The very deliberately addictive design of big social media is and has been a nuclear assault on the collective attention span of the populace. Combine this with all the other millions of available distractions on the devices we all walk around with and you basically have a ubiquitous ocean of noise, of pings and dopamine hits, of quick answers and short form content . We live in inside this.

And in here it’s very hard, and very time-consuming, to constantly parse what is real or not, what’s signal and what’s not, what’s manipulated and what’s not, what has a factual basis and what does not. Bad policies and malevolent actors thrive in this environment. Nuanced policies struggle to find air, to find space on the blanketed jungle floor to grow.

It’s gets hard to pursue things that require sustained attention span, which is most things worth doing.

It’s hard to be perform the basic responsibilities/diligence of citizenship well in an environment like this. And by responsibilities of citizenship I mean being informed, seeing through BS, developing thoughtful views, standing on your values, distinguishing sincerity from charlatanism, between propaganda and information, etc.

Which probably plays some role in the diminishing quality of our political candidates. A clouded citizenry doesn’t deliberate and decide - it lurches violently and unpredictably.

I fear this will only get worse with AI and augmented realities.