Directory of Lost Causes

I sometimes wonder if I'm completely deranged. In fact, it's seldom that I cease to wonder if.

I'm going to speak fairly simply and plainly, just because I'm tired, as usual, and that makes it easier for me.

I was interested to read this article, recently, about the psychologist Dr. Sigman saying that social networking sites are bad for you, because they actually reduce your ability to socialise, and lack of social activity is bad for your health etc. I sent it to a friend in a spirit of "I told you so", not to him in particular, but just to the world in general, and he wrote back saying Dr. Sigman's views were a load of tosh, and that he had no evidence to back them up. Perhaps if Dr. Sigman is specifically targeting social networking sites like Facebook, then he doesn't have much of a case. I'm really actually beginning to think, however, that the Internet has altered the structure of my brain - as some drugs are said to - in an unpleasant manner. I realise that I now find it much harder to concentrate on things than I used to. The Internet is like a new channel in my brain, permanently open, and endlessly distracting. I'm not going to talk at length here, but I do find my relationship with the Internet to be at least partly unhealthy.



I think that one reason people reject such ideas out of hand is that anything new enough, technologically speaking, has now become beyond criticism. Technology is cool, in the same way that Nike trainers once were, or perhaps still are, for all I know. To argue against something that is cool, is simply to make yourself uncool, and therefore you cannot win.

I do not see technology as it now exists as at all benevolent, but closer to the opposite of that. I see it as voracious and domineering. Kurzweil's technological singularity does not excite me as it seems to excite everyone around me. It sickens me with horror that so many should so willingly, droolingly and idiotically scramble to sell their souls, for the sake of being cool, or whatever their generational equivalent is.

I reviewed the new Morrissey album a couple of days back, and I was thinking about the question of whether or not - as some have said - the lyrics are crap. In particular, there are the lyrics from Something Is Squeezing My Skull: "There is no hope in modern life", and "No true friends in modern life". Such lines seem very trite and generalised. And yet, I can't help thinking that, they're just, basically, true. There is no hope in a society that only looks forward to technological singularity. No hope. And no, there are no true friends, only 'friended' Facebook 'friends'.

This was brought home to me (I suppose I mean clarified or something) by a recent Morrissey interview. Morrissey gets so much bad press that even a long-time fan like myself, by mere osmosis, or subliminally or something, begins to take some of it on board. However, every time I see him interviewed (rather than just read it in print), my impression has always been very favourable - the impression of someone thoughtful and frank, not trying to impress. Here's what Morrissey says in the interview, in connection with the song Something Is Squeezing My Skull:

As time speeds up, nothing changes. People become more lonely. And the more they surround themselves by electronic gadgets, they become more isolated and lonely. And I think there'll be a reaction against that.

I hope that there will be a reaction against it. I feel that there must be. I feel that the time is well past at which we must realise that there is more to progress than technology, and that technological progress has actually become malignant, like an ingrowing toenail.

I'm perhaps not the best spokesperson for these kinds of idea, because I tend to express myself negatively rather than positively. Some kind of technology, I think, must continue, but I think it must be a radically different technology than that which currently exists, with a radically different philosophy underpinning it than the current philosophy of Kurzweilian megolamania.

I think that I would like - I have no idea how successful I will be - to devote my creative energy from now on to imagining alternative technologies. I'm not a techy at all, and it's probably too late for me to become one, so I don't think I can help here practically. But I hope that if I can project a different future than that advocated by Raymond 'Cyberman' Kurzweil that it might at least imaginatively open up other possibilities to people.

Technology will not save us. That does not mean we can scrap the idea of technology - though, if we could, that would be fine. Perhaps we just need to save technology from the materialists.