If the past few years have felt like bad headlines after bad headlines, that’s essentially what they were. has occurred, and bad news has been pouring in lately.
I won’t be one of those people, but I have some gloomy news to share. This time it’s about the end of humanity due to technology. When will humans go extinct? It’s not certain, but it’s “under consideration,” according to Jaron Lanier, who coined the term “virtual reality.”
what’s the fuss? Many of Lanier’s warnings relate to his Twitter issue mentioned above.
“People survive by passing information to each other,” Lanier said. interview with Guardian“We are putting the basic nature of humanity through a process with intrinsic motivations of corruption and depravity. whether or not.”
But Lanier isn’t just concerned about the dramatic changes happening on Twitter. He cited “psychological operatives” associated with Russian leader Vladimir Putin and the Chinese Communist government promoting and filtering information based on the agenda. Fundamentally, technology and the web have become rigged and exploited systems, creating dangerous chaos.
“There are all kinds of middlemen,” Ranier said. Guardian“They may be the people who own the platforms, more recently Elon Musk, or third parties who are good at smuggling influence. Some are hidden, some are competent, some are not, and some are random, like an algorithm that someone made but didn’t understand.”
So what does all this talk about technology have to do with extinction?
“I still think it’s being considered extinct as a result,” Lanier said. “Not necessarily, but it’s a fundamental drama. If we can work together to solve the climate crisis, that’s a fundamental sign that we’re not completely dysfunctional.”
Have we coordinated a real response to the climate crisis? That is debatable. What is indisputable is that social media has become a polarized space. Lanier also Opinion article of new york times, wrote that it had noticed “changes in the public behavior of those who frequently use Twitter and other social media.” Lanier named Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and Ye (former Kanye), calling them “surly little boys” and hypothesizing that they were “poisoned by Twitter.”
All this news sounds very serious. What can be done to save mankind?
“The most serious question here is can we be sane enough to communicate and coordinate in order to survive?” Ranier asks.
Time will tell.
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