Hi patm,
Thanks for your replies. The technological paradigm I’m talking about is the broad attitude that emerged over the last 200 years that every problem has a technical solution. In the context of CHT, and as a professional web developer for 25 years, I’m trying to define those features of my users’ humanity that my designs can impact positively or negatively. Just talking vaguely about preventing attention erosion or avoiding hijacking user minds doesn’t seem to be much to go by, so I was hoping we could look at issues such as those raised by Dan Rubin about how actual human relationships can built online and what technologies could enhance that process or if they must remain superficial and that’s OK because that’s all the technology is capable of given the profit objectives of the social media companies.
I’m basically agreeing with the critique made by Sacasas in his New Atlantic article referenced above: The Tech Backlash We Really Need. The argument he is making is that, while interesting and praiseworthy in terms of its stated goals, the CHT initiative doesn’t really address the root issues, “It speaks of ‘our humanity’ and ‘how we want to live,’ but it is not altogether clear that it offers a meaningful answer to the questions of what constitutes humanity, of how we want to live, of what we means” (Sacasas)The assumption is that we have a basic understanding of these without having to spell it out in detail. I started this section to see if these questions could be addressed.
As to changing the system from within, we could start by identifying the actual assumptions behind the project, one of which is that the technology behind social media is basically “good”, meaning not inherently anti-human, but it is often being used wrongly. What I’m trying to do is draw a line between human and anti-human based on my understanding of the human good. But there is a problem with defining “human” in meaningful terms, “Liberal democracy professes a fundamental neutrality regarding competing visions of the good life, offering instead to protect basic human rights while creating the context for individuals to flourish with maximal freedom. In the space created by this professed neutrality, modern technology has flourished, unchecked by a robust and thick understanding of human flourishing.”
That “robust and thick understanding” seems lacking in the tech community so I’m asking what is the criteria that we can define so that we can make real progress toward a more human experience or if the inherent momentum of technology makes it anti-human in certain fundamental ways that can only be compensated by temporarily moving away from it and enjoying other things such as the sky, the ocean and a few close friends. As you say, we are part of the operating system so our minds can only function within a tight set of restrictions when working with the technology. What are these restrictions doing to our humanity? And is it worthwhile exploring that?
By the way, I’m a big fan of Brene Brown and I loved her TED talk. That’s my idea of humanity.