Brilliant insight Mr Birmingham! I had never considered this juxtaposition. This bit in particular grabbed my attention:
"Authentic storytelling resists moral flattening and, like us, can contain many truths at once. In this sense, story is how we metabolise our contradictions, whereas the feed exists to inflame them."
The information apocalypse currently assaulting us seems to boil down to three things: a bombardment of blatant lies and misinformation aimed at particular causes, usually corporate/billionaire-driven; the ability to parse this misinofrmation from objective reality; and the ability to simultaneously hold contradictory thoughts in our heads. Modern humanity is deeply struggling with all three.
The propagandists and talking heads and bots and internet trolls are endlessly trying to convince us that there can only be one truth at a time - the one most advantageous to whatever benefits them. This is, of course, a nonsensical idea, but increasingly the way many people seem to think.
The world is incredibly complex, so in order to actually understand anything we need to be able to see the spectrum of shades of grey. However, more and more we're fed only discreet black and white. This will not end well.
Beautifully expressed, JB. Were I still teaching a subject called "English" that essay could provide the backdrop to an entire year of reading literature, thinking - and writing. It is a template for understanding social media, "the news" and algorithms - and for having coherence in a society otherwise being pulled apart into silos of anger towards others.
Thanks Jim. I’ve been writing my columns out long hand for the past couple of weeks. That’s really helped me slow down and deepen my thinking about things.
I honestly think the end of humanity won’t be wrought via asteroids, or rising oceans, or vengeful gods, or nuclear weapons, etc. etc. but something along the lines of what you’re outlining.
I can see an endless parade of future generations who have trained their brains from birth to be incapable of narrative comprehension and instead only be satisfied by continual dopamine hits from corporations and bad-faith actors.
Any everyone, robbed of the essential tools to comprehend the world and each other, will just…wither away.
Or it will be totes awesome! At least, that’s what Siri just told me. What a cheeky monkey she is!
Well thanks a bunch for landing a whole pile of thinky on me just as I was about to clock off for the weekend. Why is the model of you artists "I have suffered for my art so now its your turn"? So I'm off to think about this, I GUESS!
Thank you, John. This thinky came at just the right time, and explains and highlights the escalating harm of AI being misused to kill thought, stifle reasoning and deaden imagination. But it is frighteningly true and your thoughts deserve wider dissemination because it is important to understand what is happening. My sharing is only a drop in the ocean. I hope others here can spread this further.
"Conflict is the primary driver of engagement on social media. It is a business model, not a philosophy. Arguably, there is no moral function to the feed. Its function, like a virus, is simply to grow.
Stories, meanwhile, function along an entire moral spectrum, from absolution to condemnation, via a universe of moral nuance. Burns suggests that storytelling allows us to perceive continuity, but even more so, I think it helps us to weave the chaotic present into something resembling a meaningful whole."
And that's why social media always leaves us mentally hungry. It's like junk food for the brain, food with no Ingrediens but saturated fats.
I studied Internet Communication - the Arts, not the technology - and would have wished we had your essay to discuss.
The timing of all this is intersting as AI Barons start to realise AI is shite at making 'Plot Based Media'. ChatGPT can write maybe a 1K fiction quite well, after that it starts to get wobbly. These atomised bits of attention haversting seems more up AI's alley, BUT there still needs to a human there that knows how and what can harvest that attention. Souless drivel getting more soulless.
As part of my PhD (Which is primarily about Steampunk and postcolonialism=cool story!) I've added AI into the mix in the form of 'How/Can AI be useful to a writer, without writing any of the story- how can it help us story writers in useful and ethical ways, what happens when you use a tool of the empire to help you critique the empire?' What I've discovered so far is if you train it yourself (a bit like a puppy really) it can be useful and speed some things up, but the irony is you have to know how to write a story first for it to be of any real assistance.
It's taken me a couple of days to pull away from the immediacy of the social media fix in order to be able to get thinky and read this. It aligns with what I have experienced personally.
Firstly as a high school English teacher, when I've had to explain (more and more since the advent of the quick media fix) that stories enable us to better understand the human condition, and so we might never feel so alone in facing the trials life throws our way.
By the way, the jargon used in schools is "responder", but I quite like the 'eye of the beholder' thing you inferred, reminding that we all view/read with our individual contexts coming into play.
Secondly... well, I've already admitted to it in my first sentence here.
This piece resonates a LOT. As I observe my teenage daughter spending hours and days scrolling through “feed media”, while being absolutely reluctant to behold any plot-based media whatsoever, I daily wonder where I’ve gone wrong. It really is a recent phenomenon (Gen Alpha, not Gen Z). She’s grown up in a house crammed full of books with parents who read daily, who watch films and TV shows which stream into the house without effort. She can watch nearly anything she wants to watch at any time..but it’s the vibes that have her hooked.
Working Mr Pinchy and the Rostovs into the same par? That’s quite the talent Mr Birmingham.
Brilliant insight Mr Birmingham! I had never considered this juxtaposition. This bit in particular grabbed my attention:
"Authentic storytelling resists moral flattening and, like us, can contain many truths at once. In this sense, story is how we metabolise our contradictions, whereas the feed exists to inflame them."
The information apocalypse currently assaulting us seems to boil down to three things: a bombardment of blatant lies and misinformation aimed at particular causes, usually corporate/billionaire-driven; the ability to parse this misinofrmation from objective reality; and the ability to simultaneously hold contradictory thoughts in our heads. Modern humanity is deeply struggling with all three.
The propagandists and talking heads and bots and internet trolls are endlessly trying to convince us that there can only be one truth at a time - the one most advantageous to whatever benefits them. This is, of course, a nonsensical idea, but increasingly the way many people seem to think.
The world is incredibly complex, so in order to actually understand anything we need to be able to see the spectrum of shades of grey. However, more and more we're fed only discreet black and white. This will not end well.
Beautifully expressed, JB. Were I still teaching a subject called "English" that essay could provide the backdrop to an entire year of reading literature, thinking - and writing. It is a template for understanding social media, "the news" and algorithms - and for having coherence in a society otherwise being pulled apart into silos of anger towards others.
Thanks Jim. I’ve been writing my columns out long hand for the past couple of weeks. That’s really helped me slow down and deepen my thinking about things.
God. Devo were right, weren’t they?
I honestly think the end of humanity won’t be wrought via asteroids, or rising oceans, or vengeful gods, or nuclear weapons, etc. etc. but something along the lines of what you’re outlining.
I can see an endless parade of future generations who have trained their brains from birth to be incapable of narrative comprehension and instead only be satisfied by continual dopamine hits from corporations and bad-faith actors.
Any everyone, robbed of the essential tools to comprehend the world and each other, will just…wither away.
Or it will be totes awesome! At least, that’s what Siri just told me. What a cheeky monkey she is!
Well thanks a bunch for landing a whole pile of thinky on me just as I was about to clock off for the weekend. Why is the model of you artists "I have suffered for my art so now its your turn"? So I'm off to think about this, I GUESS!
What are these things of which you speak? The "clocking off" and the "weekend"? We know nothing of such things, much less the thinking.
Thank you, John. This thinky came at just the right time, and explains and highlights the escalating harm of AI being misused to kill thought, stifle reasoning and deaden imagination. But it is frighteningly true and your thoughts deserve wider dissemination because it is important to understand what is happening. My sharing is only a drop in the ocean. I hope others here can spread this further.
Thank you, Roxie.
"Conflict is the primary driver of engagement on social media. It is a business model, not a philosophy. Arguably, there is no moral function to the feed. Its function, like a virus, is simply to grow.
Stories, meanwhile, function along an entire moral spectrum, from absolution to condemnation, via a universe of moral nuance. Burns suggests that storytelling allows us to perceive continuity, but even more so, I think it helps us to weave the chaotic present into something resembling a meaningful whole."
And that's why social media always leaves us mentally hungry. It's like junk food for the brain, food with no Ingrediens but saturated fats.
I studied Internet Communication - the Arts, not the technology - and would have wished we had your essay to discuss.
I'm getting nostalgically thinky now. Thanks, John.
No sploshions? No sweary rants? You’re making me *think* on a Friday afternoon? This, sir, shall not stand!
Imma need to think about this.
'Plot based media'...Jesus on bicycle!
The timing of all this is intersting as AI Barons start to realise AI is shite at making 'Plot Based Media'. ChatGPT can write maybe a 1K fiction quite well, after that it starts to get wobbly. These atomised bits of attention haversting seems more up AI's alley, BUT there still needs to a human there that knows how and what can harvest that attention. Souless drivel getting more soulless.
As part of my PhD (Which is primarily about Steampunk and postcolonialism=cool story!) I've added AI into the mix in the form of 'How/Can AI be useful to a writer, without writing any of the story- how can it help us story writers in useful and ethical ways, what happens when you use a tool of the empire to help you critique the empire?' What I've discovered so far is if you train it yourself (a bit like a puppy really) it can be useful and speed some things up, but the irony is you have to know how to write a story first for it to be of any real assistance.
Oh I can write whole essays about this! It can be super useful, just not in the way people imagined at first.
It's taken me a couple of days to pull away from the immediacy of the social media fix in order to be able to get thinky and read this. It aligns with what I have experienced personally.
Firstly as a high school English teacher, when I've had to explain (more and more since the advent of the quick media fix) that stories enable us to better understand the human condition, and so we might never feel so alone in facing the trials life throws our way.
By the way, the jargon used in schools is "responder", but I quite like the 'eye of the beholder' thing you inferred, reminding that we all view/read with our individual contexts coming into play.
Secondly... well, I've already admitted to it in my first sentence here.
This piece resonates a LOT. As I observe my teenage daughter spending hours and days scrolling through “feed media”, while being absolutely reluctant to behold any plot-based media whatsoever, I daily wonder where I’ve gone wrong. It really is a recent phenomenon (Gen Alpha, not Gen Z). She’s grown up in a house crammed full of books with parents who read daily, who watch films and TV shows which stream into the house without effort. She can watch nearly anything she wants to watch at any time..but it’s the vibes that have her hooked.
Sounds bloody awful! Glad to see you're a fellow Bulwark follower 👍