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I’m slowly, reluctantly coming to the conclusion that technology that can provide absolutely anyone the ability to say absolutely anything in a globally accessible, unmoderated, uncurated communications platform, creates a social problem bigger than we have ever seen before. 1
We could debate forever whether or not it’s the fault of the technology. But it would be a moot argument, because once that genie is out of the bottle, there’s no putting it back in. 2
In the past, crackpot, anti-social ideas got shouted down at the watering hole, and similar hateful notions failed to get ink in the media. But the net gives everyone a voice, and every idea is imbued with equivalent value. 3
In other words, humankind’s historically effective (arguably so) methods of meme control are simply no longer effective in their role of relegating anti-social thought to the dark and beery scuttle. 4
Once you realize how the darkest impulses of the worst people have been turbocharged by the new tech, we are forced to admit that we have a new problem, and it’s not a tech problem, even though it was tech that opened the long-sealed crypt. 5
I have no answers. Sorry. This simply reflects my inner torment as a technologist. I feel responsible and want to fix it, and tech is my medium. But I have come to realize that tech isn’t going to solve this problem. 6
In fact, I believe that tech will only worsen things. The solution has to come from our social organizations. That is our great human strength, the thing that separates us from other things: our ability to work cooperatively. 7
It’s not a coincidence, and it should not be a surprise, that the anti-social forces waxing strong in our world today consistently tell a false story. Their every utterance implicitly and explicitly describes a lie about humanity. 8
That lie says that the human condition is naturally about constant and unrelieved competition. About how life is a bloody struggle for dominance, and the fight is vicious and unconstrained. 9
The reality of the human race, our defining truth, is that humans cooperate. Humans trust each other, and for good reason. We work together to make things that are bigger than our little selves. 10
No other animals come close to creating the social organizations that humans do, on both large and small scale. Our ability to defer gratification, and to share our burdens collectively in the service of a communal vision is the exact opposite of the “competitive-human” meme. 11
Yuval Noah Harari makes in interesting point: Top predators like lions evolved up the ladder of power over millennia. They occupy their niche naturally and are comfortable with it. 12
Contrarily, humans are—evolutionarily speaking—a middling hunter-gatherer with weak claws, teeth, & fur. But our cooperative social powers work faster than evolution, and we have ascended to the role of peak predator in mere moments, and we are not comfortable with our power. 13
While we are lords of the solar system, our lizard brains remain terrified of bears and hyenas and storms and disease and eclipses. So, even when we have objectively conquered those terrors, we are still ruled by our fears, and our fears need an object, so we create "others.” 14
But see, the theme here is that our ability to socially organize and cooperate is our secret human power! It has given us dominance over the world, so it is to this power that we must look for a way to vanquish the monsters loosed by technology. 15
