(Revised 10/16/19)
This forward, written by Neil Postman for his book, “Amusing Ourselves To Death” in 1985, was brought to my attention by Tristan Harris during a podcast interview with Tim Ferris (9/10/19). It looks as if Postman’s analysis was spot on for what we’re seeing with our consumption of technology 35 years later.
“We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn’t, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.
But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s dark vision, there was another – slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies (Instagram?), the orgy porgy (Facebook?), and the centrifugal bumblepuppy (YouTube?). As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions”. In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we desire (love) will ruin us.
This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.”
Comment…
Huxley observed that the tyranny we should be concerned about is that which is born out of our “infinite appetite for distractions.” Big tech and digital entertainment/social media companies offer us an infinite array of intentionally addictive distractions – profiting off of us infinitely distracting one another. Our government enables the commercialization of childhood and the addictive entertainment media viewed by children through lack of sufficient protections for children and their privacy in the digital and real world social commons – by setting the young age of 13 as the age children are ready to be commercially exploited and allowing big tech to allow children to opt out of their parent’s digital oversight; these are woefully insufficient protections.
Our seemingly insatiable appetite for the consumption of the sensational, trivial, and irrelevant, is probably beyond what even Huxley could have imagined. We are distracting, misinforming, and dis-informing each other for many reasons, but commonly for profit, politics, ideology, or ego, but also we and especially children, are motivated by the fear of missing out (FOMO). The unhealthy amplification and frequency of these digital distractions are largely due to intentional psychological manipulation through what is known as persuasive design. Today’s tech industry uses A.I. enabled smart technologies to craft digital habituation for the masses – creating the attention economy, and in the process, enabling consumers to construct their own personal behavior modification chambers (Jaron Lanier) which we carry with us nowadays where ever we go. Do these not generate caustic outcomes for childhood and society? Is this our brave new world?
(italicized terms are also from Tristan Harris)