0:01

Hey everyone, it's Tristan and

0:03

welcome to your undivided attention. The

0:06

great late media theorist

0:08

Neil Postman liked to quote

0:10

Aldis Huxley, who once said that

0:12

people will come to adore the

0:14

technologies that undo their capacity to

0:17

think. He was mostly talking

0:19

about television. This was before

0:21

the internet or personal computers ended

0:24

up in our homes or rewider

0:26

to societies. But Postman could have

0:28

just as easily been talking about

0:31

smartphones, social media, and AI. And

0:33

for all the ways television has

0:35

transformed us in our politics, our

0:37

eating habits, our critical thinking skills,

0:40

it's nothing compared to the way

0:42

that today's technologies are restructuring what

0:44

human relationships are, what communication is,

0:47

or how people know what they know.

0:49

As Postman pointed out many times, it's

0:51

hard to understand how the technology

0:53

and media we use is changing

0:55

us when we're in the thick

0:57

of it. And so now as

0:59

the coming wave of AI is

1:01

about to flood us with new

1:03

technologies and new media forms, it's

1:05

never been more important to have

1:07

critical tools to ask of technology's

1:09

influence on our society. And Postman

1:11

had seven core questions that we

1:13

can and should ask of any

1:15

new technology. And I'll let him

1:17

tell you in his own words.

1:19

What is the problem to

1:22

which a technology claims to

1:24

be the solution? Whose problem

1:26

is it? What new problems

1:29

will be created because of

1:31

solving an old one? Which

1:34

people and institutions will be

1:36

most harmed? What changes in

1:38

language are being promoted? What

1:41

shifts in economic and political

1:43

power are likely to result?

1:45

And finally, what alternative media

1:48

might be made from a technology?

1:50

Now, I think about these questions often, and

1:52

it may not surprise you to hear that

1:54

today's episode is one I've been wanting to

1:57

do for quite a long time, since Neil

1:59

Postman has... far been one of the

2:01

most influential thinkers for my own views

2:03

about technology. His ideas have been so

2:05

clear-eyed, prescient, starting in the 1980s, about

2:07

the role of technology in shaping society

2:09

that I wanted to dedicate a full

2:11

hour to exploring them. So today we

2:13

invited two guests who thought deeply about

2:16

Neil's work. Sean Illing is a former

2:18

professor who now hosts the Gray Area

2:20

podcast, Ed Box, and has often written

2:22

and discussed Postman's relevance to our current

2:24

cultural crisis. We also have Lance Strait,

2:26

a professor of communication at Fordham University.

2:28

He was actually a student of Postmans

2:30

at NYU and spent his career developing

2:32

the field of media ecology that Postman

2:34

helped create. Sean Lance, thanks for coming

2:37

on your invited attention. Glad to be

2:39

here. Thank you. So I'm just curious,

2:41

you know, for me, Neil Postman has

2:43

been such a profound influence on our

2:45

work. So in 2013, when I was

2:47

kind of having my own awakening at

2:49

Google, that there was just something wrong

2:51

in the tech industry, there was something

2:53

wrong about the way we were going

2:55

to rewire the global flows of attention

2:57

and something wrong with the the scrolling,

3:00

doom scrolling culture that I saw in

3:02

the Google bus. And I, you know,

3:04

used to be someone who really deeply

3:06

believed just in this kind of, Tech

3:08

is only good. We can only do

3:10

good with it. It's the most powerful

3:12

way to make positive change in the

3:14

world. And it was this friend of

3:16

mine, Jonathan Harris, who is an artist

3:18

in Brooklyn, who first introduced me to

3:21

Neil Postman's work and his books technopoly

3:23

and amusing ourselves to death. And I

3:25

just could not believe just how prescient

3:27

and just precise he was in his

3:29

analysis. And I have been wanting to

3:31

bring Neil Postman's, you know, just really

3:33

critical insights to our audience who include

3:35

a lot of technologists for such a

3:37

long time. So I'm just very grateful

3:39

to have both of you on and

3:41

hope we can have like a really

3:44

rich conversation. So just to sort of

3:46

open with that. That's great. I think

3:48

I got Postman pill back in. 2016

3:50

or 2017 and it's it I mean

3:52

I came up as a political scientist

3:54

political theorist that was medication and we

3:56

didn't really encounter any of this stuff

3:58

right But once I

4:00

sort of internalized

4:02

the media ecological way of seeing

4:04

things, it really kind of

4:06

changed how I understood all the

4:09

politics. It's pretty profound. What

4:11

was your entree into Postman's work and

4:13

what you see as kind of his

4:15

critical insights? In 2016,

4:17

I was invited by a former

4:19

classmate of mine to give a

4:21

talk at Idaho State. This

4:24

is sort of right in the beginning of

4:26

the Trump era and all the chaos involved with

4:28

that. And I gave my little talk and

4:30

then I went for a hike with my buddy

4:32

who's a media theorist, and we got to

4:34

talking. And at

4:36

the end of that, he sort of

4:38

introduced me to Postman and media ecology.

4:40

And that was sort of the germ

4:43

of the book that we ended up

4:45

writing together, The Paradox of Democracy, which

4:47

came out in 2022. But

4:49

before that, I'd never

4:52

really encountered media ecology at

4:54

Neil Postman. And for me, the

4:58

value of these great media

5:00

ecologists is that they really

5:02

force us to stop looking at

5:04

media as just a tool

5:06

of human culture. And instead,

5:09

to see it as much more

5:11

as a driver of human culture. And

5:13

this changed the way I looked at

5:15

the political world. I mean, what

5:17

you discover when you look at the

5:19

history of democracy and media is

5:21

that all of these revolutions in media

5:23

technology, the printing press, the telegraph,

5:25

radio, film, TV, the internet, it's not

5:27

so much that these technologies are

5:30

bad. It's that they unleash

5:32

new rhetorical forms and new

5:34

habits and new ways of thinking

5:36

and relating to the world

5:38

and each other. And that's very

5:40

disruptive to society and the

5:42

established order. And we're sort of living

5:44

through that. I could go on, but I'll pause

5:47

and let Lance speak. Lance,

5:49

how about you? How did you first

5:51

get into this work and starting

5:54

with your being a student at Postman's?

5:57

Well, I mean, I could go

5:59

back to the... 70s as an undergraduate

6:01

in a class on educational

6:03

psychology. Postman's first big book,

6:05

Teaching as a Subversive Activity,

6:07

was on the reading list.

6:09

And that was when he

6:11

was still following McLuhan with

6:13

the argument that we need

6:16

to adjust ourselves to the

6:18

new media environment. Just a

6:20

note for the audience, Marshall

6:22

McLuhan is another very influential

6:24

media ecology thinker from Canada.

6:26

who famously coined the idea

6:28

that the medium is the

6:30

message. And you'll hear his

6:32

name throughout this conversation. But

6:35

I first read him. in

6:37

I guess in 79 with

6:39

teaching as a conserving activity

6:41

which was also when I

6:44

first met him and That's

6:46

where he did his about

6:48

face Although maintaining the media

6:50

ecology outlook, but arguing that

6:52

we needed to counter the

6:55

biases of television because we're

6:57

inundated with it and When

6:59

Postman introduced the idea of

7:01

media ecology, he gave it a

7:04

very simple definition that it's the

7:06

study of media as environments. And

7:08

once we understand that, then it's

7:11

no longer just a tool that

7:13

we choose to use or not

7:16

use and we have complete control

7:18

over, but rather it's like the

7:20

environment that surrounds us and influences

7:23

us and changes us. And when

7:25

we look at democratic society and

7:28

democratic politics, That was shaped, modern

7:30

democracy was shaped by

7:32

a typographic media environment

7:34

and that television is

7:36

reversing so many of

7:39

those characteristics and is

7:41

really a question about

7:43

what will survive that

7:45

of the various institutions

7:47

that grew up within

7:49

the media environment formed

7:52

by print culture. So

7:54

there's just already so much to dig into

7:56

here. So let's set the table a little

7:58

bit for listeners. Let's start by. by talking

8:00

about Neil Postman's book, Amusing Ourselves

8:03

to Death, which is really a

8:05

critique of television and how the

8:07

medium of television and taking over

8:09

society and transitioning us from Lance,

8:12

what you're just talking about of

8:14

a typographic culture to a television

8:16

culture, would completely shift and transform

8:18

public discourse, you know, participation, democracy,

8:21

education. Does one of you want

8:23

to take a stab at kind

8:25

of the Cliff Notes version of

8:27

Postman's argument before we dive into

8:30

specifics? Well, I mean, it really

8:32

is the shift from typographic era

8:34

to the television era and that

8:36

that has undone a lot of

8:39

key elements of American culture. You

8:41

know, as you may know, I

8:43

did a book that followed up

8:46

on Amusing Ourselves to Death, and

8:48

I don't think Postman quite... made

8:50

it overt in amusing ourselves to

8:52

death, but he has four case

8:55

studies, you know, and they're the

8:57

news politics religion and education and

8:59

how each one has been transformed

9:01

in a negative way from by

9:04

television and what I tried to

9:06

explain is that what postman hit

9:08

upon there are the four legs

9:10

that the table of American culture

9:13

stands on politics democratic elections obviously

9:15

journalism as the First Amendment and

9:17

the way that makes possible democratic

9:19

participation, absolutely, often overlooked, but religion

9:22

forms the kind of moral and

9:24

ethical basis that our republic was

9:26

founded upon, and then education as

9:29

the promise that people will be

9:31

literate, which like the bottom line

9:33

of education is reading, writing, and

9:35

arithmetic, that people will be literate

9:38

enough. be able to govern themselves

9:40

to get access to information and

9:42

and think rationally and make good

9:44

decisions. So do you want to

9:47

add to that? there's so much

9:49

here. I mean, when people talk

9:51

about, you know, typographic culture versus

9:53

televised culture, let's just zoom into

9:56

what do we really mean? Because

9:58

so much of Postman and Marshall

10:00

McLuhan is essentially a kind of

10:03

holding up a magnifying glass to

10:05

the invisible. When we say it

10:07

structures, you know, the way that

10:09

we think, like what do we

10:12

actually mean by that? What's the

10:14

phenomenology of reading text on a

10:16

page that's so different from watching

10:18

this podcast in a video right

10:21

now? Well for me, I mean,

10:23

the point in all of this

10:25

is to get us to really

10:27

see how every medium of communication

10:30

is acting on us by imposing

10:32

its own biases and logics, and

10:34

they are different. You know, Postman

10:36

talks about, you know, you have

10:39

the printed word, what is it

10:41

to read a book? What is

10:43

the exercise of reading? It's deliberative,

10:45

it's linear, it's rational, it's demanding.

10:48

What is TV? It's visual,

10:50

it's... It's entertaining. It's all

10:53

about imagery and action and

10:55

movement. What is social media?

10:57

It's reactionary. It's immediate.

10:59

It's algorithmic. It kind

11:02

of supercharges the

11:04

discontinuity of TV and

11:07

monetizes attention and new and

11:09

powerful ways, right? Once you have this

11:11

media ecology framework, you look at the

11:13

eras of politics that coincide with these

11:15

communication technologies. You can see it in

11:18

the language of politics. You can see

11:20

it in the kinds of people that

11:22

win elections, how they win those elections,

11:24

how they appeal to people. You can

11:26

see it in the movements and the

11:28

dominant forces at the time. Like I was

11:31

saying, it still blows my mind that

11:33

I made it through a graduate education

11:35

and political theory, and we never managed...

11:37

to read any media ecology because it really

11:39

is, especially in a free and open society

11:41

where people can speak and think and persuade

11:43

one another. It's a kind of master variable

11:45

that's not often seen as that, but it

11:48

should be. So let's dive into that just for

11:50

a second. So you know, people think, okay,

11:52

we live in a democracy, you have

11:54

candidates, those candidates debate ideas, they have

11:56

their platforms, they talk about themselves, and

11:58

then voters are sitting there. and they

12:00

kind of taken all those arguments and

12:02

they make a rational choice. And that's

12:04

just democracy. And democracy is democracy. It

12:07

doesn't change over the last 200 years.

12:09

So let's just explain, Sean, what you

12:11

were just saying, maybe Lance, you want

12:13

to do this. In what way does

12:15

media define the winners and losers of

12:18

our political world? I mean, Postman gives

12:20

so many examples, but. Well, I think

12:22

we have to start with the fact that,

12:24

you know, democracy was founded on the

12:26

idea that. people have enough access

12:28

to information to make decisions,

12:31

you know, but it also

12:33

presupposes that people will talk

12:35

to one another and be

12:37

able to speak in a

12:39

rational way. I mean, Postman's

12:41

kind of... wonderful illustration is

12:43

of how people went to

12:45

listen to the Lincoln Douglas

12:47

debates for hours upon end.

12:49

And it can imagine there

12:52

was a carnival-like atmosphere, but

12:54

still that people were willing

12:56

to sit and listen for

12:58

whatever, six hours of debating

13:00

going on, whereas today everything

13:02

is reduced to these sound

13:05

bites, you know, these 10-second

13:07

sound bites. And, you know,

13:09

posting points to two key

13:11

technologies. in the 19th century

13:14

that start the ball rolling

13:16

away from typography and ultimately.

13:18

come together with television. One is

13:20

the telegraph, because just by speeding

13:23

things up, we have no time

13:25

to think and reflect, and that

13:27

really is harmful. So just the

13:29

speed at which we're moving, right,

13:31

which we see today, where we've,

13:33

you know, in this moment, we

13:36

feel overwhelmed, and there's like a

13:38

new story every few hours, some

13:40

new thing happening, and we don't

13:42

know what to do. And the

13:44

other thing is the image, the

13:46

photography, the photography. of the 19th

13:49

century becomes the dominant

13:51

mode of communication. So

13:53

between the two, it's

13:55

all about appearance and

13:58

personality that's communicated. over

14:00

the televised image and this

14:02

rapid turnover that favors celebrity

14:05

and fame over substance. Yeah,

14:07

can I just say something real

14:09

quick? The telegraph is such

14:11

a good example of a

14:13

practical example of McLuhan's, you

14:16

know, the medium is the

14:18

message, you know, that how

14:20

the medium itself, the technology

14:23

itself, doesn't just influence content.

14:25

It really dictates what it actually

14:27

means. And I was going back

14:29

and I was reading Thoreau actually

14:31

when I was researching my book.

14:33

And you know Thoreau was talking

14:35

about the telegraph as a kind of

14:37

proto social media that it was

14:40

that it was actually he's arguing

14:42

that it's actually changing what constituted

14:44

information that with a telegraph it

14:47

became a commodity to be sold

14:49

and bought right we get the the

14:51

birth of the penny presses and tabloid

14:53

journalism in. For him, that was sort

14:55

of the end of the idea

14:58

that information was something that was

15:00

definitionally important or actionable. It just

15:02

became another source of entertainment.

15:04

It became a consumer product. So

15:06

much of our work in this podcast

15:09

and at CHT, obviously it's like this

15:11

question of why does any of this

15:13

matter? Like why are we here talking

15:16

about this? And it's because technology and

15:18

media are having a bigger and bigger

15:20

influence on constituting our culture. People always

15:23

say, you know, If culture is upstream

15:25

from politics, then now technology is constituting

15:27

the culture that is upstream from politics.

15:29

I was just at Davos in Switzerland,

15:32

and I would say the most popular

15:34

question being asked, and it was like

15:36

right on inauguration day January 20th, and

15:39

basically the dinners I was at, people

15:41

said, what do you think will matter

15:43

more in the next few years? The

15:45

choices of political leaders or the choices

15:47

of technology? leaders and companies, and especially

15:49

when you tune into AI. And so

15:52

I just want to ground this for

15:54

listeners of like, why are we even

15:56

talking about this? It's because technology is

15:58

going to structure what human relationship is

16:00

what communication is how people know what

16:03

they know the habits of mind so

16:05

I just want to just make sure

16:07

we're returning to kind of set the

16:10

stakes of why this is so important

16:12

because so often I think the thing

16:14

that's it's problematic for me about postman

16:17

is it just feels so abstract McLuhan

16:19

the medium is the message it doesn't

16:21

hit you about how significant that idea

16:24

is so I just want to return

16:26

lands to the thing you were saying

16:28

about the Douglas Lincoln debates in the

16:31

1800 people don't know we kind of

16:33

res passed it They debated for three

16:35

hours each, I believe it was one

16:38

guy took three hours, then the next

16:40

guy took three hours, then there was

16:42

like an hour rebuttal. Can you imagine

16:44

seven hours of political debates that are

16:47

long-formed speeches in front of live audiences?

16:49

And just what a different notion of

16:51

the word democratic debate. So here we

16:54

are, we're using this phrase democratic debate,

16:56

but the meaning of it has completely

16:58

shifted. of what constitutes those two words

17:01

in the year 2025 than the year

17:03

1862. And so let's just dive into

17:05

I think another aspect of why this

17:08

matters, which is the power that media

17:10

confers in the way it sets up

17:12

what kinds of people win or Liz

17:15

Sean, you look like you're trying to

17:17

jump in. What's interesting is that for

17:19

postmen, the TV air was all about

17:22

entertainment, right? Like everything that unfolded on

17:24

or through that medium. had to be

17:26

entertaining because that's what the laws of

17:28

TV demand. But this era, where TV

17:31

is still around, it still matters, but

17:33

not nearly as much, there's much more

17:35

of a convergence with other mediums, like

17:38

the internet and social media, which are

17:40

now more dominant, really, culturally, and politically.

17:42

And on these mediums, it's not about

17:45

entertainment so much as attention. The attention

17:47

economy is master now, right? In the

17:49

TV era, politicians really had to be

17:52

attractive and likable. They had to play

17:54

well on TV. Now they just have

17:56

to know how to capture and hold

17:59

attention, which means leaning into spectacle and

18:01

problem. and performative outrage or virtue as

18:03

the case may be, they dictate a

18:06

different kind of political skill set

18:08

to win. One of the reasons

18:10

why both postman and McLuhan are

18:12

so prescient, at least that people

18:14

think of them that way, you

18:17

know, that they're, what they were

18:19

talking about largely television and yet

18:21

it seems to apply so well

18:24

to today. And for some, for

18:26

many people, it seems to better

18:28

fit today, is that their analysis

18:31

was based not on, not just

18:33

on the specific medium of television,

18:35

but on the idea of electronic

18:38

media generally. But I think

18:40

entertainment was Postman's way of

18:42

getting at the larger point,

18:44

which is that it's trivial,

18:47

it's not serious, and what

18:49

catches our attention, it's a

18:51

larger set of dynamics, and

18:54

entertainment was just kind of

18:56

way of pinpointing, but it

18:58

really is that non-serious trivialization.

19:01

It's a different kind of

19:03

entertainment. So I just want to name a

19:05

pushback that I got when I remember

19:07

speaking to these arguments in the tech

19:09

industry when I was at Google in

19:12

2013 Which is people some people might

19:14

say well, why is that a problem

19:16

if people like to amuse themselves people

19:18

like amusement? Don't we all need some

19:20

amusement in the world? What would you

19:22

say to that or what would postman's

19:24

argument be against that? Well postman wasn't

19:27

against amusement. You know, he said

19:29

television is great. The best thing

19:31

about TV is junk. He loved

19:34

TV, especially sports. You know, we

19:36

actually bonded together as Mets fans,

19:39

although his real love was the

19:41

Brooklyn Dodgers, but you know, in

19:43

their absence, it was the Mets.

19:46

He also, you know, loved basketball.

19:48

and all of that. I mean

19:50

sports is one of the great

19:53

things that television can provide. It's

19:55

awful for politics. It's awful for

19:57

religion. I mean it really... has

20:00

degraded religious participation and presentation by

20:02

putting it on television and also

20:04

through social media and all of

20:07

the other advances that we've seen.

20:09

And it's bad for education. So

20:11

I would go back to what

20:14

you were saying earlier about distraction,

20:16

which is a really important word.

20:18

I think that's more. closely pegged

20:20

to the role of technology here,

20:23

fragmenting our attention, pulling us around

20:25

like greyhounds chasing around a slab

20:27

of meat. I mean, I was

20:30

talking to Chris Hayes the other

20:32

day, who was on my show

20:34

and he has a new book

20:36

out about attention and the fragmentation

20:39

of attention and really sort of

20:41

the death of mass culture in

20:43

any meaningful sense, right? And I

20:46

was asking him, well, I mean,

20:48

isn't democracy on some level... a

20:50

kind of mass culture and if

20:52

we can't pay attention together, if

20:55

we can't focus on anything together,

20:57

then what the hell does that

20:59

make of our democratic politics, right?

21:02

I mean, that's what concerns me,

21:04

right? I mean, I remember, you

21:06

know, reading McLuhan, who, you know,

21:09

would talk about... media and time

21:11

and he was so obsessed with

21:13

electric media because it flattened time

21:15

and it made everything instantaneous and

21:18

And he would argue that this

21:20

sort of scrambled society's relationship to

21:22

time and you know like radio

21:25

and TV and now the internet

21:27

create this landscape where everything unfolds

21:29

in real time, but you know

21:31

in a print dominated culture where

21:34

you're consuming weekly or monthly magazines

21:36

or quarterly journals or books, that

21:38

facilitates a kind of deliberation and

21:41

reflection that you don't get when

21:43

everything is so immediate and frenzied

21:45

and in a democracy where the

21:47

horizon of time is always the

21:50

next, the hell of the next

21:52

election, it's the next new cycle.

21:54

That kind of discourse makes it

21:57

very hard to step back and

21:59

think. beyond the moment. It makes

22:01

it very difficult to solve collective

22:03

action problems. And all the

22:06

most important problems are collective

22:08

action problems. Totally. Yeah, I

22:10

think to sort of my interpretation of

22:12

what you're both saying is that

22:15

there isn't a problem with people

22:17

having amusement in their lives or

22:19

having entertainment. It's about whether the

22:21

media systemically structures the form of

22:23

all information in terms of its

22:26

amusing capability or its entertainment capability.

22:28

and that that systemic effect makes

22:30

us confused about whether we're actually

22:32

consuming information or getting educated versus

22:35

we're really just being entertained. And

22:37

he says, you know, the basic

22:39

quote, the television is transforming our

22:41

culture into one vast arena for

22:44

show business. And that was for

22:46

the television era. When I think

22:48

about social media era and I

22:50

think about Twitter or X, I

22:52

think, you know, social media is

22:54

transforming our culture into one vast.

22:56

Vadiator Stadium arena for basically drama

22:58

and throwing insults and, you know,

23:00

salacious tweets back and forth. Another

23:03

sort of key concept that

23:05

Postman is critical of is the

23:07

information action ratio. And I remember

23:09

this actually in the tech industry

23:11

that so many people, and I

23:13

used to really believe, How many

23:15

problems really had to do with

23:18

people just not having access to

23:20

the appropriate information, which is all

23:22

about information access? I mean, I

23:24

had a tiny startup called Apshire

23:26

that was a talent acquired by Google that

23:28

was all about giving people contextual access to

23:30

more information. I remember it. Do you remember

23:33

that? Okay. Yeah, yeah, it was good. Yeah,

23:35

well, thank you. I mean, it was motivated

23:37

by, I think the good faith version of

23:39

this, which is that if people don't. have

23:42

imagined you know right when you're encountering something

23:44

that you have no in basic you have

23:46

no reason to be interested in the perfect

23:48

most engaging professor guide lecturer you know

23:51

museum curator showed up and held your

23:53

hand and suddenly just told you why

23:55

this thing that you're looking at is

23:57

the most fascinating thing in the world

23:59

and that's what this little appure thing

24:01

was. It was basically providing instant

24:03

contextual, rich information that was supposed

24:05

to entrance you and deepen your

24:07

curiosity and understanding about everything. And

24:09

it was driven by my belief,

24:11

which is very common in the

24:13

tech industry, that it's all about

24:15

driving so much more information. And

24:17

if we only just gave people

24:19

more information, then that would suddenly

24:21

make us respond to climate change

24:23

or respond to poverty or do

24:25

something. And so I'd love for

24:27

you to articulate what was Postman's

24:29

kind of critique. of information glut

24:31

and the information action ratio he

24:33

speaks of. Well, you know, I

24:35

mean, what he would say is

24:37

that in the 19th century not

24:40

having enough information was a problem,

24:42

but we solved it. We solved

24:44

it long ago, and that's the,

24:46

and that. creates new problems because

24:48

we just keep going and going

24:50

and going and going. I mean,

24:52

I would say, you know, think

24:54

about how most of human history

24:56

not having enough food was a

24:58

problem, and today we are wrestling

25:00

with issues of obesity because we

25:02

solved that problem a long time

25:04

ago. We've got plenty of food,

25:06

but we just keep going and

25:08

going and going and going. So

25:10

I mean, this was actually one

25:12

of McLoon's points is that you

25:14

pushed things far enough and you

25:16

get the reverse. You get it

25:18

flipping into it into it. opposite.

25:20

So information scarcity by solving it

25:22

we create a new problem of

25:24

information glut and that leads us

25:26

you know as you said since

25:28

most of that we're powerless to

25:30

do anything about it leaves us

25:32

with irrelevant information leaving us feeling

25:34

impotent powerless which again I think

25:36

a lot of people are feeling

25:39

particularly right now. Yeah I always

25:41

found with those types. There's a

25:43

tendency to conflate information in truth

25:45

as though they're the same and

25:47

they are not the same I

25:49

don't know how anybody can look

25:51

at the world right now and

25:53

say that this Superabundance of information

25:55

has been a boon for truth

25:57

and to the point that Lance

25:59

is just making It's this combination

26:01

of being constantly bombarded

26:03

with information. Most of

26:05

it true, a lot of it bullshit, a

26:07

lot of it terrible, being bombarded

26:10

with that and also the

26:12

simultaneous experience of complete impotence

26:14

in the face of that.

26:16

We've also engineered an environment

26:19

that elevates the lies,

26:21

it elevates the falsehoods, it

26:23

elevates the distractions, it elevates

26:25

the things that stimulate our

26:28

more base primal impulses.

26:30

And that in the

26:32

contest between diversions, amusements,

26:34

provocations and dispassionate truth, I

26:37

think we all know who's going

26:39

to win that fight 99 times

26:41

out of 100. And I would

26:43

really think it's really important

26:45

to distinguish between information and

26:48

knowledge and knowledge is something

26:50

that we largely got from

26:52

books. And information is something

26:55

that we are inundated through

26:57

the electronic media. And it

26:59

doesn't really have to be

27:02

true or false. And that's

27:04

why in a way the

27:06

distinction, well, valuable in some

27:09

context, but the distinction between

27:11

misinformation, disinformation, and just information,

27:13

is not that important. because it's,

27:15

you know, when we have information

27:17

glut, anything goes. You can't tell

27:19

what's what because it's not relating

27:21

to anything out there. Things are

27:23

critical point that you're making because

27:26

even, let's say, we solved the

27:28

misinformation, disinformation problem, boom, it's gone,

27:30

it's all gone from all the

27:32

airways. You're still just bombarded by

27:34

information glut and information that doesn't

27:36

give you agency over the world

27:38

that... that you're seeing, the company's profit from

27:40

mistaking and reorienting or restructuring what agency means

27:42

in terms of posting more content on social

27:45

media. So I see the social cause that's

27:47

driving me to emotion and then I hit

27:49

reshare and think that I've like done my

27:51

social action for the day. I think Malcolm

27:54

Gladwell wrote about this like 10 years ago,

27:56

so that the kind of failures of text

27:58

solutionism I'm going to reshale. share this

28:00

content, what I'm really doing is

28:02

actually driving up more things for

28:04

people to look at and keep

28:07

getting addicted on social media. So

28:09

I'm perpetuating the money printing machine

28:11

that is the social media company.

28:13

I want to actually get us

28:15

to AI because so much of

28:17

this conversation was really motivated for

28:19

me about how do we become

28:22

a more technology critical? culture, which

28:24

I think is what Postman was

28:26

all about. It's like, what does

28:28

it look like to have a

28:30

culture that can adopt technology in

28:32

conscious ways aware of the ways

28:34

it might restructure? community, habits of

28:37

mind, habits of thought, education, childhood

28:39

development, and then consciously choose and

28:41

steer or reshape that technology impact

28:43

dynamically such that you get the

28:45

results you would want by adopting

28:47

that technology. And in doing that,

28:49

I think I want to turn

28:52

at this point in the conversation

28:54

to his other book, Technopoly, which

28:56

he wrote several years later, which

28:58

the subtitle is The Surrender of

29:00

Culture to Technology. And I think

29:02

this is actually the heart of

29:04

what I'm... I mean, I think

29:06

that amusing ourselves to death is

29:09

a very accessible thing for most

29:11

people in the race to the

29:13

bottom of the brainstem and social

29:15

media as an extension of TV.

29:17

I think technopoly really gets to

29:19

the heart of what does it

29:21

mean to have a society consciously

29:24

adopt technology in ways that it

29:26

leads to the results that it

29:28

wants? And what does that relationship

29:30

look like? So how would we

29:32

set the table of the argument

29:34

that Postman is making in technopoly,

29:36

either of you? His idea of

29:39

technology is really like a more

29:41

accessible expression of Heidegger's critique of

29:43

technology. Technologies are things we use

29:45

in the world to get things

29:47

done or improve our experience in

29:49

the world. And then gradually as

29:51

we move into the modern world,

29:54

technology becomes almost a way of

29:56

being. As Postman says, we became

29:58

compelled by the impulse to invent.

30:00

It's innovation for the sake of

30:02

innovation. It is a blind mania

30:04

for progress. disconnected from any fixed

30:06

purpose or goal and that's sort

30:09

of what Postman is calling technology

30:11

where our whole relationship to the

30:13

world is defined by and through

30:15

technology. Technology is this autonomous self-determinative

30:17

force that's both undirected and independent

30:19

of human action and we're almost

30:21

a tool of it rather than

30:24

the other way around. Here's Postman

30:26

in his own words. Well in the

30:28

culture we live in... Technological

30:30

innovation does not need to be

30:33

justified, does not need to be

30:35

explained. It is an end in itself

30:37

because most of us believe

30:39

that technological innovation and human

30:42

progress are exactly the same

30:44

thing, which of course is

30:46

not so. Postman was talking

30:48

about the personal computer as

30:51

a quintessential technology of technology.

30:53

I mean, my God, what

30:55

would he make of... AI, which by

30:57

any measure, is and will be

31:00

far more immersive and totalizing than

31:02

personal computers. I just want

31:04

to briefly add the quote that

31:06

Postman cites from Thoreau, since we

31:08

mentioned it multiple times. that our

31:10

inventions are but an improved means

31:12

to an unimproved end. I think

31:15

this really speaks to what you're

31:17

speaking about, Sean, which is Postman's

31:19

critique that we deify technology. We

31:21

say that efficiency and productivity and

31:23

all the new capabilities, whatever they

31:25

are, the technology brings, are the

31:27

same thing as progress, that technology

31:29

progress is human progress. And it's

31:31

never been more important to interrogate

31:33

the degree to which that's true

31:36

and not true. And this is not

31:38

an anti-technology conversation, but it's about... How

31:40

do we get critical about it? Lance,

31:43

you were going to jump into that?

31:45

Well, first I'd say that Postman

31:47

would say that Heidegger was a

31:49

Nazi and should not be mentioned

31:51

anymore, but that the big influences

31:53

on Technopoly were Lewis Mumford, who

31:55

was one of the great intellectuals

31:57

of the 20th century and a

31:59

key. mediocre scholar and then Jacques

32:01

Alouel. And it definitely is this

32:03

argument that particularly in America, it's

32:05

not about the stuff, it's not

32:07

about the gadgets, it's about a

32:10

whole way of looking at the

32:12

world and that efficiency becomes the

32:14

only value that we make any

32:16

decisions on. You know, which means

32:18

that it's almost impossible to say

32:20

no when somebody goes, here's a

32:22

more efficient way to do this.

32:24

You can do it faster, do

32:26

more with it, and we almost

32:28

never say no. And you must

32:30

have seen this new thing about

32:32

mirror genes or whatever, the, you

32:34

know, mirror bacteria. Yeah, whether they

32:36

can create organisms with mirror image,

32:38

DNA, which are... bodies would have

32:41

our immune systems would have absolutely

32:43

no defense over. And so we

32:45

shouldn't do it. Well, somebody's going

32:47

to do it. I mean, you

32:49

know that somebody is going to

32:51

do it because once we have

32:53

that capability, nobody puts a stop

32:55

to it. You know, Postman did

32:57

know about AI because that's been

32:59

around, you know, for much longer

33:01

than people, you know, than this

33:03

sudden emphasis on it. And Joseph

33:05

Weisenbaum, who was somebody that Postman

33:07

knew, I was one of these

33:10

sort of pioneers in artificial intelligence.

33:12

He did the Eliza program and

33:14

and in his book, Computer Power

33:16

and Human Reason, you know, he

33:18

introduces the word ought that we've

33:20

forgotten to use, OU, G,T, you

33:22

know, ought we do this? Not

33:24

can we do this, but ought

33:26

we do it, and that that

33:28

is just vanished from our vocabulary.

33:30

And, you know, he argues that

33:32

we need to reintroduce it. You

33:34

know, I always think of that

33:36

hilarious John Stewart joke, you know,

33:39

that the... the last words a

33:41

human being will ever utter will

33:43

be you know some dude in

33:45

a lab coat who says it

33:47

I would ask you a question.

33:49

I would ask you a question.

33:51

I mean, you were part of

33:53

this world in a way. I

33:55

am not. You talk to these

33:57

people. The people who are building

33:59

AI, who want to build AGI

34:01

and whatever else, I mean, they

34:03

are acutely aware of how potentially

34:05

destabilizing it can be. Why did

34:07

they persist in that? Is it

34:10

just a simple, well, if we

34:12

don't do it, China is going

34:14

to do it? It's actually related

34:16

to what Lance is speaking about,

34:18

that if we don't have a

34:20

collective ability to choose which technology

34:22

roads we want to go down

34:24

and which ones we don't, and

34:26

if we just say it's inevitable,

34:28

someone's going to do it and

34:30

better we, the good guys, who

34:32

we think we have better values

34:34

than the other guys, better off

34:36

that we do it first, we

34:39

actually even know what the dangers

34:41

are and can try to defend

34:43

against the bad guys. And I

34:45

think that the thing that, you

34:47

know, you were just speaking about

34:49

with the mirror bacteria, is a

34:51

perfect example because the reason that

34:53

Postman's questions here about how do

34:55

we consciously make decisions about what

34:57

technologies we should do and not

34:59

want to do rather than just

35:01

because we can we do it

35:03

is because AI is about to

35:05

exponentially the introduction of new capabilities

35:08

into society. So it's just it's

35:10

going to be a Cambrian explosion

35:12

of brand new text and media

35:14

and generative everything that you can

35:16

make. You can make law, you

35:18

can make new religions, you can

35:20

make. as we say language is

35:22

the operating system of humanity, from

35:24

code to law to language to

35:26

democracy to conversation, and now a

35:28

generative AI can synthesize and decode

35:30

and hack the language either of

35:32

conversation in the form of misinformation,

35:34

hack code in the form of

35:37

hacking cyber infrastructure, hack law in

35:39

the fact of overwhelming our legal

35:41

systems or finding loopholes in law.

35:43

And so as we're unleashing all

35:45

these new capabilities, it is more

35:47

important than ever that we get

35:49

an ability to consciously choose, do

35:51

we want to do mirror bacteria?

35:53

But then the challenge is, as

35:55

technology democratizes the ability for more

35:57

people to do more things everywhere

35:59

beyond. on global boundaries. Our problems

36:01

are international, but our governance is not

36:04

international. We have national governance responding to

36:06

global interconnected issues. And then we can

36:08

see the political henwoods are not really

36:10

trending in the direction of global governance,

36:12

which is looked upon as a kind

36:14

of a conspiracy of people who are

36:16

out of touch of the national interests

36:18

of the people, which is a very

36:20

valid critique. So yes, Sean, I'm sort

36:23

of wanting to play with you here

36:25

on what's your relationship to this question

36:27

that you're laying out? I don't know. I

36:29

mean, I'm just constantly thinking

36:31

of what are the tradeoffs going to

36:34

be. I mean, you just think about

36:36

the explosion of the internet and

36:38

the tradeoffs involved there. One

36:41

consequence of that, there are

36:43

a lot of incredible benefits. I

36:45

love the interwebs. I use them

36:47

every day. But one of the

36:49

consequences of that is the complete

36:52

destruction of gatekeepers, of any

36:54

kind of boundaries at all

36:56

on the information environment. We lost

36:58

the capacity society lost the

37:01

capacity to dictate the stories

37:03

society was telling about itself

37:05

and You know digital just

37:07

exploded all that you know

37:09

the internet is like this

37:11

choose your own adventure playground

37:13

and it Unsettles and undermines

37:15

trust and a lot of people

37:18

might say well good these institutions

37:20

the elites were corrupt and untrustworthy

37:22

to begin with okay fine But

37:24

we tend to under-appreciate how much what

37:26

we take to be true is really

37:29

just a function of authority. Most of

37:31

us haven't observed an electron or a

37:33

melting glacier. We take it to be

37:35

true because we believe in the experts

37:38

who tell us these things are real.

37:40

And we believe the video clips on

37:42

the evening news of glaciers melting. But

37:44

if that trust is gone and the

37:46

info space is this hopelessly

37:49

fragmented thing riddled with

37:51

deep fakes and misinformation

37:53

reality. isn't possible anymore,

37:55

then where does that leave us? I

37:57

will say I think there's actually a

37:59

way. to get to a good

38:01

world is just we have to

38:03

distinguish between the internet being a

38:05

problem versus the engagement-based business models

38:07

that profited from drama derivatives, you

38:09

know, the amusement culture, the tweetification

38:11

culture, and personalized information bubbles which

38:13

are incentivized. So it's important to

38:15

recognize the reason we have personalized,

38:17

it's not just that you can

38:19

choose your adventure, it's also true,

38:21

but the mass like reinforcement of

38:23

personal information bubbles is actually incentivized

38:26

by the business models because... it's

38:28

better to keep you coming back

38:30

if I give you more of

38:32

the thing that got you interested

38:34

last time. And so we can

38:36

we can split apart the the

38:38

toxic thing of the engagement based

38:40

business models from the internet. And

38:42

then I think you could say

38:44

is there a different design of

38:46

internet protocols and design of these.

38:48

Metcalfe monopolies, meaning network effect-based social

38:50

media places where there's only a

38:52

handful of them, could they be

38:54

designed in a different way that

38:56

actually do reward the kinds of

38:58

mediums that actually enrich and bring

39:00

out the better angels of human

39:02

nature? And that's still the optimist

39:04

in me that believes that it's

39:06

possible to do that. Lance, I

39:08

see you sort of nodding and

39:11

also maybe skeptically nodding your head

39:13

here, so feel free to jump

39:15

in. Well, I mean, I think

39:17

Postman would question. whether more technologies,

39:19

the answer, and every new innovation

39:21

solves some problems, but creates many

39:23

more, which we then solve by

39:25

more technologies, and it just keeps

39:27

expanding and expanding and expanding that

39:29

way. You know, when I teach

39:31

my students media ecology, I try

39:33

to emphasize, let's think about what

39:35

are the appropriate uses for this

39:37

particular medium, and then what's inappropriate?

39:39

And, you know, if we can

39:41

start with that, the internet... or

39:43

various aspects of it were great

39:45

for certain things. I never empowered

39:47

people who were, you know, kind

39:49

of in minorities and brought together

39:51

people who were having difficulties in

39:53

a lot of ways. I can

39:55

speak just in terms of my

39:58

own family with having raised an

40:00

autistic. child that, you know, parents

40:02

of autistic children will largely unable

40:04

to like go to a self-help

40:06

group in person because your hands

40:08

are full and being able to

40:10

communicate over a discussion list or

40:12

group online was, you know, very

40:14

valuable. So, you know, this is

40:16

where we face this problem of

40:18

trying to evaluate the costs and

40:20

benefits. There is a vision of

40:22

a world that would work. And

40:24

I agree with you, Lance, that

40:26

it actually, it takes asking what

40:28

are the appropriate uses of a

40:30

technology and the actively inappropriate uses

40:32

and then consciously designing our social

40:34

structures, our social norms, our culture,

40:36

like not designing, but like, you

40:38

know. practicing cultural values that allow

40:40

us to say what how do

40:42

we reward those appropriate uses and

40:45

anti-reward the inappropriate uses. Now I

40:47

want to just move a little

40:49

bit from admiring the problem because

40:51

there's a tendency to kind of

40:53

re-hash all these things and I

40:55

think Postman is unique in offering

40:57

I don't know if I'd call

40:59

it solutions, but a form of

41:01

taking an active and agentic stand

41:03

on technology. And he has this

41:05

famous lecture series where he outlined

41:07

seven questions that we can ask

41:09

of any new technology. And he

41:11

said that these questions are a

41:13

kind of permanent armament with which

41:15

citizens can protect themselves from being

41:17

overwhelmed by technology. You know, the

41:19

first is what is the problem

41:21

to which this technology is the

41:23

solution? What is the actual human

41:25

or social problem? for which that

41:27

technology is the solution. It's a

41:30

very basic question, but it's a

41:32

very powerful one. So anyway, we

41:34

can go into some of the

41:36

others, but I'm just curious if

41:38

either of you have a reaction

41:40

to this or as we move

41:42

into a more of a solutions

41:44

oriented posture. You know, Sean, what's

41:46

your sense of this? I think

41:48

it's a great question. I just

41:50

go back to what we were

41:52

saying a minute ago. How do

41:54

we answer it? What is a

41:56

mechanism for having that conversation for

41:58

having that conversation? of giving us

42:00

more of what we want. It

42:02

cannot tell us what's worth wanting

42:04

in the first place. And the

42:06

problem is I don't know how as

42:08

a society we have that conversation

42:11

together about what's worth wanting and

42:13

then have a conversation about how

42:15

to go about getting it. I

42:17

just don't know. And the problem with

42:19

some of these new technologies like AI

42:22

is it's not even clear what they're

42:24

going to do. So it's very hard

42:26

to talk about. the trade-offs that might

42:28

be involved. But I don't know, it's

42:31

not a very good answer because I

42:33

don't have one, I guess. Well, and it's

42:35

interesting because I think that, so

42:37

one of the things that actually

42:39

excites me about AI is the

42:41

ability to use it to more

42:44

quickly augment. society's ability to see

42:46

the downsides and externalities and play

42:48

out simulations of various new technologies.

42:50

Because one of the things that

42:52

we have to get incredibly good

42:54

at is actually foreseeing the negative

42:56

unintended consequences before they happen. So,

42:58

you know, imagine inventing plastics, but

43:00

actually knowing about forever chemicals and then taking

43:03

a left turns, we don't go down the

43:05

road of creating more, you know, pollution than

43:07

we have the capacity to clean up. And

43:09

the same thing with social media, and

43:11

that's one of Postman's other questions, is

43:13

whose problem is it? So if it's

43:16

the problem of not being able to

43:18

generate content at scale, whose problem

43:20

was that? This is the basic second

43:22

question. The third question is what new

43:25

problems will be created by solving this

43:27

problem with this technology? So in the

43:29

case of generative media, we will create

43:32

a new problem of people who have

43:34

no idea what's true because now anybody

43:36

can create anything and flood the... information

43:38

airwaves and then he asks which people

43:41

and institutions will be most harmed

43:43

by the adoption of this technology.

43:45

So for example gatekeepers or the

43:47

idea of trustworthy or having you know

43:49

any kind of authority or expertise is

43:51

suddenly going to be eliminated by the

43:53

fact that there's a flood of information

43:55

kind of a denial of service attack

43:57

on democracy through all this stuff that's

43:59

And then he has this really

44:02

important subtle question that he asks,

44:04

what changes in language are being

44:06

promoted by this technology? And I'm

44:08

curious, Lance, if you have some

44:10

examples that Neil has given on

44:13

that one, because I think it's

44:15

such a crucial one that's very

44:17

subtle. Well, sure. And I think

44:19

it's actually a very important one.

44:22

And you're right that it does

44:24

sort of take a left turn

44:26

from the other questions. But what's

44:28

often missed. when folks just look

44:30

at like amusing ourselves to death

44:33

and and technopoly is that postman's

44:35

grounding was in the study of

44:37

language and he was he started

44:39

out in English education and and

44:41

he was also very much associated

44:44

with general semantics which in in

44:46

a large part is about our

44:48

use of language and trying to

44:50

understand our misuse and how that

44:53

changes our thinking. I mean I

44:55

think for me a great example

44:57

is community. And when you think

44:59

about the use of the word

45:01

community in a real community. people

45:04

are together and they don't all

45:06

share the same interests and viewpoints,

45:08

which is what we mean when

45:10

we talk about online community, virtual

45:12

community, and that's where you get

45:15

that siloing effect. You know, in

45:17

a real community, people have to

45:19

negotiate with people who are very

45:21

different from themselves and find a

45:23

way to live together. And you

45:26

can't just like pick up and

45:28

leave, you know, where you live,

45:30

whereas on the internet, you can

45:32

just, you know, click a button

45:35

and you've left that community. and

45:37

you find one that's more to

45:39

your liking. So that meaning of

45:41

the word community has changed drastically

45:43

by that usage. And that is

45:46

also, you know, you could also

45:48

connect that back to a kind

45:50

of Orwellian quality because that was,

45:52

you know, the idea in 1984,

45:54

and it's expressed in the index

45:57

that we can change the meaning

45:59

of words and change the way

46:01

people think. That may not be

46:03

happening all that intentionally as it

46:05

was under a totalitarian system. And

46:08

it actually did happen under Nazi

46:10

Germany and in Soviet Union. But

46:12

it's still happening and it's still

46:14

changing the way we think. I

46:17

think it's an excellent point. And

46:19

then it feeds back into real

46:21

community. So when people are in

46:23

real community, their expectations have been

46:25

formed by these online experiences and

46:28

these new definitions for words. Sean?

46:30

I guess I've done a lot of

46:32

technology bashing here and I just want

46:34

to say it's not all of

46:36

our problems cannot be laid at the

46:39

feet of technology. I mean, it is

46:41

also true that over the last

46:43

three, four decades, we have stopped

46:45

as a society investing

46:48

in social infrastructure, community

46:50

centers, libraries, third spaces,

46:52

where people can actually... Get

46:55

together and talk and be with one

46:57

another and engage their community and not

46:59

just be Home alone ordering pizzas with

47:01

the app so that they don't have

47:03

to engage with another human being in

47:06

the entire process right so My worry

47:08

is that these technologies have pushed society

47:10

in a more solipsistic direction. It's pulling

47:12

us more inward Allah the movie her

47:14

I feel like that's where we're going

47:17

where people are just they're going to

47:19

be in relationship with chat bots. They're

47:21

going to be you know at home

47:23

using VR technology or whatever and they're

47:25

going to stop going outside and doing

47:27

things with other people and so we

47:30

have failed on both fronts and there

47:32

is a there are policy solutions that

47:34

could counterbalance some of this if we

47:36

invested in those things and we we

47:38

haven't or we stopped and we should

47:40

again. I agree. I just wanted to

47:42

name one other example of language

47:44

that change that is happening without

47:47

really reckoning with it is Elon's

47:49

redefinition of saving free speech when

47:51

he takes over Twitter to protect

47:53

people's ability to reach millions of

47:55

people anonymously inside of a news

47:58

feed that rewards the most salacious

48:00

inflammation of cultural fault lines in the

48:02

cultural war and like a system that

48:04

just like rewards the toxicity of inflammation

48:07

on cultural fault lines everywhere and then

48:09

saying that that's about free speech it's

48:11

like it's a it's a kind of

48:14

a new speaking and kind of turn

48:16

on what what was freedom of speech

48:18

really meant to protect in its original

48:20

essence as defined by the founding fathers

48:23

and it had nothing to do with

48:25

or it certainly did not foresee a

48:27

world where a single person could reach

48:30

200 million people every day with their

48:32

thumb as many times as they wanted

48:34

to, and that's a different thing than

48:36

the deeper ideas. And so I just

48:39

think the best question of language, we

48:41

just imagine a society that is actually

48:43

asking that question. So imagine a society

48:46

that is actually asking that question. So

48:48

imagine that sort of a postman-informed society.

48:50

And every time there's a new technology

48:52

rolling out, their immediate first thoughts are

48:55

instead of being entranced by it and

48:57

deifying the technology and deifying the solution.

48:59

Whose problem is that? What are the

49:02

new problems that are going to be

49:04

created by this technology? What are the

49:06

changes in language that it's actually hiding

49:09

from us about the way it's reconstituting

49:11

things? So I just, I feel like

49:13

that's a vision of society that I'm

49:15

reminded of the, I think it's the

49:18

opening chapter of Technopoly where he talks

49:20

about the story of, was it's really

49:22

about. What is a conscious adoption strategy

49:25

of technology where in that story they're

49:27

actually talking about should we adopt the

49:29

written word and they're sort of talking

49:31

about that as a choice and noticing

49:34

all the things that that's going to

49:36

give and also it's what it's going

49:38

to do and also which things it's

49:41

going to undo in the society? And

49:43

I just feel like that's. That's so

49:45

within reach is to have cultures that

49:47

actually are critical of technology in which,

49:50

you know, Postman is part of the

49:52

curriculum of, you know, political science courses

49:54

at every university and part of undergraduate

49:57

education. And it's all the more important

49:59

because technology is so central in the

50:01

fundamental shaping forces of the entire world.

50:03

So maybe I'm just a dreamer but

50:06

this is the. Can I ask you

50:08

a question? Do you think it's the

50:10

responsibility of the people building these technologies

50:13

to ask themselves these questions or do

50:15

you think it's the responsibility of the

50:17

public to ask and answer these questions

50:19

and then impose their solutions. It's all

50:22

the more important that the people building

50:24

it have a critical understanding of what

50:26

it will do because they're they're being

50:29

at the driver's seat. and the control

50:31

panels about how it's going to roll

50:33

out means that it's even more important

50:35

that they're contending or tending with these

50:38

questions than it is with the regular

50:40

public and I think the regular public

50:42

needs to contend with it as maximally

50:45

as possible. Lance? Well, I mean, the

50:47

history of invention shows that inventors... pretty

50:49

much are wrong about what their technology

50:52

is going to do. And so they're

50:54

the last people, I think Arthur Kessler

50:56

called them sleepwalkers, you know, that, I

50:58

mean, television's a great example because when

51:01

television's introduced or, you know, especially in

51:03

the post-war period. all of the write-up

51:05

of it is it's going to bring

51:08

culture into everyone's home. They'll have opera

51:10

and ballet and classical music and it's

51:12

going to be wonderful for democratic politics

51:14

because we'll be able to televise political

51:17

conventions and people will see, you know,

51:19

debate and discussion on political issues. You

51:21

know, and they couldn't be more wrong

51:24

and I, you know. I think there's

51:26

a great spirit of play that comes

51:28

with invention. It's just, you know, to

51:30

see, you know, what can be done,

51:33

what we can do. But I don't

51:35

even know if an AI program, I

51:37

mean, you mentioned this before, Tristan, but

51:40

I don't know if that can, they...

51:42

I don't know, it can adequately foresee

51:44

all of the consequences because you introduce

51:46

a change into a highly complex interdependent

51:49

system. It's going to change something, it's

51:51

going to change other things, they're going

51:53

to... interact with one another? It's a

51:56

complex system for sure. Yeah. And to

51:58

be clear, I want to say a

52:00

couple of things. I agree that we

52:02

don't, and others don't have a good

52:05

track record of foreseeing the consequences of

52:07

their invention. I do think that there

52:09

are tools one can use to much

52:12

better foresee what those consequences will be.

52:14

In 2013, how could I foresee that

52:16

the attention economy would lead to a

52:18

more addicted, distracted, sexualized society? It's because

52:21

the incentives at play help you predict

52:23

the outcome. And I think an incentive

52:25

literate culture that follows the Charlie Munger

52:28

quote, you know, if you show me

52:30

the incentive, I'll show you the outcome.

52:32

If we can understand what the incentives

52:34

are, you can get a very good

52:36

sneak preview of the future. I don't

52:38

think it's an easy thing to reach

52:40

for, but I think it's something that

52:42

we need more of if we're going

52:44

to be a technology enhanced society

52:47

and actually make it through, because

52:49

we're quite in danger now. Sean? Yeah, look,

52:51

even if the answer to these questions is,

52:53

you know, in the words of Nate Barkazzi,

52:55

nobody knows, we should still be

52:58

asking them. That would at least

53:00

be a start. That's just not

53:02

something that we've done or are

53:05

doing. I think one of the

53:07

real needs is to

53:09

really reinforce literacy and that

53:11

this is ultimately what's

53:14

being threatened because that is

53:16

the foundation of democracy and

53:18

it's the foundation of the

53:21

enlightenment in postman's last. book

53:23

was building a bridge to

53:26

the 18th century, which wasn't

53:28

saying that we should go

53:30

back to the 1700s, but

53:33

that we should retrieve from

53:35

that era that literacy, typography,

53:38

the enlightenment, and the respect

53:40

for science and democracy that

53:42

existed back then, that we

53:45

need to reinforce those elements of

53:47

the media environment that the electronic

53:49

media are really doing away with.

53:51

And when you say, what is

53:54

the problem that AI is going

53:56

to solve? And I actually mentioned

53:58

it before. I mean, information glut

54:01

is one of the problems that

54:03

it's there to solve. But I

54:05

think one of the problems is

54:07

that reading and writing are hard.

54:09

They're hard to do. Anyone who

54:11

has written a book, you know,

54:13

will tell you that, what could

54:15

be more unnatural than sending a...

54:17

five-year-old to sit still for hours

54:19

on end, you know, but that's

54:21

what you need to learn how

54:23

to read and write and So

54:25

what are we doing? I mean

54:27

we and we've been doing this

54:29

for a long time now We're

54:31

developing technology to read for us

54:33

and to write for us I

54:35

mean, that's what AI voice synthesis

54:37

and voice recognition That's what it's

54:39

all doing. So we don't have

54:41

to do it ourselves So the

54:43

way to at least try to

54:45

mitigate this is by reinforcing those

54:48

aspects of the media environment that

54:50

we still have that are under

54:52

assault today. Yeah, I would just

54:54

say that in a lot of

54:56

ways the problem of our time

54:58

is this misalignment between our interests

55:00

and our incentives and the tragedy

55:02

really is that we have built

55:04

tools that have undermined our capacity

55:06

to alter our incentive structures. in

55:08

healthy ways. Exactly. That is it.

55:10

If our whole damn problem could

55:12

be distilled, that's it. I don't

55:14

know what to do about that,

55:16

but that's the challenge ahead of

55:18

us, and we've got to figure

55:20

it out. Completely, completely agree. If

55:22

incentives can control the outcome, then...

55:24

And governance is normally the ability

55:26

to change what those incentives are.

55:28

You pass a law or a

55:30

policy and you build social norms

55:32

and consensus in order to get

55:34

that law or policy passed to

55:36

change and say, hey, you're not

55:38

allowed or you can't profit from

55:40

this thing that would be highly

55:43

profitable, like whether it's underage, drugs,

55:45

sex trafficking, whatever the thing is.

55:47

So I completely completely agree. I

55:49

know we're basically here out of

55:51

time and just want to close

55:53

with this. this quote, that no

55:55

medium is excessively dangerous if its

55:57

users understand what its dangers are.

55:59

It's not important that those who

56:01

ask the questions arrive at any,

56:03

at my answers, or Marshall McLuhan's.

56:05

This is an instance in which

56:07

asking the questions is sufficient, to

56:09

ask is to break the spell.

56:11

And that just feels like what

56:13

we're arming here is let's arm

56:15

ourselves with the questions to protect

56:17

ourselves from getting further overwhelmed. And

56:19

also let's be honest about the

56:21

nature of what's coming. So questions

56:23

are our most important medium. That's

56:25

from language, and that's the way

56:27

that we start to think about

56:29

things critically and deeply. Well, no

56:31

one's going to listen to a

56:33

three-hour Lincoln-style speech to save us,

56:35

so we just need a kick-ass

56:38

meme that's going to bring us

56:40

all together. It's your job to

56:42

find a tweet for this one

56:44

and create some memes that are

56:46

going to go viral. We'll tweet

56:48

our way through it. No worries.

56:50

Sean and Lance just wanted to

56:52

thank you for coming on your

56:54

undivided attention. That's great. Thank you.

56:56

Thank you. So

56:58

a thought I'd like to leave you

57:00

with. There's a quote from the introduction

57:02

of amusing ourselves to death that has

57:04

always stuck with me, where Postman compares

57:06

two dystopian visions for the future. The

57:08

first presented by George Orwell in 1984,

57:11

of surveillance at Big Brother, and the

57:13

other presented by Aldis Huxley in Brave

57:15

New World. Postman wrote, what Orwell feared

57:17

were those who would ban books, while

57:19

Huxley feared was that there would be

57:21

no reason to ban a book, for

57:23

there would be no one who wanted

57:25

to read one who wanted to read

57:27

one. Orwell feared those who would deprive

57:29

us of information. Huxley feared those who

57:31

would give us so much that would

57:33

be reduced to passivity and egoism. Or

57:35

well feared that the truth would be

57:37

concealed from us, while Huxley feared the

57:39

truth would be drowned in a sea

57:41

of irrelevance. Or well feared that we

57:43

would become a captive culture, while Huxley

57:45

feared we would become a trivial culture.

57:48

As Huxley remarked, the civil libertarians and

57:50

rationalists who are ever on the alert

57:52

to opposed tyranny to opposed tyranny. failed

57:54

to take into account man almost

57:56

infinite appetite for

57:58

distractions. And it was

58:00

Postman's fear that

58:02

it would be Huxley,

58:04

not Orwell, whose

58:06

prediction would come true.

58:13

Your undivided attention is produced by the

58:15

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58:17

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58:19

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58:21

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producer is Sasha Fegan. Mixing on this

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