Great excerpt from your book. As always your writings make me better see and understand the digital water I find myself swimming in. I have always found your books and articles extremely well written and I admire your ability to break down complex ideas and tie them in a narrative thread which I am able to follow.
I did find this excerpt slightly denser than usual but I attribute that to my unfamiliarity with basic concepts in Psychology and Sociology. I expect Superbloom to be denser because of this, but I look forward to reading it soon.
To Nicholas Carr: As a long-time admirer of your theory-based work. I very much appreciate your detailing in Superbloom the increasing relevance of the theoretical framework I developed in my 1985 book, No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior (Oxford). As you write, my work adapts the place-based theories of the self by Cooley, Mead, and Goffman to settings that are not physically bounded. That approach to media was not welcomed by everyone 40 years ago. My study of how major changes in media alter the geography of social situations and affect social roles – including those of children and adults, different genders, and leaders and followers – was alien to those focusing on message content and concerns over simple imitation and persuasion. Thank you for bringing the perspective of media evolution changing “patterns of social information flow” into central focus as a way of understanding "where" we live now.
Many thanks for your note, Professor Meyrowitz. No Sense of Place, it's now clear, was a prophetic work. The book's focus on the importance of spatiotemporal boundaries to our social lives, and the consequences of tearing down those boundaries, as social media has, explains a great deal about our current situation. I very much hope that Superbloom draws people to your work.
Gah, I love your writing and always have. Your new book is preordered + am waiting patiently (kind of). If it’s even a fraction as brilliant as The Shallows, it will be an epic. Thanks for sharing this excerpt.
I entirely agree with your reflections on the collapse of the self that has taken place through the disembodied and limitless ether of the internet. I would add that I feel in many ways, it has also collapsed how we view others. When the average person sees another human in front of them, they feel a sense of duty to observe their fundamental humanity through polite and courteous behaviors. Of course, dehumanizing thoughts may compulsively spring to mind, especially if they find said person’s behavior or presence aversive in some way. However, the prefrontal cortex will screen for these impulses and suppress them. Within the digital landscape, this boundary is subverted. Other people become content, which can be liked or disliked. Praised or shunned. And because they are mere pixels, void of any human or moral qualities, one may easily feel at liberty to express their dehumanizing impulses towards others. Perhaps because the prefrontal cortex screens for consequences, and there seemingly are none to someone commenting through relative anonymity. I wonder at times if our social media feeds are like prefrontal suppressants. Like somehow not having the person in front of us tells that part of our brain to take a nap. The safety mechanisms in our brains, as it turns out, exist for a good reason. Not simply for us, but also for those around us.
Yes, we've evolved to be highly social beings - but social beings with bodies interacting with other social beings with bodies in actual space and time. The idea that we could remove our socializing from the physical world without fundamentally altering the nature of that socializing seems to have been a terrible, and in retrospect obvious, mistake.
I think your idea that certain social functions of the brain require physical presence is intriguing (and makes sense, from an evolutionary perspective). I hope you'll develop it further.
The spectacle presents itself simultaneously as all of society, as part of society, and as instrument of unification. As a part of society it is specifically the sector which concentrates all gazing and all consciousness. Due to the very fact that this sector is separate, it is the common ground of the deceived gaze and of false consciousness, and the unification it achieves is nothing but an official language of generalized separation.
Also, when you come up with a metaphor like the "mirrorball," what takes place in your mind/in real life (excitement?, curiosity?, etc.) and how do you go about developing it further?
I've had an idea for a book for a while and I'm not sure if your book will set me free and I'll no longer need to write it, or inspire me further. Excited either way. Great excerpt.
Thanks for posting this excerpt. I was thrilled to see you had a new book coming out and to discover you had joined Substack.
It feels as though we're finally seeing books that account for the social impacts of generative AI...not marketing material for big tech companies, but actual analysis. Substack is a good source of such analysis, but reading a good book on the topic will be a relief.
I'm curious if Superbloom tackles generative AI, which is an interesting wrinkle in the digital social life you write about here. LLMs may be nothing more than a vastly improved natural language interface to the Internet, but that is a significant cultural development, and one that exacerbates and extends the problems you outline.
I plan to review Superbloom, possibly along with John Warner's "More Than Words" also due in January. Can't wait to get my hands and eyeballs on books by authors I have long admired.
Thanks, Rob. Yes, the book has a chapter ("Machines Who Speak") that looks at generative AI. Because the book is mainly concerned with how communication systems shape society, I focus on what it means to automate the production of speech (in all its forms) under the control of corporations, but I also discuss the impacts of the outsourcing of self-expression on personal relationships and the way we make sense (or don't) of reality.
Great excerpt from your book. As always your writings make me better see and understand the digital water I find myself swimming in. I have always found your books and articles extremely well written and I admire your ability to break down complex ideas and tie them in a narrative thread which I am able to follow.
I did find this excerpt slightly denser than usual but I attribute that to my unfamiliarity with basic concepts in Psychology and Sociology. I expect Superbloom to be denser because of this, but I look forward to reading it soon.
To Nicholas Carr: As a long-time admirer of your theory-based work. I very much appreciate your detailing in Superbloom the increasing relevance of the theoretical framework I developed in my 1985 book, No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior (Oxford). As you write, my work adapts the place-based theories of the self by Cooley, Mead, and Goffman to settings that are not physically bounded. That approach to media was not welcomed by everyone 40 years ago. My study of how major changes in media alter the geography of social situations and affect social roles – including those of children and adults, different genders, and leaders and followers – was alien to those focusing on message content and concerns over simple imitation and persuasion. Thank you for bringing the perspective of media evolution changing “patterns of social information flow” into central focus as a way of understanding "where" we live now.
Many thanks for your note, Professor Meyrowitz. No Sense of Place, it's now clear, was a prophetic work. The book's focus on the importance of spatiotemporal boundaries to our social lives, and the consequences of tearing down those boundaries, as social media has, explains a great deal about our current situation. I very much hope that Superbloom draws people to your work.
Gah, I love your writing and always have. Your new book is preordered + am waiting patiently (kind of). If it’s even a fraction as brilliant as The Shallows, it will be an epic. Thanks for sharing this excerpt.
I entirely agree with your reflections on the collapse of the self that has taken place through the disembodied and limitless ether of the internet. I would add that I feel in many ways, it has also collapsed how we view others. When the average person sees another human in front of them, they feel a sense of duty to observe their fundamental humanity through polite and courteous behaviors. Of course, dehumanizing thoughts may compulsively spring to mind, especially if they find said person’s behavior or presence aversive in some way. However, the prefrontal cortex will screen for these impulses and suppress them. Within the digital landscape, this boundary is subverted. Other people become content, which can be liked or disliked. Praised or shunned. And because they are mere pixels, void of any human or moral qualities, one may easily feel at liberty to express their dehumanizing impulses towards others. Perhaps because the prefrontal cortex screens for consequences, and there seemingly are none to someone commenting through relative anonymity. I wonder at times if our social media feeds are like prefrontal suppressants. Like somehow not having the person in front of us tells that part of our brain to take a nap. The safety mechanisms in our brains, as it turns out, exist for a good reason. Not simply for us, but also for those around us.
Yes, we've evolved to be highly social beings - but social beings with bodies interacting with other social beings with bodies in actual space and time. The idea that we could remove our socializing from the physical world without fundamentally altering the nature of that socializing seems to have been a terrible, and in retrospect obvious, mistake.
I think your idea that certain social functions of the brain require physical presence is intriguing (and makes sense, from an evolutionary perspective). I hope you'll develop it further.
this is an intriguing take. Love it if you can develop it further in your writings.
The spectacle presents itself simultaneously as all of society, as part of society, and as instrument of unification. As a part of society it is specifically the sector which concentrates all gazing and all consciousness. Due to the very fact that this sector is separate, it is the common ground of the deceived gaze and of false consciousness, and the unification it achieves is nothing but an official language of generalized separation.
Also, when you come up with a metaphor like the "mirrorball," what takes place in your mind/in real life (excitement?, curiosity?, etc.) and how do you go about developing it further?
Usually I just worry about whether it works or not.
I feel similarly.
I've had an idea for a book for a while and I'm not sure if your book will set me free and I'll no longer need to write it, or inspire me further. Excited either way. Great excerpt.
Thanks for posting this excerpt. I was thrilled to see you had a new book coming out and to discover you had joined Substack.
It feels as though we're finally seeing books that account for the social impacts of generative AI...not marketing material for big tech companies, but actual analysis. Substack is a good source of such analysis, but reading a good book on the topic will be a relief.
I'm curious if Superbloom tackles generative AI, which is an interesting wrinkle in the digital social life you write about here. LLMs may be nothing more than a vastly improved natural language interface to the Internet, but that is a significant cultural development, and one that exacerbates and extends the problems you outline.
I plan to review Superbloom, possibly along with John Warner's "More Than Words" also due in January. Can't wait to get my hands and eyeballs on books by authors I have long admired.
Thanks, Rob. Yes, the book has a chapter ("Machines Who Speak") that looks at generative AI. Because the book is mainly concerned with how communication systems shape society, I focus on what it means to automate the production of speech (in all its forms) under the control of corporations, but I also discuss the impacts of the outsourcing of self-expression on personal relationships and the way we make sense (or don't) of reality.