the sophistry of sore winners

2025-05-31 00:42

have you read neil postman’s “five things we need to know about technological change”? i first encountered this piece in a society-and-technology course i took in undergrad (we had to).

it’s a good read, and a short one; i encourage you to read through all of it. but i wanted to zoom in on his second idea and quote a bit:

This leads to the second idea, which is that the advantages and disadvantages of new technologies are never distributed evenly among the population. This means that every new technology benefits some and harms others.

[…]

And now, of course, the winners speak constantly of the Age of Information, always implying that the more information we have, the better we will be in solving significant problems–not only personal ones but large-scale social problems, as well. But how true is this? If there are children starving in the world–and there are–it is not because of insufficient information. We have known for a long time how to produce enough food to feed every child on the planet. How is it that we let so many of them starve?

[…]

That is why it is always necessary for us to ask of those who speak enthusiastically of computer technology, why do you do this? What interests do you represent? To whom are you hoping to give power? From whom will you be withholding power?

i don’t want to, umm, glaze him too much. i quite like recipe websites and youtube tutorials and online banking¹. they are genuine quality of life improvements!

and yet. i can’t stop going back to this second idea of his.

i don’t recall much about the first computer revolution, but i do recall the second. i was just a kid. i know there was a lot of worry about social media and facebook among adults, and i know i was very eager (if anxious) to sign up for a facebook account. i liked a lot of early “web 2.0” (i still keep a last.fm account around.) i never got the point of twitter².

“technology” (networked computer technology is perhaps a more precise term) just wasn’t as primary to our lives. but now it is essential.

i would imagine if technology was as essential now as it was back in 2008, and the people who ran facebook were saying “get with the program and get on facebook, losers, or you basically won’t exist”, someone who didn’t want to get on facebook would feel quite threatened by this statement. they would feel as if it were a matter of life or death, as they rightfully would. but they don’t want to be on facebook because they feel like they have something to lose. perhaps their soul; perhaps they don’t want to be reduced to a collection of photos and posts and likes.³

then on the other hand, you have people who go on facebook and have no problem with it. when they encounter someone who’s anti-social media, they’re bewildered. remember, in this scenario the anti-social media person believes it will strip away their livelihood. they think they are the loser⁴ in this technological change. i think they would react with outright hostility. (to be clear: i think it’s bad to be hostile to others.)

but the people on facebook clearly don’t have as much of an issue. maybe they think the benefits outweight the costs. social media is just a tool after all.

i feel like, in this context, to the person who believes they will lose, any social media user’s calls for civility (or acquiesence) in discussion would code as quite hollow. especially when they are aligning themselves on the side of the winners.

one might even suspect that despite their calls for balance, they don’t seem to be seriously listening to any concerns. they seem to assume these concerns are borne of ignorance. it must be because of ignorance, or bruised ego, or something superficial like that.

wouldn’t it be unfathomably arrogant if somebody were to think like this?