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2022-02-27 - Computers - Taming Tigers

Desiderata Technologica

Thinking about the Mephistophelian dimensions of infotech, how to tame the Tiger of that demon, if such a task is more than hopeless fancy. I still hold faint hope that the cybernetic may become more symbiote than parasite. Towards that blessed future estate, I’d like to offer here some off-the-cuff considerations.

• Phones are evil partly because they are convenient. Make them less convenient, less always on. Demand more first of all yourself.

• Phones by default demand attention. Infotech should not demand attention except in an emergency. For instance, I have almost all notifications turned off, including messages. I often forget this is not the default for most people. Whitelists and priority message flags are important in managing this.

• Go to infotech, rather than let it demand your attention. Pick up your device when you want and when it is worthwhile, then put it down otherwise. Leave the phone at home when you take a stroll. Use a keyboard computer to chat instead, or such a device you must turn off and on. Make the machine (and infotech addicted humans) wait for your convenience.

• I grok that infotech can be helpful, indeed a very helpful demon. My tablet is an information prosthetic without which my communications become thin, my research and learning become much more difficult, and my interface with so-called mainstream society becomes utterly untenable. It is also a crutch I use with an eye to try to help me do without it. That paradoxical leverage lends resiliency and encourages gratitude for the good infotech can do.

• Kill your Faceborg. Can anyone actually justify such toxic technopablum anymore? Long form communication is intellectually superior to short form; strive for that. Just so, superficial parasocial interactions cheapen intimacy and deaden the heart. Ergo, social media as currently constructed is diabolical and ought to be eradicated (or at least minimized toward absolute necessity). If you are trying to form community, and must use so-called “social” media due to regrettable network gravity, try to use it for advertising with an eye to move participants toward more intimate and honest fora.

• Tangentially, less eyes are often better eyes. Social games of fame no less spiritually vacuous now than in prior ages. Stop counting viewers. End your own personal data mining of others. Speak with a friend where others cannot “like” what you say. Intimacy demands small Dunbar numbers; accountability is predicated on such intimacy. Privacy is thus not only a basic humane right, but a pillar in securing the earnestness and honesty for a society to be at all healthy. Advancing more private media is a moral mandate, helps build worlds where trust becomes possible.

• Offline time is good time, an opportunity to ponder, reflect, muse, and ruminate. Idleness, when embraced deeply, proves the devilry of productive attention in stealing from us our moral birthrights. Creative but non-“productive” engagement dilates time, casts moments and places and people in spiritual relief. One may thus find the life one is missing when one is “making other plans”, and learn to savour that life a bit.

• If a person won’t contact you in a palpably useful and more intimate but “inconvenient” method, or cannot bear delays due to logistics and consideration, they aren’t worth worrying over. That is, if your “friend” wont email you as you asked instead of blithering on toxic social media, they palpably aren’t your friend.

• HX. Handling of message traffic clarifies attention. This requires cooperation of sender and receiver. If your correspondent has a do not disturb time frame, respect it! Flag your messages for whether they are needful priority or not.

• Wait. Wait more. No, it’s not enough. Wait some more. Just because Alice didn’t reply to Bob within 5 minutes doesn’t mean she is dead or hates him. Alice may be offline. Alice may have difficult logistics interrupting the conversation. Alice may be eating or praying or making love. Alice may be jolly well sick of staring at tiny glowing screens for to-day. If it’s unimportant, it is a manifestly good thing for Bob to shut his cyber pie hole and sit back for a spell. Patience is both a character enhancement and a practical skill alien to our push-button world.

• Eschew the virtual. Do not let the machine vicariously instantiate parasocial simulacra in place of your deeper appreciation of the actual people you wish to contact. Take it as precept to often intentionally remember: infotech wants to subvert organic intimacy. Medium is message. Our “helpful” devices WANT to stand in between us. Grapple that demon. Fight the parasitic inertia of infotech - no holds barred!

• You are a child of the universe, no less than the planets and the stars. Always good to recall the majestic commonwealth of our very “star stuff”.

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