Discussion about this post

User's avatar
A Special Presentation's avatar

With regard to "the backlash to the backlash" - I think it's almost forgotten by now how thoroughly invested the liberal and left critics in question were in the type of 1990s-2000s techno-utopian ideology represented by Wired, Boing Boing, the concept of the "blogosphere", minimalist Apple industrial design, and so on. After he died a more or less preventable death in 2011, pretty much every Apple store turned into an impromptu memorial for Steve Jobs, who, after all, is more responsible than anyone else for the proliferation of smartphones.

A lot of this stuff was just intellectualized ad copy for tech companies, but there was some more sophisticated thinking that appealed to some very deep liberal bedrock beliefs that are (or were) widely held. Information wants to be free, self-expression should always be encouraged, connectivity is the best basis for empathy, asynchronous and synchronous communication are as good as each other, and so on. In 2010 or so, these all seemed pretty self-evident, at least to me. If Haidt is right, and we gave to our kids these devices that enable communication, information retrieval, self-expression, and connection on previously impossible levels, and the main effect it had was to make our kids miserable...well, it raises questions about the veracity of these precepts (or at least their clean implementation in the real world) in a way that makes liberals feel very uncomfortable.

Expand full comment
Jason Girouard's avatar

I like the framework of online vs real-world interactions being asynchronous vs synchronous because it seems to explain other behavioral styles of those who spend more of their lives online. Stemming from this, the review makes me think this analysis can be helpful in more contexts than just kids’ behavior and mental health — e.g. I think we’re actually seeing some effects of growing up online in the workplace now. Younger colleagues I’ve seen deliver strong work asynchronously, but can struggle to work and experiment “live” together. Does this stem from the same thing? Who knows, I should probably read the book before I speculate too much.

Expand full comment
10 more comments...

No posts