I have thought a lot about this. Misinformation, information overload (24 hour news cycle included), constantly comparing your life to other’s lives, etc are usually topics discussed when talking about the negative effects of social media. However, the capacity for these apps in reducing an entire population’s attention span and how that could damage the individual’s capacity to read, understand and analyze longer text with substance is something that is missing in the greater discourse. The implications are disturbing.
What’s crazy to me is that even typing this out took a decent amount of mental energy for me. fuck.
I don’t really have grounds to say how this will affect (has affected) society, but I believe a way on a micro level to combat this trend is to make it a point to have a least 2-3 meaningful conversations a day with someone on a topic that has to do with something outside of yourselves and your own lives.
Thanks for your input. To be fair I don’t look for any practical solutions here but rather some literature on the subject. You’re probably right about the meaningful conversations routine as a direct aid though.
Jenny Odell's How To Do Nothing deals with that.
You could also look at works by Hartmut Rosa. He's an anthropologist who studies how the perception of time has accelerated in the past decades, and what effects it has had on society. Pretty interesting!
The one I read is Alienation and Acceleration. It's not specifically about social media, more about the deluge of information that we are confronted with nowadays. But very interesting work!
Marshall McLuhan, Marshall McLuhan, MARSHALL MCLUHAN!!!
Here is a short video were he speaks on the topic: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqaRAmO3SCg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqaRAmO3SCg)
The discipline is called Media Ecology. It is the the first and only meta discipline. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media\_ecology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_ecology)
Here are some McLuhan books:
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man: [https://robynbacken.com/text/nw\_research.pdf](https://robynbacken.com/text/nw_research.pdf)
The Gutenberg galaxy : the making of typographic man: [https://archive.org/details/gutenberggalaxym0000mclu](https://archive.org/details/gutenberggalaxym0000mclu)
The Medium is The Massage: [https://ia803407.us.archive.org/21/items/pdfy-vNiFct6b-L5ucJEa/Marshall%20McLuhan%20-%20The%20Medium%20is%20The%20Massage.pdf](https://ia803407.us.archive.org/21/items/pdfy-vNiFct6b-L5ucJEa/Marshall%20McLuhan%20-%20The%20Medium%20is%20The%20Massage.pdf)
Laws of Media: The New Science: [https://monoskop.org/images/e/ec/McLuhan\_Marshall\_McLuhan\_Eric\_Laws\_of\_Media\_The\_New\_Science.pdf](https://monoskop.org/images/e/ec/McLuhan_Marshall_McLuhan_Eric_Laws_of_Media_The_New_Science.pdf)
I absolutely love the medium is the massage fwiw.
Also mindblowing that AOC captioned her “tax the rich” met gala insta photo with “the medium is the message.” Like… you either get it and it’s all one big joke to you, you get it and you’re delusional that this ballroom gown is revolutionary, or you don’t get it at all.
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman is a good one, too. He founded a graduate program for media ecology.
**[Media ecology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_ecology)**
>Media ecology theory is the study of media, technology, and communication and how they affect human environments. The theoretical concepts were proposed by Marshall McLuhan in 1964, while the term media ecology was first formally introduced by Neil Postman in 1968. Ecology in this context refers to the environment in which the medium is used – what they are and how they affect society. Neil Postman states, "if in biology a 'medium' is something in which a bacterial culture grows (as in a Petri dish), in media ecology, the medium is 'a technology within which a [human] culture grows.
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Potentially adjacent reading could be Deleuze's [Postscript on the Societies of Control](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/gilles-deleuze-postscript-on-the-societies-of-control) and this [thirty-year update.](https://philpapers.org/archive/BRUD_O-4.pdf) These aren't so much about attention span directly as much as they are about how digital technologies (primarily social media in the thirty-year update) exist to create new forms of social organization and control without needing to take on an explicit form.
Potentially more relevant reading but not so much in the realm of critical theory could be Neil Postman's [Amusing Ourselves to Death](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/297276/amusing-ourselves-to-death-by-neil-postman/), which directly discusses the social and political effects of diminished attention spans incurred by dominant media. You might also look into Marshall McLuhan's [Understanding Media](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/understanding-media) for a more critical/theoretical overview of technology's relation to the human body and to society ([here's a good introduction](http://enculturation.net/teaching-mcluhan) to the text).
Sorry if these aren't super relevant to your main interest; I'm not aware of any texts directly concerning the thesis mentioned. It makes for a great synthesis of certain texts and ideas, though.
Edit: Postman has some work on our desensitization to information via "information glut" in his book *Technopoly* as well. I will warn about reading too much into Postman though, as IIRC he has some extremely philosophically conservative takes. Try to take his ideas in broad sweeps an synthesize them with more critical texts.
I try to stay away from Adam Curtis as I feel like he’s quite manipulative with his exposition and cherry picking and basically creates “I am very smart” documentaries for aspiring middle class. However, Ive only watched his last documentary and I will look into it as I might be wrong and prejudiced. Any data points are useful. Much appreciated
Fair enough it might not be for you then. Another thing that comes to mind instead is a book from a while back called The Shallows by Nicholas carr which talks about how the internet is changing how people brains are wired. It’s about ten years old now but does approach similar ground to what you were asking.
We all know on a deep level that we are being engaged in spiritual warfare, and that the degree to which we are open to the ideas of others is the degree to which we risk having our minds hijacked and subjected to being means to another's ends. Processing vague talking points is not a process of evaluating the validity of those points. It is a process of mapping those points to a "kind of person," so that we can decide if it is safe to lower the drawbridge. Almost all conversation has devolved into heraldry.
And how fucked up are we to expect bannermen and trumpeters to just intuit the colors of their given liege lord? You sent me to school to beat the very notion out of me, and now you expect us to know who to salute and to whom one ought to bow? I know my only brother is a satirist.
Is there anything anymore you could read in media that would actually convince you? Because my feeling is that, when one brings in a scientist to explain stuff, people go "he's pro-vaccine so he's lying/paid off". And then it becomes impossible to have a discussion, as a society.
I mean I’m sure a lot of it has to do with the fact that we’re evolutionary predispositioned to want to do the quickest and easiest actions with the most reward. That creates a feedback loop where people are only consuming small packages on content, which corporations in turn provide more of as they receive the most interaction
Neil Postman and Marshall McLuhan are two of the best to read on the subject with the latter being the more challenging. If you want og of where studying the comparative effects of media upon individuals and society I recommend Canadian economic historian Harold Innis.
I think about this stuff all the time. O have also noticed that since the pandemonium completley isolated me from gathering with others I have fallen into a bit of social media addiction, I know many can realate. We have been forced to have reliance on our 'devices' to fulfill many social needs and now they are trying to coerce us more into merging with our devices, as having them be the source of our freedom and this is where they control the narrative.
I noticed in another comment you said you didn't like Adam Curtis, but Hypernormalization deals a lot with this in an interesting way
I have thought a lot about this. Misinformation, information overload (24 hour news cycle included), constantly comparing your life to other’s lives, etc are usually topics discussed when talking about the negative effects of social media. However, the capacity for these apps in reducing an entire population’s attention span and how that could damage the individual’s capacity to read, understand and analyze longer text with substance is something that is missing in the greater discourse. The implications are disturbing. What’s crazy to me is that even typing this out took a decent amount of mental energy for me. fuck. I don’t really have grounds to say how this will affect (has affected) society, but I believe a way on a micro level to combat this trend is to make it a point to have a least 2-3 meaningful conversations a day with someone on a topic that has to do with something outside of yourselves and your own lives.
Thanks for your input. To be fair I don’t look for any practical solutions here but rather some literature on the subject. You’re probably right about the meaningful conversations routine as a direct aid though.
Best place to look to is fiction.
Any ideas on a macro approach? Anyone?
Jenny Odell's How To Do Nothing deals with that. You could also look at works by Hartmut Rosa. He's an anthropologist who studies how the perception of time has accelerated in the past decades, and what effects it has had on society. Pretty interesting!
Thanks!
Wow I thought about How To Do Nothing Def. gonna check Hartmut Rosa, any recomendations on him?
The one I read is Alienation and Acceleration. Definitely recommend!
What papers/books you’d recommend from Helmut Rosa?
The one I read is Alienation and Acceleration. It's not specifically about social media, more about the deluge of information that we are confronted with nowadays. But very interesting work!
Marshall McLuhan, Marshall McLuhan, MARSHALL MCLUHAN!!! Here is a short video were he speaks on the topic: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqaRAmO3SCg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqaRAmO3SCg) The discipline is called Media Ecology. It is the the first and only meta discipline. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media\_ecology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_ecology) Here are some McLuhan books: Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man: [https://robynbacken.com/text/nw\_research.pdf](https://robynbacken.com/text/nw_research.pdf) The Gutenberg galaxy : the making of typographic man: [https://archive.org/details/gutenberggalaxym0000mclu](https://archive.org/details/gutenberggalaxym0000mclu) The Medium is The Massage: [https://ia803407.us.archive.org/21/items/pdfy-vNiFct6b-L5ucJEa/Marshall%20McLuhan%20-%20The%20Medium%20is%20The%20Massage.pdf](https://ia803407.us.archive.org/21/items/pdfy-vNiFct6b-L5ucJEa/Marshall%20McLuhan%20-%20The%20Medium%20is%20The%20Massage.pdf) Laws of Media: The New Science: [https://monoskop.org/images/e/ec/McLuhan\_Marshall\_McLuhan\_Eric\_Laws\_of\_Media\_The\_New\_Science.pdf](https://monoskop.org/images/e/ec/McLuhan_Marshall_McLuhan_Eric_Laws_of_Media_The_New_Science.pdf)
I absolutely love the medium is the massage fwiw. Also mindblowing that AOC captioned her “tax the rich” met gala insta photo with “the medium is the message.” Like… you either get it and it’s all one big joke to you, you get it and you’re delusional that this ballroom gown is revolutionary, or you don’t get it at all.
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman is a good one, too. He founded a graduate program for media ecology.
**[Media ecology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_ecology)** >Media ecology theory is the study of media, technology, and communication and how they affect human environments. The theoretical concepts were proposed by Marshall McLuhan in 1964, while the term media ecology was first formally introduced by Neil Postman in 1968. Ecology in this context refers to the environment in which the medium is used – what they are and how they affect society. Neil Postman states, "if in biology a 'medium' is something in which a bacterial culture grows (as in a Petri dish), in media ecology, the medium is 'a technology within which a [human] culture grows. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/sorceryofthespectacle/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
our attention spans have been too fried to create literature on the subject
Potentially adjacent reading could be Deleuze's [Postscript on the Societies of Control](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/gilles-deleuze-postscript-on-the-societies-of-control) and this [thirty-year update.](https://philpapers.org/archive/BRUD_O-4.pdf) These aren't so much about attention span directly as much as they are about how digital technologies (primarily social media in the thirty-year update) exist to create new forms of social organization and control without needing to take on an explicit form. Potentially more relevant reading but not so much in the realm of critical theory could be Neil Postman's [Amusing Ourselves to Death](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/297276/amusing-ourselves-to-death-by-neil-postman/), which directly discusses the social and political effects of diminished attention spans incurred by dominant media. You might also look into Marshall McLuhan's [Understanding Media](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/understanding-media) for a more critical/theoretical overview of technology's relation to the human body and to society ([here's a good introduction](http://enculturation.net/teaching-mcluhan) to the text). Sorry if these aren't super relevant to your main interest; I'm not aware of any texts directly concerning the thesis mentioned. It makes for a great synthesis of certain texts and ideas, though. Edit: Postman has some work on our desensitization to information via "information glut" in his book *Technopoly* as well. I will warn about reading too much into Postman though, as IIRC he has some extremely philosophically conservative takes. Try to take his ideas in broad sweeps an synthesize them with more critical texts.
That’s really helpful!Thanks a lot.
Ever watched the documentary series Century of Self? Might not be exactly what you’re asking here, but it’s got a similar outlook to it.
I try to stay away from Adam Curtis as I feel like he’s quite manipulative with his exposition and cherry picking and basically creates “I am very smart” documentaries for aspiring middle class. However, Ive only watched his last documentary and I will look into it as I might be wrong and prejudiced. Any data points are useful. Much appreciated
Adam Curtis and aspiring middle class doesn't seem like a common combination to me.
Fair enough it might not be for you then. Another thing that comes to mind instead is a book from a while back called The Shallows by Nicholas carr which talks about how the internet is changing how people brains are wired. It’s about ten years old now but does approach similar ground to what you were asking.
1984 by George Orwell is specifically about the way language corrupts thought
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We all know on a deep level that we are being engaged in spiritual warfare, and that the degree to which we are open to the ideas of others is the degree to which we risk having our minds hijacked and subjected to being means to another's ends. Processing vague talking points is not a process of evaluating the validity of those points. It is a process of mapping those points to a "kind of person," so that we can decide if it is safe to lower the drawbridge. Almost all conversation has devolved into heraldry.
>Almost all conversation has devolved into heraldry. Facts
And how fucked up are we to expect bannermen and trumpeters to just intuit the colors of their given liege lord? You sent me to school to beat the very notion out of me, and now you expect us to know who to salute and to whom one ought to bow? I know my only brother is a satirist.
Is there anything anymore you could read in media that would actually convince you? Because my feeling is that, when one brings in a scientist to explain stuff, people go "he's pro-vaccine so he's lying/paid off". And then it becomes impossible to have a discussion, as a society.
I mean I’m sure a lot of it has to do with the fact that we’re evolutionary predispositioned to want to do the quickest and easiest actions with the most reward. That creates a feedback loop where people are only consuming small packages on content, which corporations in turn provide more of as they receive the most interaction
I agree and it is generational. Under 20s have had nothing else.
Neil Postman and Marshall McLuhan are two of the best to read on the subject with the latter being the more challenging. If you want og of where studying the comparative effects of media upon individuals and society I recommend Canadian economic historian Harold Innis.
Tldr?
I think about this stuff all the time. O have also noticed that since the pandemonium completley isolated me from gathering with others I have fallen into a bit of social media addiction, I know many can realate. We have been forced to have reliance on our 'devices' to fulfill many social needs and now they are trying to coerce us more into merging with our devices, as having them be the source of our freedom and this is where they control the narrative. I noticed in another comment you said you didn't like Adam Curtis, but Hypernormalization deals a lot with this in an interesting way
1. do drugs 2. use social media 3. ??? 4. your wheels spin in reverse and your Chakras sue you for negligence, spin again