Technology is never to blame for anything, because technology is not a moral actor; people may be to blame for the manner in which they use technology.
OTOH, people have been falsely conflating “the youth of today seem to have a different lifestyle than I preferred in my youth” with “society is sick” for at least as long as we have historical evidence of what people thought.
I guess you could argue that technology isn't to blame, but technology changes people. And it's hard not to use technology when it's so pervasive. At work I have a hard time not eating donuts when someone brings them in. Technology is similar. If everyone around you is on their phone or facebook or whatever it takes a lot of willpower/willingness to be different to not do the same.
If there is less stigma in admitting it, people are going to come forward more. Thus more cases are recorded. Which is good, as then they can get help. I remember people saying you need to see a shrink as an insult. Imagine people making fun of you for seeing a doctor about your broken leg!
Postman argues that omitting (excluding) technology from discussion of the human condition is exactly the problem. All changes lead to winners and losers. It's both denial and hubris to not even update the ledger.
Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology http://a.co/3WNmkU3
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technopoly
Further, Donald Norman argues every thing (technology, tool) has its own affordances, for better or worse. Which is opposite to the myopia captured in the cliche "Guns don't kill people, people kill people."
For a very narrow and incomplete definition of technology, sure. Technology literally means the science of craft. Technology isn't just the product, its something you practice when you're engineering and inventing a means to an end. In practicing technology, you make choices in identifying what problems to solve, how, and whether they are problems in the first place. Such choices are subject to morality. In that sense you can indeed blame technology.
I don't think there's ever been a discussion about the ethics of technology here without someone trying to pull the brakes by pointing out that inanimate things themselves are not moral actors, but let's face it, if someone participates in discussion on this site their IQ is probably higher than 70, and understand that already. Assume for a minute, at least for the sake of discussion, that this isn't the point GP is trying to make.
I think society is still sick and it's because we are more alienated[0] from our roles in it than we ever have been. This is somewhat connected with our use of modern technology but has more to do with our economic relations with each other and with the material world.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation
-Marshall McLuhan
There is an element of truth to those anxieties. New forms of media create new spatial relationships that are often destructive to previous forms.
So in a sense, new media can be highly destructive of the way people have perceived reality their whole lives:
>As I read and contemplated the subject, behold! that very discontentment which Master Hugh had predicted would follow my learning to read had already come, to torment and sting my soul to unutterable anguish. As I writhed under it, I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy. It opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to get out. In moments of agony, I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity. I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Any thing, no matter what, to get rid of thinking! It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me. There was no getting rid of it. It was pressed upon me by every object within sight or hearing, animate or inanimate. The silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness. Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever. It was heard in every sound, and seen in every thing. It was ever present to torment me with a sense of my wretched condition. I saw nothing without seeing it, I heard nothing without hearing it, and felt nothing without feeling it. It looked from every star, it smiled in every calm, breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm.
-Frederick Douglass on learning how to read as a slave (which was illegal)
[ ... ]
> In 1969, at the age of 9, I could be left to play with my friends and wander several miles from home without any sense of danger.
How's technology to blame for helicopter parenting, fear of terrorism and crime in general, the notion there seemingly is a nonce behind every street corner and similarly irrational ideas and behaviours rampant today?
While social media does its share to exacerbate these fears and overly cautious behaviour so does TV and other more traditional media.
The underlying cause isn't technology but what we allow others to do to us with it.
It seems obvious that this is the result of fear mongering-profiteering in the news media.
Instead of superficially blaming technology for our failings we had better find out what the actual causes of these failings are and remedy those.
That is a strange line to include there, as I am not sure how people staying inside and having very little social life would erode public trust in the idea that your house won't be robbed while you're away. There are hundreds of factors that play into the changing landscape of trust, but I know my small town parents still have no real concern leaving the door unlocked in their small town of ~1000 or so people.
Personally, I'd say the trust issue has to do with the fact that the world population has almost perfectly doubled since 1969, and humanity's short history has not prepared us for the population explosion that has occurred over the last 150 years. We live closer together than ever before -- but cities have never really been safe, and serial killing predates electricity (oddly) without even getting near to modern technology or us collectively being "blinded by everything shiny".
The issue with our population now is that our cities are larger, there are fewer small towns and rural areas, hence the erosion of trust.
I think Dunbar's Number (colloquially the Monkeysphere) kind of covers why we aren't handling the explosion of social circles well. But that can't be blamed completely on technology.
Maybe birthrate is more reasonable. Anecdotally, my nephew is an only child and he doesn't get to run around a lot (nor does he have a lot of desire to). When I was growing up in the 80's, it seemed like families were bigger, so it was less of a big deal if one kid drowns while swimming in the river or blows up playing with gasoline. If you only have one kid, you're probably less likely to attribute cliff jumping or playing with gasoline to "just kids being kids".
It's not too late. We can go back.
The Roman Empire was fantastically multicultural at its high points and its low. The United States has never been homogeneous, no matter where in its history you find yourself -- the low or the high points.
In fact, I (and many others) would argue that a lot of the meteoric rise of the United States occurred on the backs of labor that did not match the current ideals of those far enough right to want a homogeneous United States -- whether it was black slavery, cheap Chinese labor, late 19th century immigration towards the American Dream...
There is more to the equation than homogeneity is what I am saying here.
My 80s/90s childhood was one of "high-trust" ethnic diversity in just such a place, since my family didn't run in the elite, isolated-private-school/gated-suburbs circles. I had friends of every background, and so did most everyone else I knew, it was just how things were, not some liberal hollywood propaganda job. Somewhere like inside-the-perimeter Atlanta isn't perfect by any means, but it's actual diversity seems to make it way less sneakily unintentionally racist than NYC or SF. Or, worse, someone in random-white-person-ville small midwestern town who hears about Chicago gangs in the news.
And now I see a bunch of people online scared of / angry about diversity or its portrayals who seem completely confused by the concept of a boba joint with local latinos, blacks, whites, and asians all as customers in the same shop - cause if a movie portrayed a group like that, you know it would get called out for "SJW brainwashing" - so it seems like the argument is completely backward. The more you actually encounter and interact with people who don't share your ethnicity, the more trust you build. While the more you segregate minorities into clusters of poverty and desperation, the more you'll fear crime and so on.
>Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime. -Mark Twain
The strange irony is that you no longer have to travel very far to meet a broad range of people, but still so many avoid leaving their gated communities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic_d...
You mention Chinese labor, for example, but the Asian presence in the US was below 1% until 1980. There were only three demographics that really existed in any numbers in US history up until the past few decades: Native Americans (mostly genocided or blended with other categories, and not counted as part of the population until this happened), whites (80-90% until 1980s), and the black people who were mostly either slaves or descended from slaves (fluctuated between 10 and 20%). Since the 1980s, the Hispanic population has seen a massive upsurge, with Asians also increased as a proportion of the population by almost 5x, and "Other" going from basically 0% to 6%.
This is not exactly a diverse picture, even if it isn't 100% homogeneous.
Citation needed. As far as I am aware from my understanding of history, Roman Empire was very large geographically but there were homogeneous cultures / tribes living in separate areas of the vast empire. You had Germanic tribes living together in proximity, same with Gauls, Eastern tribes like Vandals or Visigoths, local cultures also inhabited parts of Roman Empire outside of European continent such as Northern Africa or Israel.
This should be evident as Europe was very homogeneous until early 20th century still with societies being mainly composed of similar peoples in their respective areas and this was obviously a continuation of Roman Empire’s former tribes.
Trying to make a comparison with current world where you have melting pots in places like London or New York might be inaccurate. But I’d like to be educated on this issue more.
Says who? You are falling into the trap every old person does. Thinking their youth was great and that society is going to crumble since you are on your way out and the kids today didn't live like you did.
> In 1969, at the age of 9, I could be left to play with my friends and wander several miles from home without any sense of danger.
The more things change, the more things stay the same. When you were 9, your grandparents and other old people were saying the same thing. Society is falling apart. Kids are sat in front of "idiot boxes", turntables, etc. Or wasting time playing silly games or rotting their brains listening to rock and roll.
When I was growing up in the 90s, old people were blaming MTV, gangsta rap and 3 way phone conservations for the end of society.
> There was balance because we had less technology
Not compared to your grandparents.
> It's unthinkable.
It's unthinkable because you are old and out of touch. Kids today do all the things you did. Maybe not as much. They go to school. Interact with their classmates. Hang out with their neighborhood friends. Play stickball, football, etc.
So don't worry. Society will be fine without you and life will go on. Who knows, when I get to be your age, I'll be saying how VR tech is ruining kids. I hope not.
In 1969, at the age of 9, I could be left to play with my friends and wander several miles from home without any sense of danger. Days were occupied with spports or just hanging out then reading and TV in the evening. There was balance because we had less technology. The ageing mill towns of East Lancashire, UK, still enjoyed a culture of trust and respect for your neighbours such that you could leave your front door open without fear of theft. Parents stressd "playing out" and being "out of the house" but it didn't stop kids from achieving academically.
The thought of hiding in my room and hardly ever seeing my friends face-to-face would have been soul-destroying. Chess, games, cricket and football was life itself in my teens up to about 15 when the music scene and girls became the main fascination. These were all social activities and I can't imagine those glorious teenage years spent hidden in my room staring at a phone screen as a substitute for real human contact. It's unthinkable.