Are we losing our ability to reflect? Does it matter?
Remember the days of the 24 hour news cycle? Did you ever take the time to read the daily newspaper with a hot cup of coffee or tea? We’d watch the nightly news or listen to the radio? After which, there was a spell of time between the next round. We scanned a headline and if it was interesting, we read it. Then we talked, in real-life, to other humans about what we read. We discussed, we sought the thoughts of others. We likely saw a fairly broad spectrum of opinions. We had time to reflect.
Today, we are inundated with notifications on phones, watches, tablets and all those other screens around us. On social media we read a headline, form an instant opinion and type out a reaction or hit a pre-determined icon of like, anger, sadness or maybe a heart. The tech giants deploy algorithms that shape what we see. No longer do we want a contrary opinion. We want the ones that support our views. Most of us today know what confirmation bias means and we’re okay with that.
We seek to blame the tech giants later for locking us into our own dark corners and silos of opinion. When all they are doing is meeting a demand that we don’t really push back on. Because we always prefer what makes us feel comfortable, or at least supports our view of the world.
We are perhaps, losing our ability to reflect. To pause. To think. To, as the saying goes, let cooler heads prevail.
Instead, we rely on someone else’s cooler head to prevail. As long as the cooler head agrees with our opinion.
It is not the fault of the technology. Information technologies, such as social media, do not make decisions. The algorithms deployed by social media networks guide us, influence us, nudge us, learn from us. And there’s the rub. Algorithms learn from the inputs they receive. We are the inputs that teach the algorithms.
As a result, we have asked for and been given, more information faster. From fake news to real news.
No longer do we reflect, now we just react.
Machines, computers, algorithms, they can’t fix this loss of reflection. Only humans can. Humans like attention. We like to be acknowledged, to be seen. We are herd creatures. We survive by being social. Being tribal. Humans have built the tools to satisfy these inherent behaviours and desires. And we’ve fed that hungry beast and fed it well.
When was the last time you sat back, stepped back and spent some time to reflect on the messages and notifications that have bombarded you every day? Or before you hit a pre-ordained emotion icon or type something out?
We are losing our ability to reflect, to let our own cooler heads prevail, a term which matches logically and coherently with that other phrase “to sleep on it.”
What do you think? Are we losing our ability to reflect?
