Tag Archives: New York Times

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A Cloud Over Tech

If we all “hang out” virtually, we make ourselves smaller.

A few days ago I watched a car drifting on its own across a sloped parking lot, motor off.  There was an occupant, but he was lost to everything except the text he was writing. He was clearly headed for trouble on the other side when he finally realized that the laws of physics had put him in the path of others. I fear this is us, drifting–even while the world waits–and too preoccupied with a screen to notice.

teens and cell phones

As a case in point Brian Chen’s recent technology piece in the New York Times (December 29, 2022) eagerly described of coming advances in digital media:  better iPhones, new virtual reality equipment, software that allows people to “share selfies at the same time,” and social media options that provide new “fun places to hang out.”

So glib and so short-sighted.  When did a few inches of glass with microchips become a “place?” Language like this makes one wonder if, as students, these technology journalists encountered the rich expanses of social intelligence that come to life in real time. Too few technology mavens seem to give any weight to the ranges of human experience predicated on hard-won human achievements of cognition and competence.  Consumer-based digital media are mostly about speed rather than light. If we all “hang out” virtually, we make ourselves smaller, using the clever equivalent of a mirror to not notice our diminished relevance.

Most social media sites only give us only the illusion of connection. This is perhaps one reason movies, sports and modern narratives are so attractive: we can at least witness people in actual “places” doing more with their lives than exercising their thumbs. Spending time with young children also a helps. In their early years children reflect our core nature by seeking direct and undivided attention; no virtual parenting, please. In expecting more than nominal indifference they may be more like their grandparents than parents.

A.I. pollutes the idea of authorship

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Among more changes awaited next year, Chen described a “new chatty assistant” from an A. I. firm. The software is called Chat-GPT, which can allow a nearly sentient chatbot to act as a person’s “research assistant,” or maybe generate business proposals, or even write research papers. He’s enthusiastic about how these kinds of programs will “streamline people’s work flows.”  But I suspect these require us to put our minds in idle: no longer burdened with functioning as an agency of thought.  Apparently the kinks to be worked out would be no more than technical, freeing a person from using complex problem-solving skills. Indeed, the “work” of a computer generated report cannot be said to come from the person at all. As with so many message assistants, A.I. pollutes the idea of authorship. Who is in charge of the resulting verbal action?  Hello Hal.

Consider how much worse it is for teachers of logic, writing, grammar, vocabulary, research and rhetoric, let alone their students. All ought to be engaged in shaping minds that are disciplined, smart about sources, and able to apply their life experiences to new circumstances. It is no wonder that the increasing presence of intellectual fakery makes some college degrees nearly meaningless. Paying for an A.I.-generated college paper is bad enough; generating plans for action from a self-writing Word program is a nightmare for all of us who expect our interlocutors to be competent, conscious and moral free agents.

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Plurality, Triangulation and the Truth

Anyone in an open society has the advantage of seeing what Putin and his nation cannot. One of the glories of an open society is that information travels easily and mostly unencumbered.

American intelligence reports note that Vladimir Putin has functionally locked himself and his nation behind a media firewall, afraid to let his citizens hear what the world knows. The Russian dictator is notorious for keeping his own council.  But it seems worse this time, with many of his aides apparently willing to be the bearer of bad news. So even though he has initiated the human catastrophe of the Ukraine war, he and many Russians may still know little of the horrors that have been unleashed. As the New York Times’ Tom Friedman recently noted, “Putin, it turns out, [has] no clue what world he was living in, no clue about the frailties of his own system, no clue how much the whole free, democratic world could and would join the fight against him in Ukraine, and no clue, most of all, about how many people would be watching.” Meanwhile, most of the gains Russia achieved in the last 20 years are being rolled back by sanctions imposed by the world’s democracies.

By contrast, ordinary citizens in most of the rest of the developed world could fill him about the aimless marauding of the Russian Army. Most anyone in an open society has the advantage of seeing what Putin and his nation cannot. One of the glories of free societies is that information travels freely and mostly unencumbered. The democracies of the world take access to a multitude of sources doing credible reporting as their birthright. Individual sources may not always be accurate. But without much effort, citizens can “triangulate” between multiple sources to find truths that seem to be reasonably solid. If a conservative-leaning source confirms the same conclusion as a more liberal outlet, we can judge that the news is probably accurate.  If one outlet plays favorites, a thoughtful reader–and their are too few–will cross check with other sources before reaching a conclusion.

Now, imagine living in a prison where the only loudspeaker ever heard is controlled by the guards. Welcome to North Korea or Russia, trying to impose the medieval values of top-down control on their citizens.

In no particular order, here are some easily accessible news-gathering outlets, available mostly for free to Americans via their ubiquitous computers, and key websites like YouTube. All outlets on this partial list are doing original reporting in English from Ukraine and Eastern Europe:

  France 24

  BBC  (U.K.)

 Agence France-Presse (AFP)

  Associated Press

  MSNBC/NBC

  CNN

  New York Times

  NHK (Japan)

Washington Post

Reuters

The New Yorker

  Deutsche Welle (Germany)

  The Guardian

And there are so many more:  NPR, CBC (Canada), PBS, Fox News, Sky News, ABC, CBS, ABC News (Australia), The Atlantic, Channel 4 News (UK), ITV, and others.

Free access to the press is a good reminder of why we protect our freedoms. The media firewall denying Russian citizens the same kind of access is as good an indicator as any of a failed state.