"Like"

“Like” it or not, we are now in an age of mass communication, available to just about everybody who lives in any half-way modern society. What differentiates this age of mass communication from its founding fathers in the radio and television electronic age of mass communication is that now anybody can participate. The Internet gave birth to new programs and new platforms that permit all of us to have a voice capable of going around the globe in a matter of seconds. Think how far we’ve come in just a mere half century, when mass communication consisted of worldwide distribution of a newspaper-that was actually made of paper and was physically transported by trains, planes, or trucks to reach the masses. Then came the electronic age of radio, followed by television. In the beginning even television was limited to landlocked broadcasts dependent on transmitter  relay stations. Eventually intercontinental cable and fiber-optic cable cut down the time of mass broadcasts, but it was nothing compared to today’s split-second digital micro-wave technology that works through a complicated systems of satellite relays. Really remarkable!! And who knows what will be next in the future of communication technology.

I often stand back in complete awe at the amount of information we have available to us via the Internet. Mankind has never experienced this type of broad access to so much information. Mankind has never been able to share information so widely or with so much speed. I am not one to criticize the Internet, or the social media networks that came into existence as the natural outgrowth of computer technology. Far from it- I believe this is transformative and will mark a real advance for humanity. It would be hypocritical of me to denounce these advances, considering I use them with great pleasure and, in fact am using it now to share this essay. But that is not to say that I’m completely comfortable with all ways it is used, or comfortable with some of the unintended consequences these technologies have brought us.

I tend to think that we are somewhat like young children with a fancy new toy we haven’t totally figured out just yet. We seem to be fumbling around with the parts without determining how it all goes together, and how it works. We have something new and very exciting, but we haven’t discovered how to integrate it into our lives in healthy ways. So we just keep experimenting with our new toy trying to have it make sense and figure out better ways to use it. Perhaps our fascination with the speed and availability of communications has caused us to turn away from other intellectual pursuits and habits we engaged in before these technologies took our attention. I see these kinds of issues played out in places like Facebook. I don’t want to pick on Facebook, but it seems Facebook is the best example of mass communication without the benefit of old-fashioned intellectual integrity.

 I got to thinking how easy it is to see a post put up by a Facebook “friend” or even a friend-of-a-friend who just hits that “like” button without much thought. When I first started using Facebook it was almost entirely made up of posts from family and friends who were sharing some item from their personal lives. They might share family photos, family news, or just personal tidbits. In that vein, Facebook became the MySpace for the masses and grew into a huge sensation- relatively easy to use, and widely popular. Networks of friends and friends-of-friends expanded our social reach in some good ways. It enabled us to be in touch with old friends and acquaintances from long ago or far away. I have noticed however how Facebook is now populated with many more commercial, political, or “issue” posts. And I suppose that’s OK too. These “issue” posts have actually been able to mobilize worthy social movements that might not have otherwise never gotten off the ground, let alone ever been recognized. Facebook enables us to see things that are of interest to us and reflect our own desires for information, activities, or points-of-view. I have a few that I follow with regularity too.

Of concern are posts that pop up on my page from friends who have hit that “like” button, or the “share” button, and whom I suspect have not thoroughly checked out the source material behind the posts. As easy as Facebook can be to share information, it can easily be coopted by unscrupulous or down-right offensive sites which count on the user just seeing the single message and not understanding the people and the underlying message that spawned it. I’m particularly sensitive to some conservative political messages, but I know that the same thing can happen with progressive sites too. For example, each time I see a post that calls for us to “Impeach Obama” or "take back our Country", I find myself clicking the original source site to see what they are really espousing. Sadly, I often find openly racist or offensive messaging on the original site. I won’t give specific examples in this essay as I don’t want to offend any Facebook friends who most probably have spread these ideas unintentionally. I have also seen sites that seem to put out an otherwise innocuous message only to dig deeper and see violent or misogynistic material. In another example some of the sites that I prefer occasionally have posts that I won’t “share” or “like” because I know the source might go too far for some- or  it just doesn’t truly reflect my thinking.  For example, I won’t share or “like” some post on my page that suggests “religion is the root of all evil”. First of all, “all’ is a big word and I don’t want to misuse it-  and even though I have my own thoughts on the matter, I find it intellectually dishonest and just plain lazy to express my thoughts on such a complex topic in one slogan I didn’t even write. 

I’m always a bit saddened when I see a post from a Facebook friend that contains offensive, racist, or violent messages. I go back and forth as to whether I should “Unfriend” the sender or just let it be. I truly don’t want that kind of message on my page, and I try to believe the sender probably just didn’t know what they were posting. But I know too that we should all be responsible about what we post. It is one of the dilemmas of social relationships this new technology has given us.

One of the unfortunate by-products of this new mass communication and sites like Facebook is that it actually encourages us to be lazy. We are seduced into pushing that “like” button because it is easy to be taken in by a slogan and just say to all of our friends and their friends, “yea, that sounds good to me- and I’m letting you know it”. Perhaps we have just come to the place in the Internet world where there is so much information- so many opinions that we simply won’t take the time or don’t have the time to dig just a little bit deeper for the true messages and meanings.

In that old-fashioned world of intellectual integrity I mentioned above, bad ideas or false information exited then too, but they didn’t spread quite so fast because the mechanics of mass communication gave us an opportunity to check things out and rethink ideas before they got out there too far to retrieve. Another very unfortunate by-product of the computer age of mass communication is the growing belief that every idea or thought is just as valid as every other idea or thought. After all, one might come to believe that anything that CAN be put out there has equivalent validity to anything else simply because it’s out there too. In the days of real journalism, reporters had to answer to editors who demanded to know the sources and confirm that they were credible. Those of us who remember the Watergate era know that Woodward and Bernstein investigated for months before Ben Bradlee would let them go to print. Now anyone with a laptop or an iPhone is instantly published. Ideas that are widespread come to be believed based on the scope of their disbursement, rather than the quality of the information. We are all subject to the manipulation of ideas such a world makes possible. Recently  I heard an excerpt of a speech the President made wherein he was making statements (seemingly) offensive and insulting to the middle class. These excerpts were making their way around the Internet and social media as “proof” of the President’s “disdain” for the American people. As it turns out the excerpts were taken totally out of context and the President was actually arguing the opposite point.  But such is the way of instant mass communications- and the purveyors of these hoaxes knew it.

In this brave new world of the Internet, Facebook, and instant mass communication it would good to stop a moment and consider how we can blend these new technologies with traditional ways of thinking and educating. In particular, it is vitally important in this new age of technology to resurrect the art of critical thinking. Our children are incredibly adept at managing the technology of the day. It’s an old joke, that if you want to learn how your new computer works, just ask a 9 year-old kid! As we have come to rely on the technology and “reformed” education to enable our children to pass the standardized competency tests we have left many of the thinking and reasoning skills by the side of the road. They just aren’t taught. To give a recent example that speaks to the lack of reasoning ability, and also speaks to the creation of false equivalencies, consider the issue of climate change. 99 out of a hundred climate scientists have collected data to show man’s activities (with fossil fuels- and greenhouse gases) is creating accelerated and devastating climate change. Instead of accepting the overwhelming data, the fossil fuel industries (and Rush Limbaugh) insist it’s a hoax. They say, “don’t believe the data-don’t believe that putting hundreds of millions of tons of chemicals and pollutants in the air every year will actually change the air. Instead believe the one guy out of a hundred (who works for us) who says it isn’t so.” That is not reasonable- and one out of a hundred is not equivalency. But our use of mass communication methods suggests it is.

I’m hoping our wisdom will begin to catch up to our technology. I’m fairly confident it will, as it always has. A case in point- we knew how to transplant a human heart before we knew how to make wise decisions about when to do it, and who we should do it for. Information and knowledge will be the currency of the future. If we begin to look at the sources, dig a bit deeper, use our reasoning abilities, and teach our children the lost art of critical thinking; questioning the assumptions of others and challenging our own assumptions; our communications and our relationships with nature and each other will surely improve. That’s something we can all “like”. 

Thanks for looking in.