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Wednesday, July 20, 2016 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
“There will be time, there
will be time,
To prepare a face to meet
the faces that you meet.”
TS Eliot, The Lovesong of
J. Alfred Prufrock
A few months ago, in a
moment of indiscretion, I
joined Facebook.
For years I had avoided
it. In the beginning I stayed
far, far away because my
former job required a clan-
destine approach to my per-
sonal life and information,
and then later because I just
didn’t see the need for it.
But times change, the world
keeps spinning around, and
after continual prodding by
friends and family — and
with an eye toward using
the platform as a means to
broaden my writing audi-
ence — I finally caved in and
signed up.
A large part of me now
regrets that decision.
Facebook, it appears, is
one of the principle drivers
behind the phenomenon of
the shrinking, if not — to
borrow a phrase — closing
of the American mind. They
are not alone, of course,
those Facebook engineers
and their competitors in vari-
ous Silicon Valley skunk-
works have dreamed up any
number of social sites, all
of which have been cleverly
designed to operate on the
same dopamine response as
methamphetamines. Like
and share. Like and share.
Like and share, with an ever-
diminishing return after the
initial high.
Today, in an historical
twist, we are faced with a
strange contradiction — the
notion that even as we drown
in information, and are swept
away by the speed in which
it arrives, we actually know
less and less. The conversa-
tions on Facebook, where
they exist in any recogniz-
able form, quickly spin off
into insults and personal
attacks, or are reduced to
highly dubious and un-cited
facts to prove even more
questionable points.
From the regrettable and
damaging 24-hour television
news cycle, to any number
of web-based “news” ser-
vices and social media noti-
fications, to livestreamed cell
phone video, who can pos-
sibly sort through the daily
bombardment of memes
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vying for our attention and
claiming to represent truth?
And isn’t that the point
of information, for us to fil-
ter through it judiciously and
arrive at some element of
truth?
And what, exactly, is a
meme? British evolutionary
biologist Richard Dawkins
has forwarded a theory of
memes as “simple units of
cultural information whose
primary characteristic is the
ability to replicate and spread
virally through their interac-
tion with other memes…
When you plant a fertile
meme in my mind you lit-
erally parasitize my brain.”
And here’s the rub — the one
that should probably scare
you: “Truth and proof are
barely criteria in the compe-
tition among memes.”
Isn’t that Facebook, par-
ticularly after some contro-
versial event, somewhere in
our country?
This robotic invasion of
Facebook memes (and who
knows where they come
from) seems to be unstop-
pable. The parasite is taking
over the host.
The Book of Face is a
world of memes competing
on a grand scale. These “sim-
ple units of cultural informa-
tion” invade our computers
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and our minds without any
necessary vetting or intellec-
tual challenge, merely slam-
ming into each other and
competing for survival. And
nobody gets any smarter. We
look at them and laugh, or we
cry, or we rage against them.
From a distance, we act
and look like heroin addicts
on a park bench. And don’t
believe for a second that the
engineers at Facebook and
elsewhere don’t know this,
and seek to capitalize on
parasitizing your brain, and
maybe even, God help us,
with an eye to eventually
controlling it.
In a world of self-driving
cars and the rise of artificial
intelligence, that isn’t as far-
fetched as it sounds.
I was in graduate school
when email swept the planet,
and I well remember sit-
ting in a room full of other
students being instructed on
how to use it. We laughed
out loud, thinking it was the
most ridiculous thing we’d
ever seen. What use could we
possibly find for it?
Now, of course, email is
going the way of the 8-track,
largely replaced with an
array of memes, instant mes-
saging, and emojis, and if
our means of communicating
is any indication of what is
happening inside our minds
— to our ability to formulate
complicated reasoning and
articulate it with some degree
of art and persuasion — we
are definitely in trouble.
I get it. Facebook is a
tool, like any other, but
dumbing the world and its
issues down to the size of
a meme — which can be a
photo, a video, or a rant —
does nothing to improve the
manner, nor the quality with
which we exchange compli-
cated information and ideas.
It’s the principle reason I
still love books, and print
media, because with print it
takes time and effort to build
an argument, to read it and
digest it, and to formulate
an intelligent and informed
response.
Print media slows the
world down, and makes it
bigger again.
Facebook isn’t going
anywhere, and I’m still on
it, but I’m coming to see it
more and more as a peddler
of dope, who only tells lies,
and is happy to give free
samples on the merest chance
we’ll develop an addiction.
And if we get hooked, each
and every time we like and
share an unexamined meme,
Facebook makes us liars,
too.
Dr. Thomas R. Rheuben
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