OPINION
6A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, MARCH 15, 2017
Founded in 1873
DAVID F. PERO, Publisher & Editor
LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor
BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
Water
under
the bridge
Compiled by Bob Duke
From the pages of Astoria’s daily newspapers
Resist being enslaved by
the internet, your phone
By ROSS DOUTHAT
New York Times News Service
S
The Daily Astorian/File
A crowd of onlookers gathers at the edge of a landslide on the corner
of First and Commercial streets that worsened significantly last night.
10 years ago this week — 2007
As the landslide at First and Commercial continues to move, it is
wreaking havoc on streets in the vicinity.
So far, no homes have been damaged, but huge cracks and fissures
appeared on Duane Street during the weekend and a stretch of Bond
Street below the slide has been closed by falling debris.
Clatsop Community College will serve pie in honor of Pi
Wednesday.
There will also be plenty of pies for pitching at “favorite”
teachers on Pi Day, a celebration of the circle, according to
CCC.
Organized by the math department, the event brings
together pie and Pi — about 3.14 — the ratio of the circum-
ference of a circle to its diameter. It recognized the mysterious
mathematical constant, a number no one has ever found the end
of, with various quizzes and activities, including pie-throwing.
In other words, on Wednesday you can have your Pi and
eat it, too.
A self-described “ham family” in Gearhart will again be able to send
and receive radio broadcasts from its home, thanks to action by the Clat-
sop County commissioners Wednesday.
The board voted to grant an exception to Steve and Kelly Larkins for
a tower supporting a ham radio antenna that violates the county’s zoning
ordinance.
The lattice-frame tower, erected last year, exceeds the county’s 35-foot
structure height limit for residential zones. But the Larkinses argued that
state and federal rules should allow them the use of the tower, without
which their radio signal can only reach a short distance.
50 years ago — 1967
The historic log at the courthouse, marked with dates of
events in the county’s past, is being replaced by a new one. The
log was beginning to fall apart due to rot.
County commissioner Hiram Johnson said a new log has
been purchased from Crown Zellerbach Corp. and will be put
in place under the also rotted wooden cover soon. The pole-sup-
port roof will have to be replaced, Johnson said.
Fifty-nine girls, aged 16 to 21, all from Western states, were getting
acquainted with things at Tongue Point Job Corps Center Wednesday.
Most of them arrived by bus Tuesday evening, the rest came in by later
bus Wednesday morning.
Hopes for barge traffic on the Lower Columbia River are
much brighter than ever before as result of the double-barreled
announcement by Port of Astoria officials this week.
One barrel was the negotiation for a lease with Waterway
Terminals to establish a marine terminal for handling barge or
ship cargo in part of the big Pier 3 warehouse.
The other barrel was the announcement that Western Trans-
portation company and Milwaukie Railroad have established
a joint rail-barge rate for handling canned goods by barge
between Astoria and the Milwaukie line’s tracks at Longview.
These two actions put a barge line into service, with a termi-
nal here to handle its cargo, and a competitive rate that should
attract freight movement, particularly of canned fish.
o far, in my ongoing series of
columns making the case for
implausible ideas, I’ve fixed
race relations and solved the problem
of a workless working class. So now
it’s time to turn to the real threat to
the human future: the one in your
pocket or on your desk, the one you
might be reading
this column on right
now.
Search your
feelings, you know
it to be true: You
are enslaved to the
internet. Definitely if you’re young,
increasingly if you’re old, your day-
to-day, minute-to-minute existence is
dominated by a compulsion to check
email and Twitter and Facebook
and Instagram with a frequency that
bears no relationship to any commu-
nicative need.
Compulsions are rarely harmless.
The internet is not the opioid crisis;
it is not likely to kill you (unless
you’re hit by a distracted driver) or
leave you ravaged and destitute. But
it requires you to focus intensely,
furiously, and constantly on the
ephemera that fills a tiny little screen,
and experience the traditional graces
of existence — your spouse and
friends and children, the natural
world, good food and great art — in
a state of perpetual distraction.
Used within reasonable limits,
of course, these devices also offer
us new graces. But we are not using
them within reasonable limits.
They are the masters; we are not.
They are built to addict us, as social
psychologist Adam Alter’s new book
“Irresistible” points out — and to
madden us, distract us, arouse us and
deceive us. We primp and perform
for them as for a lover; we surrender
our privacy to their demands; we
wait on tenterhooks for every “like.”
The smartphone is in the saddle, and
it rides mankind.
Digital temperance
Which is why we need a social
and political movement — digital
temperance, if you will — to take
back some control.
“Temperance?” you might object,
with one eye on the latest outrage
shared by your co-partisans on social
media. “You mean, like, Prohibition?
For something everyone relies on for
their daily work and lives, that’s the
basis for our economic — hang on, I
just need to ‘favorite’ this tweet …”
No, not like Prohibition.
Temperance doesn’t have to mean
teetotaling; it can simply mean a
culture of restraint that tries to keep
a specific product in its place. And
the internet, like alcohol, may be an
example of a technology that should
be sensibly restricted in custom and
in law.
75 years ago — 1942
Twelve boys in the Astoria High School manual training department
are constructing model airplanes of wood for the Navy bureau of aeronau-
tics, along with students in numerous other U.S. high schools.
The local class, directed by William Cox, will turn out 50 of the solid
wooden models of one 30th scale size for the Navy and probably build a
few additional models for study by local airplane spotters.
The planes are intended for identification, range estimates and gun-
nery practice by the Navy. They include models of principal Allied and
Axis war plane types.
The price of crabs to fishermen advanced Tuesday from
$1.25 to $1.50 a dozen and packers said it might remain there
or near there through most of the coming crab fishing season.
Packers said the canned market was such as to justify the
boost and they hoped to try to maintain the price.
AP Photo/Matt Rourke
The Facebook logo is displayed on an iPad. In a post on Monday,
Facebook says it is prohibiting developers from using the massive
amount of data it collects on users for surveillance. This includes
using such data to monitor activists and protesters.
Of course it’s too soon to fully
know (and indeed we can never fully
know) what online life is doing to us.
It certainly delivers some social ben-
efits, some intellectual advantages,
and contributes an important share to
recent economic growth.
Our devices
we shall
always have
with us, but we
can choose the
terms. We just
have to choose
together,
to embrace
temperance
and
paternalism
both.
But there are also excellent rea-
sons to think that online life breeds
narcissism, alienation and depres-
sion, that it’s an opiate for the lower
classes and an insanity-inducing
influence on the politically engaged,
and that it takes more than it gives
from creativity and deep thought.
Meanwhile the age of the internet
has been, thus far, an era of bubbles,
stagnation and democratic decay —
hardly a golden age whose customs
must be left inviolate.
Resist the wiring
So a digital temperance move-
ment would start by resisting the
wiring of everything, and seek to
create more spaces in which internet
use is illegal, discouraged or taboo.
Toughen laws against cellphone
use in cars, keep computers out of
college lecture halls, put special
“phone boxes” in restaurants
where patrons would be expected
to deposit their devices, confiscate
smartphones being used in muse-
ums and libraries and cathedrals,
create corporate norms that strongly
discourage checking email in a
meeting.
Then there are the starker steps.
Get computers — all of them —
out of elementary schools, where
there is no good evidence that they
improve learning. Let kids learn
from books for years before they’re
asked to go online for research; let
them play in the real before they’re
enveloped by the virtual.
Then keep going. The age of
consent should be 16, not 13, for
Facebook accounts. Kids under 16
shouldn’t be allowed on gaming
networks. High school students
shouldn’t bring smartphones to
school. Kids under 13 shouldn’t
have them at all. If you want to
buy your child a cellphone, by all
means: In the new dispensation,
Verizon and Sprint will have some
great “voice-only” plans available
for minors.
I suspect that versions of these
ideas will be embraced within my
lifetime by a segment of the upper
class and a certain kind of religious
family. But the masses will still be
addicted, and the technology itself
will have evolved to hook and
immerse — and alienate and sedate
— more completely and efficiently.
But what if we decided that
what’s good for the Silicon Valley
overlords who send their kids to
a low-tech Waldorf school is also
good for everyone else? Our devices
we shall always have with us, but
we can choose the terms. We just
have to choose together, to embrace
temperance and paternalism both.
Only a movement can save you
from the tyrant in your pocket.
WHERE TO WRITE
• U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici
(D): 2338 Rayburn HOB, Washing-
ton, D.C., 20515. Phone: 202- 225-
0855. Fax 202-225-9497. District
office: 12725 SW Millikan Way,
Suite 220, Beaverton, OR 97005.
Phone: 503-469-6010. Fax 503-326-
5066. Web: bonamici.house. gov/
• U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D): 313
Hart Senate Office Building, Wash-
ington, D.C. 20510. Phone: 202-224-
3753. Web: www.merkley.senate.gov
• U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D):
221 Dirksen Senate Office Building,
Washington, D.C., 20510. Phone:
202-224-5244. Web: www.wyden.
senate.gov
• State Rep. Brad Witt (D):
State Capitol, 900 Court Street N.E.,
H-373, Salem, OR 97301. Phone:
503-986-1431. Web: www.leg.state.
or.us/witt/ Email: rep.bradwitt@
state.or.us
• State Rep. Deborah Boone (D):
900 Court St. N.E., H-481, Salem,
OR 97301. Phone: 503-986-1432.
Email: rep.deborah boone@state.
or.us District office: P.O. Box 928,
Cannon Beach, OR 97110. Phone:
503-986-1432. Web: www.leg.state.
or.us/ boone/
• State Sen. Betsy Johnson (D):
State Capitol, 900 Court St. N.E.,
S-314, Salem, OR 97301. Telephone:
503-986-1716. Email: sen.betsy john-
son@state.or.us Web: www.betsy-
johnson.com District Office: P.O.
Box R, Scappoose, OR 97056. Phone:
503-543-4046. Fax: 503-543-5296.
Astoria office phone: 503-338-1280.
• Port of Astoria: Executive
Director, 10 Pier 1 Suite 308, Asto-
ria, OR 97103. Phone: 503-741-3300.
Email: admin@portofastoria.com
• Clatsop County Board of Com-
missioners: c/o County Manager, 800
Exchange St., Suite 410, Astoria, OR
97103. Phone: 503-325-1000.