
I Blame the Babel Fish - darwhy
http://jacquesmattheij.com/i-blame-the-babel-fish
======
kstenerud
Sorry, but I just don't buy it.

We've fought countless wars throughout our past with surprising frequency. It
diminished in Europe as they consolidated from a loose collection of warring
states to nation states with foreign policies and alliances (not to mention
the printing press). The only big change was in the brutality of war as the
participants changed from a professional army to a conscripted army starting
with the French revolution, but that has little to do with the ease of
expressing ideas (unless you count the spreading of the idea of a conscripted
army).

Since that time, the frequency of wars has steadily decreased, especially
after the Vietnam war (due to the dissemination of inconvenient information).

People have listened to far-left and far-right broadcasts ever since
broadcasting became a thing. Internet echo chambers are nothing new. Before
that it was pamphlets and newspapers, and before that, street criers and
public houses.

The world is steadily becoming a safer place. The only difference is that as
we become safer, our perception of "safety" becomes further and further
warped. Things that would have been shrugged off even 50 years ago are looked
upon with horror and fear today.

------
jerf
Is it really _causing_ polarization, or is it causing more groups of people
who were previously separated to become less separated and thus bringing the
already-existing differences into a context where they can't be ignored?

I think if you ground yourself in history, and look around the world, you will
see that there were _plenty_ of very real differences between people and
groups of people in both spatial and temporal directions, and anybody who had
the idea that "everybody in the world is mostly the same and generally agrees
with each other (and me)" was simply unaware of how deeply false that has
always been.

If you look at it that way, a reflexive closing of the ranks after these
decades of increasing contact with others is quite predictable, and I'm pretty
sure you can expect it to continue apace for the next couple of decades at a
minimum, and there's basically nothing you can do about it except somehow
manage to restore the communication environment back to around the 1950s or
earlier.

(After that, I expect another wave of internationalism similar to the one that
currently exists (albeit sputtering and fading) between the elites of the US
and the EU, but much more widely spread. But before that can happen, a lot
more countries need to get much, much wealthier.)

~~~
dredmorbius
Isn't one pretty much the other?

I look at the overall dynamic as epidemiological. You need both the disease
agent _and_ the transmission vector. But if you've got a latent agent, and a
suitable host, then providing the vector _will_ trigger the pandemic.

If you look back at history, you can view the Inquisition and 30 Years War
both as attempts to retain ideological purity in an environment where the
spread of undesireable agents (ideologies) was promoted by a new reproduction
and transmission system (mostly: printing, also increasing literacy rates).

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisition](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisition)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/30_years_war](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/30_years_war)

~~~
jerf
"Isn't one pretty much the other?"

In terms of the "polarization", no. Either it was mostly pre-existing and
unrealized, or increased communication created the polarization. I'm saying
that the communication revealed already-existing polarization rather than is
creating it. Give people 1000 years ago a sudden total Facebook and I have no
reason whatsoever to believe that they'd all discover their one true unity of
belief; I daresay they'd find even _greater_ polarization.

Of course it isn't 100% one or the other, and theoretically some sort of 50/50
situation could be the case, but I'm not particularly convinced the Internet
is creating polarization to speak of. As I said, I think the idea that people
were non-polarized and basically agreed with each other has always been false,
even in something as specific as the US. Parents have voted Republican while
their children have voted Democrat for a long time.

Which also means, don't expect it to stop anytime soon. Generally when people
say they want the polarization to decrease, they _really_ mean "I want
everybody to acknowledge the intrinsic and obvious rightness of my position
and agree to share it"; I mean, nobody who decries polarization ever seems to
volunteer to switch _their_ personal beliefs that I've seen. But it turns out
that while that was always a fantasy, we can now all see up close and personal
just _how much_ that's a total fantasy that isn't going to happen.

~~~
dredmorbius
If you change one element of a system and the result of that change is a
sudden and significant change in system dynamics, I'd say you're splitting
hairs in allocating causality.

Communications created _manifested polarisation_ , if you will. The previous
state didn't have that. Comms created the new situation.

~~~
jerf
But I'd say in return that's a serious goal-post hike. When people write these
sorts of articles and decry modern social media for "polarization", they are
clearly claiming that it is creating it where it didn't exist before. It is a
totally different problem if it is revealing something that has always existed
in a way that is harder to ignore. The moral responsibility for Facebook et al
_creating_ polarization is much greater than for Facebook _discovering_ the
already-existing polarization.

Also, if one believes this is a problem to be solved, the solutions for
"Facebook is creating polarization" and "Facebook is revealing already-
existing polarization" are _totally_ different. And wildly different in
feasibility. There are absolutely real differences that emerge from the two
possibilities. One situation could be solved by just basically shutting down
the social Internet, albeit at great cost. (And other possibilities, but all
at great cost.) The other... well... there hasn't been a lot of success at
fundamentally changing human nature, and most serious attempts lately have
caused more problems than they've solved.

~~~
dredmorbius
In the case of FB, the question to me is whether or not the introduction of FB
_changes_ the dynamic.

If, say, phone and SMS-based activities simply shifted to FB, without any
significant change in scope, scale, speed, use, or outcomes ... there's a case
to be made for "the medium changed, but the behaviour didn't".

If the _behaviour itself changes_ , in scope, scale, speed, use, adoption by
specific groups, or outcomes, _then_ that out becomes far smaller.

Put another way, if there's some extant potential, say a charge differential,
or a water reservoir at elevation, and you provide a conductor or remove the
barrier keeping it from flowing -- I'd call that a causal relationship.

Or are you saying that a dam failure resulting in a valley being flooded out
is simple a realisation of the existing potential and polarisation of high and
low elevations?

I'm not buying that.

Media enables. And if costs are reduced, it enables that which was simply not
previously possible.

------
ChuckMcM
I particularly resonate with the 'exceptionally large echo chambers'. My
parents whom I love dearly have surrounded themselves in the interwebs by
people who present a message of hate clothed in the veneer of patriotism. As
far as they are concerned "everyone" thinks that way, it is damaging indeed.

~~~
kbutler
And what echo chamber would they say you've surrounded yourself with?

~~~
ChuckMcM

       > And what echo chamber would they say you've 
       > surrounded yourself with?
    

If they were being dismissive probably Pollyanna liberalism. Generally though,
since we have a healthy relationship, we talk about the differences in the
messaging we are exposed to and discuss the underpinnings of those messages.
On many things we have a high degree of alignment in our views.

For example, we both agree strongly that our political institutions have
become dysfunctional through partisan extremism. I tend to be idealistic in
that I strongly believe the tools to "fix" that are built into the system
itself (and can argue that point using the recent election as evidence to
support that claim) but they feel strongly that structural changes to how the
institutions are built is the best solution.

~~~
kbutler
My extended family has a similar spread of opinion, and I'm glad we can
discuss and accept the differences. I think it's important to identify and
interact with people you respect who have opposing views.

If you can simply dismiss differences in opinion as based on ignorance, lack
of insight, prejudice, echo chamber effects, etc., you don't have to evaluate
your own opinions as much.

And repeated exposure to weak opposition to your opinion also serves to
strengthen them, with a kind of meme-inoculation effect.

------
tarr11
Some thoughts on the internet from Adams' himself (1999)

[http://www.douglasadams.com/dna/19990901-00-a.html](http://www.douglasadams.com/dna/19990901-00-a.html)

~~~
smhenderson
Not found?

The requested URL /dna/19990901-00-a.html was not found on this server.

Apache/2.4.10 (Debian) Server at www.douglasadams.com Port 80

Would love to see what you were talking about, love Douglas Adams!

~~~
glandium
[https://web.archive.org/web/20160923110912/http://www.dougla...](https://web.archive.org/web/20160923110912/http://www.douglasadams.com:80/dna/19990901-00-a.html)

~~~
smhenderson
Thank you.

------
cyberferret
I go back and re-read DNA's HHGTTG series from the first book to the last one
at least once every year or two. Upon each reading, it becomes less and less
of a hilarious poke at the future possibilities, but rather a sad reflection
of what we have become.

I remember the first time I read the books 3 decades ago, I yearned for such a
device as the Guide. But now I have the very device that I carry with me
everywhere (albeit with a shiny Apple logo on it, instead of the MaxiMegalon
publishing corp.), and I can't help but wonder if it has made my life better
or worse.

Excuse me, I am just going to go outside and wait for Wowbagger the Infinitely
Prolonged to show up and insult me...

~~~
pacaro
One of the few good things my father did was to record the original radio play
broadcasts onto compact cassettes. They're long since overplayed and
stretched, and I don't have a player, but I listened to them over and over
again in the 80s and 90s

~~~
jacquesm
Eventually they were released on CD.

~~~
pacaro
Hmmm $160 on amazon.com and £45 on amazon.co.uk — good job I'll be in the uk
this summer

Also the best theme tune ever!

~~~
cyberferret
"Journey of the Sorcerer" \- written by The Eagles, no less!

------
acabal
This is a very timely post for me, since I was discussing this idea with a
friend just a few weeks ago. I left that conversation thinking that on the
whole, maybe, just maybe, the internet is becoming a net negative force on
society.

Yes, lots of good has been done--Wikipedia, other outlets of free culture,
email and its decentralized model, etc.--but on the whole, I think that _just
maybe_ it's poised to do more bad than good. As this post mentions, the
internet and its promise of a free and instant global megaphone for any idea
whatsoever is a powerful tool for manipulation, deceit, and power struggle on
a grand scale. The human psyche isn't yet ready for this kind of instant
firehose communication, but it seems to crave it, and our darling internet
megacorporations are happy and eager to provide it, carefully tuned to be as
addictive as possible.

Furthermore the human population on a grand scale doesn't have the critical
thinking and reasoning skills necessary to filter this firehose: huge swaths
of people in the world don't have good access to education, and in the US at
least, with our high schools already at the bottom of the barrel and our
universities increasingly becoming diploma mills/expensive trade schools, I
don't see the education situation improving. But critical thinking and
reasoning skills, which are the foundation of a good education, are exactly
what we need to combat this.

I grew up in the Bay Area, and my entire life has been centered around
computers, the internet, and the good they can do. It was really saddening for
me to reach this conclusion. I hope I'm wrong, and I hope we can do something
to remedy things. But these problems are largely cultural/human nature
problems, not technology problems.

~~~
rtpg
This isn't the first time it's happened. The printing press and radio both
were followed by waves of "fake news", conspiracy and the like.

But ultimately people stop buying the National Enquirer. The FCC shows up to
enforce some basic rules about truth telling and libel.

And... Facebook changes their algorithms to stop allowing crap to bubble up?
Twitter decides to actually clean up their platform at least a bit?

Places like /pol/ can exist without them being mainstream, but when mainstream
platforms host fringe views because '1st ammendment lol', then you start
having issues.

In "the old internet", if people were being toxic, you'd just kick them off
the forum, out of the chat.

~~~
acabal
I don't disagree, but the difference with the internet is that it's so easy to
be anonymous, or at least hard enough to unmask that it's not worth it, and
the cost is almost nothing.

With a printing press, you have to procure materials, a printer, wide
distribution of physical items, etc., and all of those contacts mean that
someone somewhere can probably point fingers if the law wants to find you. But
try finding the people behind the 10,000 anonymous Reddit throwaway accounts,
half in foreign countries. Or the guy writing fake news articles that get
picked up by Twitter, who paid for his hosting account in Bitcoin and lives in
Thailand. Radio is more anonymous, but can't be instantly shared in the same
way things can online. A friend would have to tell you the frequency, you'd
have to make time in your day to tune in and listen, and if a pirate station
gets shut down there's not always another one lined up to take over instantly.

That's the problem here--nearly free, instantaneous, global, _mostly
anonymous_ communication, that friends and family can share into your inbox
instantly and effortlessly. Firehose after firehose turned on, aimed directly
at you, by people wearing masks. That's why this situation is different from
the printing press or the radio.

~~~
rtpg
my theory has always been that 95% of the issues are generated by people not
_that_ motivated. Like if you get banned from twitter a couple of times then
you'll just kinda give up.

Or you'll just say "twitter ain't for me, gonna go for nazi mastodon".

Infowars exists, there's always going to be a platform for these people, but
it's more about making their efforts less worthwhile in other parts of the
net.

------
anothercomment
"Why is the world moving towards a more authoritarian kind of rule all of a
sudden, and why is this happening now."

Is it really all of a sudden? Counting communism as authoritarian (as it
always ends in dictatorship), strong moves towards authoritarianism have been
happening for over 100 years? I guess they have happened since the US
proclamation of independence and the French Revolution, and before that the
world was already authoritarian because there were churches and kings.

Perhaps US independence and French Revolution were flukes, and people (or at
least rulers) craving for authoritarianism is the norm.

Perhaps it is simply the herd nature of humans that is to blame? They either
want to be leaders or have a leader to look up to?

------
Mz
_We seem to need some time to react, time to grow some thicker skin lest we’re
overly vulnerable and allow ourselves to be goaded into making big mistakes,
such as accidentally empowering authoritarian regimes, which tend to be very
capable when it comes to using communications systems for propaganda
purposes._

Or, perhaps the move towards authoritarian regimes is, itself, a reaction to
that sense of vulnerability. I have read that during times of crisis in tribal
cultures, the men in charge close ranks and get a lot more controlling
generally. I think that bit came from some psychology class I had.

In other words, if this feels out of control, some people will react by
wanting to be controlling. That can go bad places.

------
vacri
> _Douglas Adams totally nailed it when he wrote that removing barriers to
> communication could become the cause of conflict._

Where are all the really big wars since the advent of mass media? There's a
large amount of forest-for-the-trees-ing here. In our domestic politics, we've
grown more polarised, but our societies in general are more harmonious, more
integrated. One of the problems the globe is facing is that the lack of wars
has removed one throttle on human population growth. Removing barriers to
communication has significantly improved civil rights as well.

I guess my point is that just because things aren't perfect now, doesn't mean
that they're worse than they were previously.

~~~
jacquesm
I think you could easily make the case that without mass propaganda World War
II would have turned out completely different. There are some serious echoes
of the past in the present.

~~~
vacri
WWII's mass propaganda did _not_ have the 'zero bar' suggested in your
article. It was state propaganda, not 'the babel fish'.

It's also not like WWII Europe was a 'harmonious group' (or Europe of almost
any era). I think that's a core error in the article; that before the babel-
fishing internet our societies were harmonious.

------
myrandomcomment
One of my all time favorite books. If you have not see the BBC TV series of it
I highly recommend it.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_th...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy_\(TV_series\))

So this is an interesting read you have here. I think the largest issues is
that because of our technology we have allowed everyone to only hear their
option. If you are in the US and you are conservative you watch Fox, if you
are liberal you watch MSNBC and if you are in the middle CNN. It was not
always this way. You came home and turned on ABC, CBS or NBC news and the news
was delivered in a non-partisan fact based method. Then you could debt it with
your family. You did not get force feed view points.

Today you never have to hear anything you do not like which leads to a closed
minded view of everything.

~~~
jerf
"You came home and turned on ABC, CBS or NBC news and the news was delivered
in a non-partisan fact based method"

Getting news from only one partisan viewpoint is not the same thing as getting
"non-partisan news".

~~~
myrandomcomment
You are splitting hairs. The point was there was no "tailored" view of the
news. There where 3 and they had standards that they all followed. We do not
have that anymore, we have infotainment, not the news.

~~~
mquander
Really? What about tabloids? What about Rush Limbaugh? What about Bill
O'Reilly? A shitload of people consumed primarily absurdly terrible news
sources before they were on the Internet.

~~~
jacquesm
That's absolutely true but the horizontal peer-to-peer connection wasn't made
it was mostly one-way.

------
rybosome
I can't count the number of times I've quoted this exact passage from
Hitchhiker's Guide when bemoaning the current state of things. I'm not sure if
Adams knew how prescient his words were, but it appears to be true (at least
for humans) and is profoundly sad.

------
sevensor
An interesting historical analogy -- in the decades leading up to the Great
War, telegraph use exploded, transoceanic cables were laid, suddenly everyone
could talk to everyone. Communications technology moved faster than political
organization. War followed.

------
dredmorbius
There's a ton of truth to this, and it's something I've come to realise,
strongly, especially over the course of past U.S. election cycle and
subsequent developments.

Media _are how society communicates_ , and if you change the messaging and
control elements of a system, you're going to change its function,
tremendously.

Mind, that's not a _new_ concept, just one that I've finally grokked.

I've just run across Darnton and Ross's _Revolution in Print: The Press in
France, 1775-1800_.

[http://www.nytimes.com/1989/07/09/books/after-the-
revolution...](http://www.nytimes.com/1989/07/09/books/after-the-revolution-
the-arts-lived-on-and-the-censors-were-silenced.html)

Earlier, there's Elizabeth Eisenstein's _The Printing Press as an Agent of
Change_ :

[http://www.worldcat.org/title/printing-press-as-an-agent-
of-...](http://www.worldcat.org/title/printing-press-as-an-agent-of-change-
communications-and-cultural-transformations-in-early-modern-europe-volumes-i-
and-ii/oclc/856017228)

(The 1968 article inspiring this is a shorter synopsis of the concept:
[http://www.worldcat.org/title/some-conjectures-about-the-
imp...](http://www.worldcat.org/title/some-conjectures-about-the-impact-of-
printing-on-western-society-and-thought-a-preliminary-report/oclc/60377645))

Eisenstein worked significantly from McLuhan's _The Gutenberg Galaxy_
[http://www.worldcat.org/title/gutenberg-
galaxy/oclc/98079330...](http://www.worldcat.org/title/gutenberg-
galaxy/oclc/980793302)

Clay Shirky's formulation is "I study people on the Internet, which is to say,
I watch people argue". His view is that the more people can communicate with
one another, the more you can find someone you disagree with.
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CEN4XNth61o](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CEN4XNth61o)
(starting at ~2m)

[https://www.xkcd.com/386](https://www.xkcd.com/386)

So:

1\. This stuff matters. Tremendously.

2\. The responses to technology are not uniformly good.

3\. _Media revolutions change societies._ It's not a question of "how do we
get back to status quo ante?", it's "what will be the new status quo".

4\. See #2: #3's implications need not be an improvement.

5\. This stuff is covered, _in excruciating but vitally significant detail_ ,
in a massive amount of literature dating to the Ancient Greeks and before. All
those Communications Studies majors you (and I) laughed at at Uni? There's
actually a there there. (And if you want to catch up a bit: MOOC ICS (if you
can find the series link):
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NhbHHpKPQL4](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NhbHHpKPQL4)

6\. This isn't, as some of the kids today are claiming, just old people
getting old. It's kind of a big deal. It's not the _first_ big deal, but it
also helps put in perspective how _earlier_ big deals were big deals. Like
what happens, say, when net literacy increases from about 25% to upwards of
90%?
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848)

7\. Demagoguery and Fascism. The role of mass media in the spread of both is
profound.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demagogue](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demagogue)
[https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230800939_5](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230800939_5)

8\. The power and draw of epistemic systems. As my friend Woozle pointed out:
as communications gain in users and influence, they attract those who would
seek to use them to personal, financial, or political advantage. There's
almost an evolutionary cycle of this.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/5wg0hp/when_ep...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/5wg0hp/when_epistemic_systems_gain_social_and_political/)

________________________________

More by way of a bibliography:

James Gleick, The Information.

Marshal McLuhan. Various.

MacKay, Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everyone

Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change.

Jeremy Norman, The History of Information. A simply amazing website I've just
stumbled across. The past 2.8 million years of information and media. Some
4,000+ articles, and 92 themes. Bernays, Propaganda and Public Relations
[http://historyofinformation.com](http://historyofinformation.com)

Popper, The Great Transformation and others.

J.S. Mill, several.

Charles Perrow, Ordinary Accidents and Making America (I think).

Arnold Toynbee, Lectures on the Industrial Revolution.

I've been trying to organise my own thoughts on this, the best effort (a
stream-of-consciousness rant some months back) to date -- _not_ good, mind:
[https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/t7qwp_va18sogdmm_xsslg](https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/t7qwp_va18sogdmm_xsslg)

