I'd wholeheartedly agree with that statement in the context it was made in, but surely everyone would admit that most of our technological improvements since he's made that quote in the early 2000s have objectively worsed our societies overall, no?
Social media has made conspiracy theories into somthing akin to a virus, and every year more people start to subscribe to them. Even if the theories have been throughly debunked, they're still gaining a larger audience with every year.
While I'd pretty much never be willing to give up my phone at this point, anyone with a critical mind will have to admit that our helpful distraction device has very real impact on the well being of the society at large. And not in a good way -- at the very least if you're looking at the society as a whole.
Discourse keeps getting more polarizing and what went for "populism" pre 2000 is pretty much table stakes for what goes for a discussion, currently.
Really, he made that statement in the time when people were talking about how "the internet will improve [everything]". In early 2000s, nobody i heard of realized how the internet would actually influence us as a society
Social media has made conspiracy theories into somthing akin to a virus, and every year more people start to subscribe to them. Even if the theories have been throughly debunked, they're still gaining a larger audience with every year.
While I'd pretty much never be willing to give up my phone at this point, anyone with a critical mind will have to admit that our helpful distraction device has very real impact on the well being of the society at large. And not in a good way -- at the very least if you're looking at the society as a whole.
Discourse keeps getting more polarizing and what went for "populism" pre 2000 is pretty much table stakes for what goes for a discussion, currently.
Really, he made that statement in the time when people were talking about how "the internet will improve [everything]". In early 2000s, nobody i heard of realized how the internet would actually influence us as a society