The arts bridge cultures; they're good for the economy, and they're good for fostering empathy and decency.
Julie Andrews
I was pondering all week about “the point” that I was going to make in this letter. I really felt like I was going to come up with some intellectual assessment on a connection I could see between the insights Kara Swisher provides in her book Burn Book — which gives an in-depth insight into the inner workings of the network of mostly men that unleashed the chaos of mobile internet technology upon our global society — and this interview with Jonathan Haidt (who recently wrote a book which I have not yet read, called the Anxious Society), where he sheds light on the results of these mobile internet technologies, explaining how in the year 2008 (the year the push notification was invented) happiness levels of teenagers began to decline, and how by the year 2011 (the year Instagram, the first app design for mobile only) it had plummeted.
I wanted to say something about how screwed up it was that these dudes in America were given free rein to blindly meander into the control room of human consciousness (which Jonathan Haidt explains has been rewired as a result of these transformative technologies) and not only indoctrinate us all, but to then, as a result, mine us of our value so it can be sold for extortionate prices to those who wanted to target us with more stuff, to then mine us of our money, to pay for the ads, run on the platforms, that are mining us for our data, and so the flywheel turns.
For a flash moment, I thought about how, in Ireland especially— which has 82 data centres on it already, which are responsible for 18% of the country’s electricity consumption, and another 40 are due to be built this year; not to mention the extreme issues experienced across multiple sectors and systems as a result of the Big Tech Corporations basing their HQs in our capital city — there’s a comparison to be made with Killers of The Flower Moon…
But that’s all bleak as hell.
And we all know about it to some degree by now anyway. So why bang on about it? And besides I don’t enjoy when people bang on about problems and don’t provide ideas for solutions, and I also don’t particularly enjoy when people bang on about ideas for solving problems, but never follow through with even trying to make them happen, or even see if they could happen.
So I tried to visualise it (on this neat lil open-source canvas tool, made by a cool guy called Steve Ruiz), and in doing so it kinda reminded me of this video (click to open):
My (batty) visualisation might not make any sense to you, it barely even does to me, and to be honest, there’s a lot wrong with it, but in making it it kind of got me excited to fill it out more, but it’s my last night in Sligo and Mum wanted to watch The Greatest Night in Pop, which is incredible, and made me
think about trying to visualise what happened to our consciousness when TVs were placed in every home…
cry, when Diana Ross cried, saying that she didn’t want it to end. I cried because I felt like that way of life, that culture of music, and performance, and community and celebrity is over. I feel like the democratisation of communication (which David McWilliams rants about here) has diluted what it means to broadcast something to the point where nothing is special anymore.
This reminded me of something Nilay Patel (Editor-in-Chief of the Verge) said, which I can’t remember word for word, but it was about how instead of it being a resist or lean-in situation to this kinda societal change, we need to grieve it…
In other, nicer news — some bits from the week:
I’ve met another person who has told me about their full-blown addiction to their solar panel app, since getting solar panels installed. They explained what to me was quite a complex interface that showed graphs and charts of the day, month week, and stats and figures on the amount of energy created, used, and sold back on to the grid.
Now that I’m saying this I think I said last week that I was going to write something about diverting our addiction from social media to energy efficiency, but I didn’t, or well, now I am, but I’m not saying anything substantial other than there’s something in there and maybe I’ll try again next week.I actually GASPED when I read that Johnny Ho, the co-founder and chief strategy officer of Perplexity, uses slime mould as his inspiration for building his team and his product. I DO TO, and tbh I am part delighted, part raging, because it’s nice to know I wasn’t crazy, but I’m also slightly raging now that so many people made me feel like I was deranged for making such a comparison.
These guys arn’t for everyone, but I love them, and this ep is both cute and relatable and a nicer spin on the ep. I shared last week about how being 33 is the worst age for anyone to be right now, so…
Gorgeous interview with Rory O’Neil/Panty Bliss which I listened to driving around sunny Dublin having a very productive day of meetings and dropping notes and gifts to people. Made me very proud of Ireland (mind you, it doesn’t take much), and increased my hankering to move back (anywhere would when the sun is shining).
Fun fact, I did the same course as him, in the same college — Design in Dun Laoghaire Art School.
This is a brilliantly genius and hope-filled invention.
These two posts were one after another on my insta feed this morning and I thought that was worth capturing.
TTFN ✌️
To anyone who actually read this, I apologise sincerely for the myriad of spelling mistakes — it seems my grammerly integration had already gone to bed by the time I wrote and sent this...