“a peek-a-boo world, where now this event, now that, pops into view for a moment, then vanishes again. It is an improbable world. It is a world in which the idea of human progress, as Bacon expressed it, has been replaced by the idea of technological progress. The aim is not to reduce ignorance, superstition, and suffering but to accommodate ourselves to the requirements of new technologies. We tell ourselves, of course, that such accommodations will lead to a better life, but that is only the rhetorical residue of a vanishing technocracy. We are a culture consuming itself with information, and many of us do not even wonder how to control the process. We proceed under the assumption that information is our friend, believing that cultures may suffer grievously from a lack of information, which, of course, they do. It is only now beginning to be understood that cultures may also suffer grievously from information glut, information without meaning, information without control mechanisms.” ― Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, 1992
Having unknown autism at that time (I was not diagnosed until 2008 / 2009) in 1997 and 1998… I didn’t fully deeply grasp how much people only cared about eye contact patterns, body language, word choices, speed of speech, length of sentences, formatting of paragraphs, egoism / self-centered mirroring of their individual mind. I thought diversity across the world was great and wanted to travel and live overseas (which I did in 2004, going to Arica Chile for a full year, later on to Algeria in Africa, Jordan in the Middle East, beyond to Indonesia and Malaysia all to self-study media ecology and relationships people have with communications and priorities of what they favor and further to the next generation / children).
I would rather just quote a book and cite a great writer, I was already an author and professional technical editor, I had edited entire books on IBM OS/2 - and I knew how books were created.
Why would I want to make every conversation an ego pissing / dick measuring contest like Steve Jobs had established in the computer industry top executives space I was working in since I had started working for SAP (Germany’s largest software company)?
“Elevator pitch” to Executives with billions of dollars, at that time Bill Gates and Paul Allen were the 1st and 3rd richest in the world, Warren Buffet at number 2. The ability to charm and convince people with just the right e-mail communications, office memo, or speaking skills would turn your life around in that office where I worked for two and a half years.
Since Q4 2014, I realized that the whole Internet had changed, Facebook and Reddit mostly where I was “reading the room” / studying mass mind (hive mind, mass man) shifts. I prefer Reddit (Lemmy-like) because it allows verbose long messages, hyperlinks to sources, and quotations. Everything not Twitter. But things changed in year 2013, and by Q3 2015 I realized it was “Eternal September” even deeper in the mind, a permanent change had happened since 2013 and it was in no way reversing, short-term trend, a fad - when I contacted the Pentagon and reported that there were active measures and drastic behavioral changes on social media systems (first time I ever reported anything to the federal government in my life).
::: _______________
“English, strictly speaking, is not my first language by the way. I haven’t yet discovered what my first language is so for the time being I use English words in order to say things. I expect I will always have to do it that way; regrettably I don’t think my first language can be written down at all. I’m not sure it can be made external you see. I think it has to stay where it is; simmering in the elastic gloom betwixt my flickering organs.” ― Claire-Louise Bennett
I relate to this hard. One of my own best friends got super pissed and accused me of lying simply because I naturally cannot hold eye contact for long, especially when someone is already being confrontational. If I am holding eye contact with you that is not a good thing, that means I’m assessing whether I am gonna have to fight you.
Police officers all over the world are trained that anyone doing odd eye contact can instantly be considered a liar / criminal and in no way acknowledge the entire body of work on autism and other science that contradicts this.