"Here
is what [Ghonim] concluded about social media today: 'First, we don’t know
how to deal with rumors. Rumors that confirm people’s biases are now
believed and spread among millions of people.' Second, 'We tend to only
communicate with people that we agree with, and thanks to social media,
we can mute, un-follow and block everybody else. Third, online
discussions quickly descend into angry mobs. … It’s as if we forget that
the people behind screens are actually real people and not just
avatars.'
'And
fourth, it became really hard to change our opinions. Because of the
speed and brevity of social media, we are forced to jump to conclusions
and write sharp opinions in 140 characters about complex world affairs.
And once we do that, it lives forever on the Internet.'
Fifth,
and most crucial, he said, “today, our social media experiences are
designed in a way that favors broadcasting over engagements, posts over
discussions, shallow comments over deep conversations. … It’s as if we
agreed that we are here to talk at each other instead of talking with
each other.'”
I think the lesson is that if you have 1 simple goal, social media can help you reach that. If you have a complex goal, like turning a country from dictator to democracy, that is where things break down.
I do agree with all that you mention here, about social media and their function or role. To me, it seems that the separation of mind, with eyes on the screen and the attention present in what's on that screen, with a sense of physicality, is key to losing respect for fellow human beings online. For when the sense of body, hence... emotional awareness accompanied by self-reflection is absent, anything goes. It's the instinctual reactions that are ruling internet activities in Social Media, that's evident. Many online activists are lonely, depressed and alienated from the world of blood, sweat and tears, in a life of lethargy, laziness, depression and even by using drugs and alcohol. The anonimity of a presence at home, without company, creates wanderers that are lost. I've witnessed, mainly in fora with spiritual and ethical discussions, fierce endless rants and airy fairy pink clouds of unrealistic projections, imaginations that almost begin to have a life of their own, in that virtual world. To me, it's one of the challenges of our time, to overcome the addiction to that state. A state wherein such a participant is at a complete loss of its sovereignty.
Imagine if a bunch of billionaires and large corporations got together and tried to push a shiny Black Box on the world. It would require that electricity production be doubled. It would take 20% of fresh water. The positive claims for it are that it would reduce work loads for humans. It would be inventive, smart, and powerful. And that’s all you know about the Black Box. Would you buy it? This is AI, or the new Artificial Intelligence. It’s promoted as a sort of one-size-fits-all panacea for mankind. AI is training the Black Box to think more like a human, but still only being a Black Box that is limited to the data it is fed. The selling point is that AI can then replace humans in jobs. “We believe that it is possible that deep learning systems are less than a decade away from superintelligence,” Pachocki added. He described superintelligence as systems smarter than humans across a large number of critical actions. [https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/28/sa...
My traffic cone experience, 3/2/26 I planned to protest at the Trump statue today for an hour, as I did once before. I have flyers promoting my proposed ordinance that any presidential statue on public property in Rapid City has to have a traffic cone on its head IF that president was a convicted felon. So, I brought along a traffic cone to make the point for the ordinance (so far, Trump is the only president this ordinance would apply to). I also had a sign that said “Trump is a felon” on one side and “Trump starts wars” on the other. I got there about 9:55. The statue is on a corner, so there is plenty of space to walk back and forth without bothering any pedestrians. So, I stuck the cone on Trump’s head (it’s got a rubber base so it can’t hurt the statue) and started slowly walking back and forth. One guy across the street gave me the finger and yelled something at me. Several cars honked when they went by. Another guy stopped at the corner and told me I coul...
1/28/26 I planned today to protest at the Trump statue downtown. Rapid City, SD has life-size statues of every president downtown, spread out to different corners. I wrote a city ordinance proposal that would require if any president had a felony or felonies, their statue must have a traffic cone on its head. This way, a felon would not be as honored as much as the other non-felon presidents. Trump, a felon, had his statue placed a few months ago. Of course, there’s not much chance that such an ordinance would pass, and when I sent it to the council persons, the mayor, and the group that manages the statues, only one councilman replied, and he thought it was a funny idea. So, if the city council doesn’t take you seriously, what to do? I thought to demonstrate by the statue and hand out flyers about the ordinance. And thus, flyers, sign, and traffic cone packed up, I drove downtown to demonstrate for about an hour (10-11). Nice weather, by the way. When ...
Comments
emotional awareness accompanied by self-reflection is absent, anything goes. It's the instinctual reactions that are ruling internet activities in Social Media, that's evident. Many online activists are lonely, depressed and alienated from the world of blood, sweat and tears, in a life of lethargy, laziness, depression and even by using drugs and alcohol. The anonimity of a presence at home, without company, creates wanderers that are lost. I've witnessed, mainly in fora with spiritual and ethical discussions, fierce endless rants and airy fairy pink clouds of unrealistic projections, imaginations that almost begin to have a life of their own, in that virtual world. To me, it's one of the challenges of our time, to overcome the addiction to that state. A state wherein such a participant is at a complete loss of its sovereignty.