New technologies open possibilities, and close other possibilities. We live in eco-technical niches as anybody else in the world, but we create our niches and we change them. So we adapt to the niches that we already have built in the past, and then we change them and create new niches in which we will adapt. But the changing is exactly what we need to understand.
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Lack of attachment…does not mean disconnection from the world and others, but ability to control what can be controlled: the self, rather than consequences. It is about detaching our motivation from the results of an action so we do not lose sight of what else is important: a sense of perspective.
My proposition is that we are not in history anymore, we are in hyperhistory. If we want to discuss about hyperhistory, when everything is written, when not only the important things are written but everything is written, then we have a lot of questions to answer. What is important? Who has the power? What is freedom?
I think we are groping towards this idea of truth. And even the word truth can be defined in multiple different ways. So we are by its very nature dealing with a very slippery topic.
I’m going to argue today that even while we know post-truth politics is having a terrible effect on our political culture and our role as citizens, it’s curiously difficult to combat it because of a set of beliefs about what politics is, and about the Internet and the way it enables ordinary people to have a voice. And these beliefs intersect with a prevailing anti-intellectual anti-elitism which associates knowledge, discernment, and truth with snobbery and power.