The other day, a friend from high school was lamenting that a mutual classmate had “unfriended” him on social media for some of his political posts. To be fair, some of his posts were difficult to stomach. Several others joined the lament in the comments. One stated that his entire family had stopped speaking to him. Others joined in claiming they had been blocked on Facebook and in real life just for posting “common sense.” This is a familiar story. We hear it every day.
Social media was promoted as a way to bring us together across great distances. It was an opportunity to share accomplishments, family photos and even what we had to eat that day across time zones and international borders. In some cases, that happened. However, in the end, social media divided us more than it brought us together. We became a country and a world divided by our own opinions and beliefs. We should not be surprised.
Sometime around 1440, Johannes Gutenberg invented movable type. Within a decade and a half, he began to produce copies of the Bible in the vernacular. People could now read the Bible in their own language. How could that possibly go wrong? It did. The dissemination of over 200,000 Bibles brought about chaos. Within a single generation, the universal church that had united the western world for centuries fractured. New Protestant denominations sprang up all over Europe. Wars ensued. Both sides burned each other at the stake. Centuries of anger divided Europe.
Ultimately, moveable type led to the proliferation of newspapers. Many offered competing viewpoints. Almost every city in the United States offered a conservative morning paper for the wealthy elite and a liberal afternoon edition for the working man. In Jacksonville, the morning tabloid was the Times-Union. The liberal afternoon paper was the Jacksonville Journal. Competing newspapers across the country exasperated an already divided electorate. Partisan news so divided the country in 1800 that the two presidential candidates did not speak to each other for decades. Those candidates were John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.
Similarly, radio promised to bring news and high-brow entertainment into every home with electricity. It did, but it also brought extremist opinions and fierce debate. A man calling himself the “Oregon Wildcat” broadcasted profanity-laced political tirades daily. When he lost a congressional race, he questioned his opponent’s sexual orientation on air. The infamous Father Charles Coughlin attacked “greedy bankers” and Jews, praised Hitler and attacked FDR. When he was finally taken off the air, his followers rallied outside studios chanting “send the Jews back where they came from in leaky boats.”
Television was presented as a great educational tool. There are still educational shows. Few people watch them. What TV brought us instead was sex, violence and political extremism. The 24-hour news cycle destroyed broadcast news as we once knew it. The news was replaced by competing opinions presented with a desperate urgency designed to keep us watching and exploit all of our basest fears. Both sides accused the other of being evil or degenerate. This was nothing new. It was an age-old story presented in technicolor.
And so, we now stand on the precipice of a new era featuring artificial intelligence and once again we are promised new levels of efficient dissemination of information and entertainment. So far, what I am seeing is the worst of fake news. Everyone with a computer can create fake videos of those they oppose saying and doing the most abhorrent things. And so far, artificial intelligence has been unable to present facts. Instead, it sorts through reams of advice and opinion, previously posted by people largely lacking the credentials to post either, condenses the nonsense and presents it as fact that the foolish embrace.
What A.I. brings us in sum is yet to be determined, but history suggests that much of it will not contribute to the advancement of civilization. Ecclesiastes 1:9 — “There is nothing new under the sun.”
Scott A Grant is a local author and frequent contributor. He welcomes your comments at scottg@standfastic.com.
