The Art of Manliness - #276： Utopia is Creepy

00:00:00.000 Brad McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. A few weeks

00:00:19.240 ago, I had futurist Kevin Kelly on the podcast to discuss the technological trends that are

00:00:23.660 shaping our future from driverless cars to artificial intelligence that will make new

00:00:27.560 scientific discoveries. Kevin paints a pretty rosy picture of what's to come. My guest today

00:00:32.480 sees a different side of the coin and argues that the future envisioned by many in Silicon Valley

00:00:36.740 is, well, kind of creepy. His name is Nicholas Carr, and he's the author of several books that

00:00:41.340 critique the wide-eyed utopianism of technologists. In his book, The Shallows, he reported on the

00:00:45.440 research that shows how Google is making us dumber. In The Glass Cage, he explored the science and why

00:00:50.220 outsourcing our work and chores to computers and robots might actually make us miserable and

00:00:54.560 unsatisfied in life. And in his latest book, Utopia is Creepy, Carr pulls together all the

00:00:59.860 essays he's written over the years on how the rapid changes in technology we've seen in the past few

00:01:04.060 decades might be robbing us of the very things that make us human. Today on the show, Nicholas and I

00:01:08.980 discuss why he thinks our utopian future is creepy, how the internet is making us dumber, and why doing

00:01:14.060 mundane tasks that we otherwise would outsource to robots or computers is actually a source of

00:01:18.440 satisfaction and human flourishing. We finish our discussion by outlining a middle path approach

00:01:23.140 technology, one that doesn't reject it fully, but simultaneously seeks to mitigate its potential

00:01:27.900 downsides. After the show's over, check out the show notes at aom.is slash utopiaiscreepy,

00:01:33.260 where you can find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic.

00:01:42.920 Nicholas Carr, welcome to the show.

00:01:45.360 Thanks very much.

00:01:46.720 So I've long been a fan of your work, The Shallows, The Glass Cage. Your new book is Utopia is Creepy,

00:01:52.820 which is a collection of blog posts slash essays you've written over the years about

00:01:57.840 technology's influence on our cognition, how we think, our culture, our autonomy, the gamut.

00:02:05.260 So let's start off with this broad question. One of the criticisms you make at Silicon Valley

00:02:09.140 in particular is that they're not just selling us gadgets and software, and that's what we think

00:02:13.140 they're selling us, but you argue they're also selling an ideology. What is that ideology,

00:02:19.780 you know, and why do you think it's bad for human flourishing?

00:02:24.520 It's an ideology that has deep roots in American culture and American history. There's a strain of

00:02:32.380 technological utopianism that runs through U.S., United States thinking going back a couple of

00:02:40.760 years. And it assumes that technological progress will bring us to, will solve all our problems and

00:02:54.340 bring us to some kind of paradise on earth. And second, and more insidious, I think it assumes that

00:03:00.900 we should define progress as technological progress rather than, and I think this is a better way to do

00:03:07.440 it rather than looking at technology as a tool that gets us to some broader, that moves us forward to

00:03:14.880 some broader definition of progress, cultural, social, economic, or whatever. With Silicon Valley,

00:03:21.200 I think it gives this long tradition of techno-utopianism a new twist and kind of a new ideology that is all

00:03:30.180 about venerating the virtual over the real. So I think, on the one hand, Silicon Valley is very

00:03:39.180 materialistic. It wants to measure everything. And what can't be measured is kind of not even worth

00:03:44.960 keeping track of or giving any value to. But at the same time, it hates the materiality of the world

00:03:52.120 and even the materiality of the human body. It wants, it believes that by virtualizing everything,

00:03:57.860 by running the world with software, and perhaps even creating a new virtual world out of software,

00:04:04.560 will solve the kind of messiness, the emotion, emotionalism, and so forth that characterizes

00:04:12.240 human beings, and also the messiness that characterizes the physical world. So I think

00:04:18.760 Silicon Valley has this kind of misanthropic ideal that physicality is the problem that we need to

00:04:27.660 solve. And if we can turn everything into algorithms and even turn ourselves into artificial intelligence,

00:04:33.460 we'll be better off. Right. They're all about making things frictionless.

00:04:38.760 Right. And it turns out, I would argue that friction is what gives interest and fulfillment

00:04:46.440 and satisfaction to our lives. It's coming up against the world and figuring it out, figuring out

00:04:52.300 how to act with agency and autonomy, gaining talents and skills, all these things that emerge from coming

00:04:59.900 up against hard challenges and coming up against friction. This is, I think this is what gives interest

00:05:04.960 to our lives. And I think the tech industry sees all of this as something to get rid of. The less friction

00:05:15.060 there is, the more, you know, everything will run efficiently and we won't come up against challenges

00:05:21.020 or hard work or things that might make us fail. But it seems to me that that's a recipe for removing

00:05:29.340 satisfaction and fulfillment from our lives. Right. And that's why you think utopia is creepy,

00:05:34.360 or at least how Silicon Valley envisions it? Well, I think beyond Silicon Valley, I would argue that

00:05:41.480 all kinds of visions of utopia tend to be creepy. There's this famous concept of the uncanny valley

00:05:50.320 in robots. So what that says is that the more humanoid a robot becomes, the creepier it becomes,

00:05:59.840 because we're very, very good at, we're social beings, we humans. And so we're very good at picking

00:06:07.760 up signals from other living things. And it becomes immediately clear when there's a robotic

00:06:15.720 attempt to mimic a human being that this is not a human being and we get creeped out. And that's one

00:06:21.500 of the big problems that roboticists have as they try to create humanoid robots is that these always

00:06:28.180 seem creepy to us. And that's the uncanny valley that it's very hard for roboticists to cross.

00:06:34.180 And I think something very similar happens in portrayals of utopias. Because almost by definition,

00:06:42.140 there's no tension in a utopia, no friction. Everybody behaves very well. Everybody is on their

00:06:50.620 best behavior all the time. And when you see that, all of a sudden you realize that people begin in

00:06:58.000 utopias, people act very robotically. They're very efficient. They have no messy emotions. They don't

00:07:04.740 get angry. And I think that that characterizes utopias in general, which is one of the reasons

00:07:11.460 that in science fiction, we're much more drawn to dystopian portrayals of the future as this horrible

00:07:17.380 mess. Whereas attempts in fiction or in movies or whatever to create a vision of utopia always turns

00:07:24.700 out to be more repellent than the dystopias because we don't see any human qualities there.

00:07:31.900 And I think the ideal that Silicon Valley has, the utopian ideal where everything is very efficient

00:07:37.780 and runs on software, is very much this kind of creepy ideal that in order to achieve it,

00:07:44.500 you have to drain human beings of what makes them human.

00:07:49.060 And why do you think they still have that drive? I mean, why don't they see the creepiness of it?

00:07:52.780 Like, I look at them like, man, that's weird. Like, why don't they see it?

00:07:57.240 Well, I, you know, I think some of it is, comes from their personalities that I don't think in,

00:08:04.000 you know, this might, this is a generalization, but I think it's some, to some extent true. These,

00:08:10.360 a lot of the leaders in Silicon Valley have spent most of their lives interacting with the world

00:08:16.540 through computer screens and that suits their personality. They're not necessarily, uh, open to

00:08:22.160 ambiguity, ambiguity, ambiguity, or to, uh, messy emotions or the kind of social conflicts that,

00:08:30.580 that come whenever you engage, um, with people face to face and with the world. So I think they're,

00:08:37.460 I think they come from, you know, I think their ideals reflect a personality that is very comfortable

00:08:45.980 with computers and very comfortable with software and programming. But when things aren't programmed

00:08:53.300 and things happen unexpectedly and perhaps inefficiently and ambiguously, they're, they draw

00:09:01.300 away from those things. So, so I think in, in some sense, what the, the world that Silicon Valley

00:09:07.020 wants to create, and it's, uh, to me, it's a very robotic world is the world that these people

00:09:13.440 actually want to live in. That's interesting, which is, it's just strange because like, you know,

00:09:18.200 the internet, the, the, one of the promises of the internet would like, it would be this sort of,

00:09:22.660 uh, it would be sort of utopia, you know, it's sort of utopia where you could see have different

00:09:26.440 types of viewpoints, different types of ideals all together that anyone can access. But the

00:09:31.260 way it's worked out is we have these people at the top who are actually structuring the internet

00:09:36.200 in a way that suits their personality and the way they like things. And we have to go along with it.

00:09:41.240 Right. And, you know, one of the things I try to, I've, when I put together Utopia is Creepy,

00:09:48.200 this collection, one of the things I did is read through my blog going back a dozen years. And,

00:09:52.900 and I realized that a lot of, a lot of the dreams about the internet and, and ones that a lot of us

00:09:59.940 held when, when we first started going online have not only haven't panned out, but in many cases,

00:10:06.020 the opposite has happened. So we, we thought that the, you know, by going online, we'd bypass

00:10:12.480 centralized, uh, centralized hubs of power, whether it's political power, media power, economic power.

00:10:21.280 And we'd have this great democratization where everyone would have their, their own voice. And,

00:10:26.420 and we'd listen to lots of different viewpoints. And what's happened is, is really, we've seen

00:10:31.720 a, an incredible centralization of power, power over information. So you get a handful of, of

00:10:38.820 companies like Google and Facebook, uh, and, and Amazon and so forth that control now huge amounts

00:10:45.500 of the time people spend online and huge amounts of the information that they get. And, and, and so

00:10:51.760 more and more of our experience is being filtered by these companies. And need, needless to say,

00:10:58.460 they're, they're motivated not only by their ideology, but by their desire to make money. These

00:11:03.840 are profit-making companies, of course. Um, and so I, I think a lot of the, a lot of the feelings about

00:11:10.880 democracy, democratization of information about people broadening their viewpoints, uh, has not

00:11:17.920 panned out. And, and I think what we're, what we're learning is that when we're bombarded by

00:11:22.980 information, the way, way we are these days, we actually become less open-minded and more polarized

00:11:29.160 and more extreme in our views. And I think we saw that, you know, in the recent election, and I think

00:11:34.140 we see it in political discourse that, that, that our hopes for, for the, our hopes about how society

00:11:41.860 and ourselves would adapt to having this constant bombardment of information just haven't panned out.

00:11:47.480 And, and now we have to struggle with consequences that we didn't foresee.

00:11:52.060 Right. And I think one of the insidious things about the internet, or at least the way it's

00:11:55.900 structured, is that it gives us the illusion that, um, we have freedom, right? Like we can spout our

00:12:01.600 opinion on Facebook or Twitter, and we think we're participating in democracy and that we're, you know,

00:12:07.360 expanding our viewpoints, but you argue, I mean, I think you just made the point that it actually is,

00:12:12.720 is an illusion. Like it actually, it reduces our autonomy and it reduces our agency.

00:12:17.660 I think, I think that's right. It, in some of that is, is simply because we become more reflexive

00:12:24.440 when we have, when we have to process so much information, so many notifications and alerts and,

00:12:29.640 and messages so quickly that we have to, we have to deal with it in a superficial fashion. And so we may

00:12:35.860 think we're, we're, you know, being participative if we click a like button or retweet something,

00:12:42.080 but really this is a very superficial, uh, way of being, uh, being involved and participating.

00:12:49.080 And it's on the terms, uh, determined by the technology companies, by the social media platforms.

00:12:55.700 Um, you know, it's in their interest to get us kind of superficially taking in as much information

00:13:02.660 as possible because that's how they collect behavioral information. That's how they get

00:13:06.680 opportunities to show us ads. Um, and, you know, I would argue that in this, that on the one hand,

00:13:14.560 you know, there's the great benefit of the internet, which is that it does give us access to,

00:13:19.000 to information and to people that used to be hard to access or, or impossible to access.

00:13:24.460 On the other hand, what it's stolen from us is kind of the contemplative mind, the calm mind

00:13:32.000 that takes this information, takes our experiences and our conversations in quietly make sense of

00:13:38.620 them. And I think that, I think that ultimately, you know, you need that space in which to think

00:13:48.120 by yourself and without interruption, without distraction, in order to develop a rich point of

00:13:53.700 view and hence, you know, express yourself and express yourself and communicate yourself in a,

00:13:59.900 in a rich way, rather than this reflexive way that we've adapted to online, which does give us this

00:14:06.960 illusion that we're constantly participating, constantly part of the conversation, but really

00:14:12.060 kind of ends up narrowing our perspective, makes us more polarized, makes us quicker to reject,

00:14:20.340 you know, information that doesn't fit with our existing worldview. Um, so I do think there's

00:14:25.760 this kind of illusion of thinking and illusion of participation that often isn't the reality of

00:14:34.100 what's going on. Right. And along that lines of participation, um, you know, one of the benefits

00:14:39.920 that technologists tout about the internet is that it makes, it democratizes the, the ability to create

00:14:45.040 content, right? We're no longer just consumers. We're also creators, but what people forget is

00:14:49.780 that like, you're creating that for the company that you're kind of working for the company for

00:14:53.960 free, right? When you create Amazon reviews or create YouTube videos or create content on Facebook

00:14:59.180 or Twitter. That that's right. And this is something I, I coined a term digital sharecropping

00:15:05.960 to a kind of an ugly term, but I think it, it describes this, that, that what, you know,

00:15:12.100 whether it's Google search engine or whether it's Amazon reviews or whether it's the entirety of

00:15:16.560 Facebook or Twitter, essentially the content that these companies use to make money off of is the

00:15:23.380 content we create. So, so similar to a sharecropping system where, you know, a plantation owner would

00:15:28.640 give a, a poor farmer, a little plot of land and some tools, and then would take most of the economic

00:15:33.580 value of any crops that were grown, uh, were given by these social media platforms, these little,

00:15:39.100 uh, little plots of land to express ourselves and to develop our profiles and, and to share and so

00:15:47.180 forth. But all of that creativity and that goes into that is monetized by the company. So, so we become

00:15:54.620 these people who, who create the content without getting any compensation for it, any monetary compensation

00:16:02.180 for it that allows companies like Facebook and Google to become enormously rich. Um, and that's

00:16:08.420 not, you know, that's not to dismiss some of the opportunities that the, the internet, the web does

00:16:14.640 really give us to express ourselves. I mean, I've, as I say, I've written a blog for a long time and I

00:16:19.560 enjoy that. And I, I feel like I've, you know, been able to clarify my own thoughts as well as speak to

00:16:26.300 an audience that I might not have, but I do think we need to recognize the kind of economic dynamic

00:16:32.480 that underlies a lot of what we do online and how in a very real sense, even though we, we don't notice

00:16:39.900 it, we are being exploited and manipulated, um, and kind of outside of our own consciousness, sometimes

00:16:48.520 we're kind of employed without pay to create these huge, very, very powerful and very rich companies

00:16:55.140 in, in, as well as very rich owners of them. Right. I thought another criticism you made was funny is that

00:17:01.180 the idea that, Oh, if you democratize that, well, I suddenly have all this great stuff, this great content, 0.97

00:17:06.160 but like most of the content that's sell, you know, amateur created is crap. Like, I mean, it's, I know 0.86

00:17:11.800 it's mean to say, but like Instagram comedians are the worst. I don't understand why people think that's

00:17:19.240 funny, but apparently it's a thing. Yeah. And it, it kind of, sometimes it shows that the audience,

00:17:27.720 you know, when they get free stuff, well, and they, they'll, they'll look for the most superficial

00:17:32.960 kind of buzz and, and that'll be enough because they don't, that they're, nobody's encouraged to

00:17:38.600 spend time kind of developing taste or, or thinking too carefully about things. Um, and you know,

00:17:44.260 this is, this kind of dream that everybody, you know, is going to be a great writer or a great

00:17:51.620 filmmaker, um, or a great musician, you know, unfortunately it's just not true. And, and I

00:18:00.360 think a lot of people understand that. Uh, I certainly understand that, you know, I'm not

00:18:05.040 going to be a great songwriter and so forth. And so, so again, this is another illusion that the web

00:18:10.340 sometimes gives us that, that it's always better. What the web tells us is this kind of myth of

00:18:17.940 participation that, you know, if you're just passively reading something or watching a movie

00:18:22.980 or a TV show or listening to a podcast, there's something wrong with that. I would argue that

00:18:27.600 that's exactly the opposites that a lot of the greatest satisfactions come from being a member of

00:18:34.320 an audience of good stuff in that we, we shouldn't feel that if we're not, we should, we shouldn't

00:18:41.060 mistake kind of a rich experience of other people's creative work as a passive experience.

00:18:47.520 It's actually very active, um, as anybody who's read a great novel or watched a great play or anything

00:18:53.160 knows. And so, you know, the web and, and a lot of the companies on the web kind of encourage us to,

00:19:01.060 uh, to think that we have to be active and participative and creative all the time. Well,

00:19:07.140 that's very important, but let's not lose sight of, uh, of the great pleasures of being an audience of,

00:19:13.300 of really good stuff. So in the shallows, um, you, you take a look at how the web has changed our

00:19:19.500 brains and you, you talked about, you began the book talking about how you've noticed your brain

00:19:24.300 change over the years. Like you can't focus as much. Um, it's hard to sit through and read a book

00:19:30.000 for a long period of time. Um, and one of the arguments you make in that book is that every

00:19:34.400 information technology, we're talking in the alphabet, uh, read the book itself and the internet

00:19:40.720 carries with it an intellectual ethic. Um, what's the ethic of the internet, of the internet?

00:19:46.880 Yeah. And what I mean by that is that, that all of these media technologies incorporate,

00:19:53.280 encourage us to think in a particular way. Um, and, and also not to think in other ways that they

00:20:00.680 don't support and that this is the ethic. I think what the, what the digital technologies in general

00:20:07.140 and the internet specifically, it, it values information gathering as an end in itself. Um,

00:20:16.100 and so what it says is the, the more information that we have access to, the faster that we are able

00:20:21.740 to process it, the more, you know, the more intensively it bombards us, the better that

00:20:28.440 more information is always better. And what, what's lost in that, I think is what everyone

00:20:34.680 used to understand, which is that information gathering very, very important, but it's only

00:20:39.660 the first stage in developing knowledge. Um, and, and certainly the first, uh, in early stage

00:20:45.720 in developing wisdom, if we ever get to that, but knowledge isn't about just gathering information.

00:20:51.300 It's about making sense of information, uh, going out, uh, having experiences, learning stuff,

00:20:57.740 finding, reading the news, uh, taking in information, but then backing away from the flow of information

00:21:04.140 in order to weave what you've learned together into personal knowledge. And this is, this is what's

00:21:10.980 lost, I think, in the ethic, the intellectual ethic of the internet. This sense that there are times

00:21:17.060 when you have to back away from the act of information gathering, if you're going to think

00:21:23.280 deeply and if you're going to develop a rich point of view, if you're going to develop a rich store

00:21:27.780 of knowledge, uh, you can't do it when you're actively distracted and interrupted by incoming

00:21:33.740 information. So I think, I think the, the internet is very, very good as a tool for information

00:21:41.800 gathering. But what it encourages us to do is to think that we should always be in the process of

00:21:47.180 gathering information. And I think that's the danger that, that the web presents.

00:21:52.420 And how do you counter that?

00:21:54.660 Not very well sometimes. I mean, and this is also something I talk about in the shallows. I think as

00:22:01.500 human beings, we are there, we have this primitive instinct to want to know everything that's going

00:22:07.300 on around us. And I think this goes back to, you know, caveman and cavewoman days when you wanted,

00:22:13.100 you wanted to scan the environment all the time because that's how you survived. Um, and so we

00:22:18.340 bring this deep information gathering compulsion into this new digital world where there's no end

00:22:25.040 to information. And as a result, and I think we see, all of us see this in ourselves. We become very

00:22:30.780 compulsive about wanting to know everything that's going on, you know, uh, on Facebook or, or in news

00:22:38.420 feeds or through notifications and so forth. And so we, we kind of constantly pull out our phone or our

00:22:44.260 computer and look at it, even if it's completely trivial information. So I think there's this deep

00:22:49.620 instinct that, that the net in, in, in technology companies tap into, uh, that can, that can become

00:22:57.140 kind of counterproductive that, that keeps us gathering information and glued to the screen.

00:23:04.000 And so to me, the, the only way I found to combat this is to resist some technology. So for instance,

00:23:14.460 I, I don't have, I'm not active on Facebook or on most social media. And it's not because I don't

00:23:21.100 see the benefits of social media. It's because I know that these systems are designed,

00:23:27.140 to tap into this instinct I have to want to be distracted and interrupted all the time.

00:23:32.520 And in order to avoid that, I just have to say, no, I don't, uh, I'm going to lose the benefits of

00:23:38.020 Facebook. I mean, one thing you, you realize when you're not on Facebook is for instance, nobody wishes

00:23:43.040 you happy birthday anymore because you're not on Facebook. Um, but nevertheless, it does seem to me

00:23:48.060 that in order, if you value kind of the contemplative mind, the introspective mind, the ability to follow

00:23:55.740 your own train of thought without being interrupted sometimes, then you have to shut down some of

00:24:00.900 these services and make the social sacrifices that are inherent in shutting down services that

00:24:07.640 increasingly are central to people's social lives. So it's, it's a very, at this point, it's a very

00:24:13.900 difficult challenge to kind of bring more balance into your behavior, into your mind, into your intellect.

00:24:21.320 And, but to me, at least my hope is that I can raise awareness that there are sacrifices that

00:24:28.740 are being made here and we should be a little more diligent, I hope, in figuring out which of

00:24:33.960 these technologies are really good for us or making us more intelligent and happier and more fulfilled

00:24:39.600 in which are simply tapping into this compulsive behavior that we often evidence.

00:24:44.600 So, you know, one assumption that technologists have is that we'll, we'll be able to find technology

00:24:50.600 to fix problems, even problems caused by technology. I mean, do you think someone in Silicon Valley

00:24:56.240 will come up with something to fix the problem of the distractibility of the internet or?

00:25:02.080 Um, I think, I think there are technologists who are trying to do that. I mean, I think we've seen

00:25:07.900 an increasing awareness among the public and, and among, you know, people in Silicon Valley or in

00:25:15.780 other, uh, technology companies outside of Silicon Valley that this is a problem that, that we have

00:25:22.600 created a system that, you know, has huge benefits and huge potential, but increasingly it is keeping

00:25:30.200 people distracted and thinking superficially and often, you know, polarized and unable to, uh,

00:25:38.780 you know, you know, give credence to people's points of view that don't fit their own. And so I think you

00:25:44.540 see kind of attempts to create, uh, apps or other software programs that reduce the intensity, the flow of

00:25:52.740 information that, that, that kind of, uh, vary the flow of information, turn off, you know, some feeds

00:25:59.940 at some, at, at times when people might be, might, might get more out of thinking without distraction

00:26:09.080 and being alone with their thoughts than, than looking into a screen, um, kind of creating a more

00:26:14.720 unitasking, uh, environment where there aren't lots of windows and lots of tabs and lots of notifications

00:26:22.140 going. The problem is that, that these are a hard sell because we've adapted ourselves very, very

00:26:31.260 quickly to, um, to this kind of constant bombardment of information in this sense that we're missing out

00:26:39.120 if we're not on top of everything that's happening all the time. So I, I do think, you know, and I think

00:26:45.640 we, we see this historically that, that often technology rushes ahead and creates problems that

00:26:52.560 were unforeseen and you can solve some of those problems with, with new technology. We certainly

00:26:57.620 see it in, in driving, for instance, with the creation of seatbelts and all sorts of technologies

00:27:03.740 that kind of make cars safer and, and so forth. But it can be, there's always this kind of tension

00:27:12.660 between the momentum a technology gains as it moves ahead and as we adapt ourselves to it and,

00:27:19.980 and, and the need to sometimes back up a little bit to redesign things, uh, to, to better fit with

00:27:27.920 what, you know, makes us interesting, well-rounded people. So, so I'm, I think, I think there are ways

00:27:36.320 to, to deal with some of these problems technologically through better design of systems, better

00:27:42.560 design of software. The question is, will we, as the public, accept those, uh, those, those

00:27:51.940 technological advances or are we stuck in this pattern of behavior that, that has been inspired

00:27:57.700 by the technology and the companies that are dominant in the technology?

00:28:02.620 Right. The other issue is there's, there's really no money in that, right?

00:28:05.040 That's, yeah, that's, as long as, I mean, one of the big issues is that we have set up the web and

00:28:13.740 social media and so forth as an advertising based system. Um, if you, if we were paying for these

00:28:19.680 things, you know, there, there was a time, uh, in the, in the error of the personal computer where if

00:28:26.480 you wanted to do something with your, with your PC or your Mac or whatever, you'd go out and you'd buy a

00:28:31.380 piece of software and you'd install it and then you'd use it for whatever you wanted to accomplish.

00:28:37.040 And that was actually a pretty good model. And we've abandoned that model for a model of, you know,

00:28:42.860 give it to me free, but distract me with ads and, and collect information about me. Um, and getting

00:28:49.000 away from that, you know, would mean actually having to pay for stuff. And, and we've, we've so

00:28:56.020 adapted ourselves to the idea that, you know, everything is free, uh, that boy, it's getting

00:29:02.600 people to pay for something that you, that they could get for free. It's a really, really a hard

00:29:06.620 sell.

00:29:07.420 All right. So, so in the glass cage, you take a look at artificial intelligence and this is the

00:29:13.360 stuff that creeps me out, uh, the most is AI. Um, I had Kevin Kelly on the podcast last week,

00:29:20.580 talked to him and he's pretty like, he's gung ho about this and it's great, but you, AI gives you pause.

00:29:26.020 Uh, why, why is that?

00:29:28.420 Well, for, for a number of reasons. And, and again, you know, I, I don't want to, I don't

00:29:35.540 want to come off as just reactively against, uh, progress in computing and progress in AI,

00:29:42.440 because I, I think there are ways that we can apply, um, artificial intelligence that would,

00:29:47.660 that would be very good. And that, that would help us out and would help us avoid some of the,

00:29:52.560 uh, some of the flaws in our own thinking and our own perspectives. Um, but I, first of all,

00:30:00.220 the AI has, the, the definition of AI has gotten really fuzzy. Um, so it's hard to know, you know,

00:30:06.640 these days technology companies call pretty much everything AI, but where I, where I see the,

00:30:12.340 the problem with artificial intelligence, as it begins to substitute for human intelligence

00:30:19.060 in analyzing situations, making judgments about situations, making decisions about it,

00:30:26.260 is that it begins to steal from us, our autonomy, our agency, and also steals from us opportunities

00:30:33.520 to build rich talents of our own. Um, and I, I think we can see this in a, in a simple way with,

00:30:41.200 um, uh, navigational technologies, um, you know, Google Maps or, or, or GPS systems in your car

00:30:50.860 that on the one hand, they, they make it very, very easy and kind of mindless to get from one place

00:30:57.260 to another. But as a result, we don't develop our own navigational skills. And also we don't

00:31:03.040 pay attention to our surroundings. And so don't develop a sense of place. And it turns out that

00:31:08.620 those types of things, the ability to make sense of, of space and of place and to be attuned to your

00:31:14.400 surroundings is really pretty important to us. I mean, we are physical creatures in a physical world

00:31:20.320 and we have evolved to be part of that world. And so what we don't in, in our drive to, to make

00:31:26.300 everything more convenient and easier, often we sacrifice the things we take for granted,

00:31:33.400 which are all about learning to navigate the world and have agency in the world and have autonomy in

00:31:39.320 the world. We kind of take those for granted. And so we're very quick to lose them in order to gain a

00:31:44.860 little bit more efficiency or a little bit more convenience. And it does strike me that, you know,

00:31:49.480 beyond the kind of doomsday scenarios or the utopian scenarios of the singularity and, you know,

00:31:55.260 computers overtaking human intelligence at a practical level, the danger is that as computers

00:32:01.880 become more able to sense the environment, to, to analyze things, to, to make decisions that will

00:32:09.760 simply become dependent on them and we'll lose our own skills and our own talents in those regards,

00:32:16.380 you know, our own ability to make sense of the world and to, and to overcome difficult challenges,

00:32:21.840 we'll simply turn on the machine and let the machine do it. And unfortunately that that's a

00:32:27.260 scenario that gives us great convenience and great ease, but also I think, and this goes back to

00:32:34.660 something we talked about earlier, also steals from us the opportunity to, to be fulfilled as human

00:32:41.140 creatures in a physical world. Yeah. Like with self-driving cars, like I, I still don't get it.

00:32:46.960 Cause like, I enjoy driving. Like, I don't know why I'd want to give that up. Everyone's like, well,

00:32:51.500 it's safer. You can be more productive. It's like, I actually enjoy driving.

00:32:55.600 And that's true of the, I completely agree with you. And you know, the last thing, even though I

00:33:01.080 realized that there are ways, and this has been a long story with, with automobiles, there are ways

00:33:05.780 for technology to make driving safer. And I think that's very, very important. The fact is that,

00:33:10.780 you know, most people in, it's like 70 to 80% of people actually enjoy driving. And, and, and it's

00:33:19.940 not like they're blind to, you know, the dangers and, and to traffic jams and to road rage and all

00:33:26.640 the horrible things that come with driving, but there's something very pleasant about driving,

00:33:31.440 about being in, it's actually one of the rare times that, that we as individuals are actually

00:33:38.080 in control of a very sophisticated machine. And, and there's pleasure that comes with that.

00:33:45.060 And there's this sense of autonomy and a sense of agency. And in, in, in, in some ways, this is a

00:33:51.840 kind of a, a microcosm of the Silicon Valley view. Silicon Valley dismisses, I think Silicon Valley

00:33:58.400 is totally unaware or of the pleasure that people get from things like driving. Um, and so that

00:34:07.440 leads them, that leads them to simply see driving as a problem that needs to be solved because there

00:34:13.620 are accidents, because there are inefficiencies, because there are traffic jams. Um, all of that

00:34:18.960 is what they focus on. Um, and so they, you know, their desire is to relieve us of what to them is this

00:34:25.880 horrible, horrible, horrible chore of driving a car. And so they, they don't realize that for a lot

00:34:33.200 of people. And that driving is really a great pleasure and, and owning a car and all of, all of

00:34:39.460 that. And, and to me, that, that kind of, uh, puts in a nutshell, the, the, the tension between the

00:34:48.180 Silicon Valley ideal and how people actually live and how they get some satisfaction out of life.

00:34:53.400 Right. So again, it's, uh, this idea that they're giving us freedom, but in the process there,

00:34:58.920 we have to give up freedom to get that freedom, right? They're giving us freedom. They're freeing

00:35:05.100 us from that, which makes us feel free. I think you could, you could say. And then, but then we find

00:35:10.540 out that we actually enjoyed those burdens when it's finally taken away. We feel existentially

00:35:15.520 empty and we're like, Oh, I don't do anything. Right. And, and, and I do think that there is,

00:35:20.540 you know, some evidence. And I think this both comes from psychological studies, but also from

00:35:25.940 our own experience that, that when we're freed of labor and freed of, of effort, we actually become

00:35:34.060 more anxious and more nervous and more unhappy. And, you know, it turns out that it's, it's the,

00:35:40.240 it's the chores that's, that software frees us from that are often the things that bring us

00:35:46.340 satisfaction that in our, in our life, that, that the experience of facing a difficult challenge

00:35:52.480 in developing the talents required to overcome that challenge, that's very deeply satisfying.

00:35:57.760 And yet, if you look at the goal of, of software programmers these days, it's to find any place

00:36:04.920 where human beings come up against hard challenges and have to spend lots of time overcoming them

00:36:09.780 in kind of automating that process. Um, uh, so there, you know, that, that's why in, in many cases,

00:36:17.600 we think our lives are going to be better when we hand over something, some chore or some task or

00:36:23.980 some job to a machine, but actually we just become more nervous and anxious and unhappy.

00:36:30.780 Right. What, what's your take on virtual reality? Cause I mean, it's crazy. Like I remember back in

00:36:35.880 the nineties, like I'd go to the science museum and they had the VR thing. Um, you could go through

00:36:41.140 the human digestive system. That was the thing. Um, and it was like, and then I thought this is

00:36:46.080 the future. This is amazing. And then like it died, didn't go anywhere. Now we're seeing this

00:36:49.960 resurgence. Um, is, does virtual reality give you pause? Do you think it's going to catch on this

00:36:55.560 time? I think it's going to, well, I mean, there's the question, there's the kind of physical

00:37:00.300 question of how long can people be in a, you know, virtual environment without getting nauseous or

00:37:07.300 dizzy or whatever. And so let, let's assume that that will be solved, that, that we'll figure out

00:37:13.880 how to create, you know, systems of, of virtual reality that actually don't, that, that are actually

00:37:20.400 pleasant to be in. Well, I, I think it, I think it will have successful applications. I mean, I can see

00:37:28.420 it in gaming. I can see it in certain marketing aspects. You know, if you want to, uh, if you're

00:37:34.800 looking to buy a house or something or rent an apartment, you'll be able to put on your virtual

00:37:38.780 reality goggles and walk through the space. Uh, you can certainly see applications in pornography,

00:37:43.900 which will probably be one of the first to come along. But what I don't think will happen, I,

00:37:48.560 I think there's, there's this belief, Mark Zuckerberg, I think from Facebook has, has stated it,

00:37:54.900 that virtual reality goggles will become kind of the next interface for computing. So we'll,

00:38:00.760 we'll spend lots of time with our goggles on or some kind of virtual in, in some kind of virtual

00:38:07.120 reality, um, in order to, you know, socialize. And that's, that's what social media will become

00:38:14.240 and what personal computing will become. I don't think that that's going to happen because,

00:38:17.980 and I think you see signs of this from like the failure of Google Glass, that there's something

00:38:23.100 about, I think there's some deep instinct within us and within probably all animals that resists

00:38:31.480 having something else control our senses, something else control, something get in the way of our field

00:38:38.640 of vision. I think we can do it for brief periods. We can do it when we're playing a game or, or when

00:38:43.460 we want to accomplish a particular task that, that can be accomplished through virtualization of,

00:38:49.400 of space or whatever. But I don't think we're going to see people walking around, uh, with virtual

00:38:55.700 reality goggles or even with simpler, uh, device projection devices. I think, uh, I think I,

00:39:03.120 I'm very dubious about kind of smartphones being replaced, for instance, by virtual reality systems.

00:39:11.420 Right. Because it looks goofy and looks creepy.

00:39:13.100 It looks goofy and it looks creepy. And it also, it feels, you feel vulnerable. You feel weird

00:39:18.900 when, when you're, when you're seeing, you know, something that some, some, when you're cut off from

00:39:26.260 the actual real world and embedded in a world that somebody else is manipulating. I, I mean,

00:39:33.020 it, it's disorienting and it's also, I think we're repulsed by it after a while.

00:39:38.480 Well, Nicholas, people who are listening to this and they're, they agree with you. Like,

00:39:41.740 yeah, utopia is creepy. Like, I don't want any, I'll, I'll take some of this, uh, utopia that

00:39:46.920 they're offering because there's some benefits to it, but there's parts of it. I just know,

00:39:50.600 I don't want to go. Is it possible to opt out? Um, I guess it is possible. You, you, you don't do

00:39:55.860 social media. Um, yeah. Any other ways to opt out?

00:40:00.020 I mean, I do a little, for instance, I'm on Instagram, but I have a private account with,

00:40:05.180 you know, a handful of close friends and family members and it's really good. I mean, it's,

00:40:10.080 you know, if you restrict, if you place certain restrictions on social media, I think it can be

00:40:16.080 very, very valuable and very fun. So I'm not, you know, I'm not arguing for total opting out if,

00:40:23.160 as if that were even possible. I, I mean, I think one thing we know about the internet and computers

00:40:29.540 and smartphones is that it's actually very, very hard to live these days without, without those

00:40:36.200 kinds of tools because society as a whole, our social systems, our work systems, our educational

00:40:42.080 systems have rebuilt themselves around the assumption that everybody's pretty much always

00:40:48.240 connected, or at least has the ability to connect very frequently. So I don't think, you know, some

00:40:53.400 people will, will opt out totally just as some people opted out of television totally and so forth.

00:40:58.740 But those, I think those will be people on the margins. For most people, I think it's really,

00:41:04.780 the challenge is really more about developing a, developing a sensibility of resistance rather

00:41:14.240 than a sensibility of rejection. And, but, you know, often tech, techies will, will quote Star Trek and

00:41:21.780 say, resistance is futile. You know, the Borg of the internet is going to take us all over. So just give

00:41:26.580 into it. I think that's absolutely the wrong approach. I, I think it's valuable to resist

00:41:33.500 these kinds of powerful technologies. And, and this is a powerful technology. It's a media technology

00:41:41.060 that wants to become the environment in which we exist. And I think it's important to resist.

00:41:47.160 And by resist, I mean, instead of, instead of being attracted to whatever's new, to the latest novelty,

00:41:53.880 to the latest gadgets, the latest app, always pause and say, you know, how am I going to use this? How

00:42:00.180 do other people use this? Is this going to make my life better? Am I going to be, am I going to be

00:42:06.540 happier? Am I going to feel more fulfilled and more satisfied if I adopt this technology? Or am I just

00:42:13.520 going to be more distracted, more dependent on, uh, technology companies, uh, more, less able to

00:42:21.560 follow my own train of thought, uh, less well-rounded. And I think if we just start asking these

00:42:27.640 questions, um, and everybody's going to have different answers to these, but if we start asking

00:42:33.060 to these questions, I think we can be, become more rational and more thoughtful in what technologies

00:42:39.340 we adopt and what technologies we reject. And ultimately I think that's the only way to kind of

00:42:45.760 balance the, the, the benefits and the good aspects of, of the net and all, all related technologies

00:42:53.120 with the bad effects. And, and by now I think we all know that there are bad effects, that this isn't

00:43:00.360 just a story of, you know, uh, everything getting better. It's, it's a, it's a story about costs and

00:43:08.100 benefits and we have to become better at balancing those. And that really does mean becoming more

00:43:13.980 resistant and more skeptical about the technology in the promises being made about the technology.

00:43:19.500 Well, Nicholas, this has been a great conversation. Where can people learn more about your book and

00:43:23.220 your work? Um, well, you can go online. Yeah. I have, uh, my personal site is nicholascar.com where

00:43:31.280 you can find out information about my books and links to my articles and essays that I've written

00:43:35.840 in, in my blog, um, which I, I still write though, not as intensively as I used to is called rough

00:43:41.660 type. And you can find that at rough type.com. Awesome. Nicholas Carr. Thank you so much for your

00:43:47.080 time. It's been a pleasure. The pleasure was all mine. Thank you. My guest today was Nicholas Carr.

00:43:51.840 He's the author of several books, including the shallows, the glass cage and utopia is creepy. All of

00:43:56.900 them are available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find more information about

00:44:00.320 Nicholas's work at nicholascar.com. That's car with two R C A R R. Also check out our show notes 0.97

00:44:06.380 at aom.is slash utopia is creepy. We can find links to resources where we can delve deeper into this

00:44:11.560 topic. Well, that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast. For more manly tips and

00:44:27.660 advice, make sure to check out the art of manliness website at art of manliness.com. The show is

00:44:31.980 recorded on clearcast.io. If you're a podcaster who does remote interviews, it's a product that I've

00:44:36.380 created to help avoid the skips and static noises that come with using interviews on Skype. Check it

00:44:41.660 out at clearcast.io. As always, we appreciate your community support. And until next time, this is Brett

00:44:45.980 McKay telling you to stay manly.

The Art of Manliness - February 07, 2017

#276： Utopia is Creepy

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