I mean, just look at the Spacers.

Some days ago, in the context of a more general email conversation, fellow IPG writer Dana Blankenhorn said:

“We live so long these days we forget how long a period 50 years is."

“We still play music from that time but we never did that before. Playing something from 1970 today is like playing something from 1919 in 1970. Obsessing over Vietnam today is like people during Vietnam obsessing over WWI. Yet people do both… I call this Moore’s Law of Politics. It impedes change."

We are all becoming Spacers

The first thing that those words brought to my mind were the Spacers of some Asimov novels: societies that decayed and disappeared exactly because they lived so long that all they wanted was to isolate themselves from the ignorant masses of the rest of the Galaxy, and changed their minds (=evolved) much less, much slower than all the other humans… until there were no more Spacers, anywhere in the Galaxy.

The super-eternal September

That comment got me thinking about more than the Spacers. In and by itself that “law” is really nothing new, or unexpected, when coupled with decreasing fertility. If the percentage of senior citizens in any society grows, that society will lose some interest and capabilities for change and innovation, in any field. It always happened, and always will.

Still, that comment immediately made myself think that a Moore’s Law of Politics' at (accelerating) work in this, very specific moment in history may have previously unseen, potentially serious implications that would deserve serious discussion.

I refer to the fact that that “Moore’s Law of Politics” is working in the same period when the only social media usable and used by the masses MUST keep all their users in a perpetual, self-isolated present, without any real personal growth of any kind. A “September that never ended” on steroids.

Algorithms don’t make much difference for Spacers

When I made that connection, other participants to the discussion replied that:

"[The eternal September state] is about the nature of choice algorithms. Choices are reinforced, then reinforced again, until they become habits and pretty you can’t imagine any other way of thinking”

"[hence, to keep the possibility of change, we all must] reinforce our own critical thinking by examining our own deeply held beliefs. If we want to persuade others, are we also willing to be persuaded?"

Fact is, “willing to be persuaded” is exactly what fails when algorithms fall on unprepared masses just while other technologies are making them less able to change, sorry I meant: rushing towards longevity. The Spacers did not want to be persuaded to change their minds. And the most long-lived they became, the least they wanted it. It does not matter whether their minds were politically “progressives” or “conservatives”, assuming those words could be applied to any Spacer in the first place. Algorithms could have accelerated their end, not changed it.

Mutually reenforcing mummifications

The social networks of today are toxic because they mummify and separate people, making it harder for everybody to feel that time passes. And the “metaverse” will only enhance this condition, if it ever gets past the hype stage.

This is bad, of course. But maybe we don’t pay enough attention to how worst it can get because that digital mummification is happening exactly in parallel with biological mummification, that is on people who are already getting collectively less flexible anyway, for decades more than it could have happened before.

What happens when everyone can be actively encouraged to always remain the same, until a moment when he not only loses any capability to change, but could stay in that state for decades more, even if the digital mummification stopped?

What happens when everybody is pulled by two qualitatively opposite forces, one dilating time, the other compressing time, all the time?

How would societies be different today if we had the same Facebook, Twitter, TV networks… same of every media that exists today, but average life expectancy being 20 years LESS? And what if it were 20 years MORE? Has anybody studied this? Please let me know!

Last but not least, with my apologies for Godwin’s law

There is another thing that puzzles me, and which I suspect is related to the questions above. It is to see, in these very times of cross-mummifications that simultaneously expand and negate the duration (if not the very existence) of history, a lot of people of all political sides explicitly stressing their being “on the right side of history”. Often with messianic certainty, even when it’s said by non-religious people. As a figure of speech, it really seems abused to me, and too overconfident anyway. Even the thousand years reich said the same thing.

Today, I do wonder how many “right side of history” are call signs of Spacers, aging day after day into a digital Eternal September instead of the good, old analog galaxies of yore.