Empowerment has gone bad
But sadly, noticing it may take too much effort.
A while ago, someone made a great point about one of those obvious things that are never repeated often enough. Back in 2019, the author of “What happened to individual empowerment in the internet age?" wrote that, more than by abusive online profiling, he is more concerned with “the voluntary things we do that undermine all the individual empowerment that was supposed to come our way."
Why? Because experience, of course
The single most important power humans have, he says, is their limited ability to pay attention.
These days, however, those who grew up in the age of the computer, cellphone and internet view smartphones, personal computer and the Internet as THE “portals to experience”, meaning that “the most important things that are happening in their lives, social, cultural, and economic, are happening online and via cellphone”.
For these people, experiences mediated through electronic means have become primary and more important than direct immediate experience.
Problem is, “keeping always on the goggles of a smartphone, you limit your reality rather than expanding it”. The world remains OUT there.
Recommended reading right after this post: “There are no REAL places anymore where to escape”.
Who writes this, why, and how to help
I am Marco Fioretti, tech writer and aspiring polymath doing human-digital research and popularization.
I do it because YOUR civil rights and the quality of YOUR life depend every year more on how software is used AROUND you.
To this end, I have already shared more than a million words on this blog, without any paywall or user tracking, and am sharing the next million through a newsletter, also without any paywall.
The more direct support I get, the more I can continue to inform for free parents, teachers, decision makers, and everybody else who should know more stuff like this. You can support me with paid subscriptions to my newsletter, donations via PayPal (mfioretti@nexaima.net) or LiberaPay, or in any of the other ways listed here.THANKS for your support!