The anti-social century

In a cover story for The Atlantic called ‘The Anti-Social Century,’ Derek Thompson documents the increasing isolation that has crept into American life, and the interplay between technology and preferences that has been at work. A glaring defect of mainstream economic theory is that it treats preferences and technology as exogenously given (along with the ‘initial distribution of endowments,’ aka property rights): in effect, all are assumed to fall from the sky in a kind of immaculate theoretical conception. This abstraction from reality – in which all of these all in play with far-reaching consequences – helps to explain why economists so often fail to bring the distribution and exercise of power into their equations.

Excerpts from Thompson’s thought-provoking piece:

Degraded public spaces—and degraded public life—are in some ways the other side of all our investments in video games and phones and bigger, better private space. Just as we needed time to see the invisible emissions of the Industrial Revolution, we are only now coming to grips with the negative externalities of a phonebound and homebound world. The media theorist Marshall McLuhan once said of technology that every augmentation is also an amputation. We chose our digitally enhanced world. We did not realize the significance of what was being amputated….

Although technology does not have values of its own, its adoption can create values, even in the absence of a coordinated effort. For decades, we’ve adopted whatever technologies removed friction or increased dopamine, embracing what makes life feel easy and good in the moment. But dopamine is a chemical, not a virtue. And what’s easy is not always what’s best for us. We should ask ourselves: What would it mean to select technology based on long-term health rather than instant gratification? And if technology is hurting our community, what can we do to heal it?

Read more here.