Like many, I have struggled to understand why so many Americans are OK with the destruction of its institutions and our relationships with one another.
Back in the 1990s I read a book called Bowling Alone, a first significant look at how Americans were losing stable communities. “There’s no place like home,” had become a dozen places in the average lifetime. Moving constantly, and with the tube and video games occupying their time, neighborhoods, local schools and churches were taking a big hit. Parent PTA membership dropped by 60%, and even though people still bowled, team bowling dropped by 60%. Thus, the name of the book.
The number of people saying they have no close friends has quadrupled since 1990. You, or at least one person on your block, reports feeling lonely every day and thus suicides have become one of the nation’s leading causes of death, increasing 37% since 2000.
The really bad news doesn’t come until about 2010 when “Smart Phones” take off and social isolation becomes a pandemic. Most of the normal human experience that has existed through the Millenia is taken away: time outside, time with friends, time to sleep and exercise – all going, going and about to be gone.
Five hours a day is the average time spent on “Smart Phones” by young adults and teens. With over 40% of teens saying they are on their phones several times a day and the other 50% saying they are on it constantly, pushing out all healthy interactive activity – no touching, seeing, smelling, hearing, feeling or learning, just addiction to that little machine in their hands.
This addiction is not accidental but planned and intended to stimulate action and reward with the hoped for responses like little infusions of dopamine hooking each user on things logarithms already know they will enjoy or agree with.
No contrary stimulus required, needed, or wanted. Much like training a dog, with each desired response give a little treat, do it again, and again and you end up with the behavior you want. We all end up bowling alone, always entertained, soothed or emboldened by wherever the treats are.
Kids get hit the hardest where their days can be ruled by social isolation. Our kids go out with friend’s half as much as we did. Since 2010 the number of youths feeling left out has doubled. Those feeling their lives are not useful have gone up 20%, while those feeling they have no hope for the world has doubled.
Swing sets rust, drive-ins gone, no stickball, no marbles, no cruising, no dolls, no biking, no pogo sticks, no teetertotters, no playing house, or building forts, no learning the twist, no hula hoops, no jacks, no splitting that piece of bubble gum, no walking to a friend’s house or playing outside unsupervised, no hopscotch, no tether ball, no blood brothers, no skipping rocks, no bow and arrows, no cap-guns and certainly no BB guns. Just quiet time in the corner, with that machine working out on human brains.
The turning of Americans against what has been America is just a little piss in the pond of what has happened and is to come.
All of what I have said pales in comparison with what is set upon us. Artificial Intelligence will take the ability to categorize and manipulate you and me in ways so profound as to make us, not us anymore. The ability of Artificial Intelligence will increase all that I have pointed out, AND THIS IS NO EXAGERATION, a billion billion times.
Richard Kimball
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