Humans are tribal animals, who cooperate within their tribe and compete with others, up to and including killing. That's how evolution works.
We began with the same mechanisms of forming tribes as other tribal animals, such as physical appearance, geographic proximity, territorial posession, and genetic kinship.
But as we evolved cultural evolution, and that itself evolved, the size of tribes has gotten bigger, and new mechanisms to form tribes have evolved. Among them are civilizations, stratification, religions, nations, and most recently social media. Some of these may have other benefits for some humans within a tribe. But primarily, they facilitate tribe formation and expansion, and cooperative action against other tribes.
When the tribes are large, and the cooperative action against other tribes is large and highly organized, we call it war. When the action is more ad hoc, when it seems to lack much cooperation or any significant organization, we call it a mob.
Humans, like other tribal animals, have always formed mobs and attacked members of other tribes, preferably when they appear to be defenseless. That lights us up with endorphins. Sometimes we capture goods and trophies. It satisfies our instincts, and the cultural imperatives we have evolved.
Social media is the perfect amplifier of that, perhaps the best we have ever invented. It enables a human to join a mob, and attack others whether they are other mobs, or individuals who just happen to be in sight, with little immediate risk of retaliation. What's not to like?
I'm afraid your hope is a pipe dream, as I suspect you well know, because the consumers, not the producers, are the problem.
Nobody is forced to soak in social media: they do it because they like it. And the producers produce what they produce because they have learned that the consumers will consume it, because apparently, they like it. And somehow, the producers make huge money from that, so they do it more and more. And the consumers just consume it more and more.
I do have one suggestion: get rid of all "like" buttons, and everything resembling them. So that people are allowed to write whatever they want, but it will never be "pushed" to millions by an algorithm. Instead, consumers must explicitly "pull", by explicitly telling their algos what they specifically want. If you explicitly tell your algo, "Please send me lots of violent hate, and lots of stuff about people I hate", it will still do that. But _until_ you tell it that, it will not.
And pushing _anything_ intentionally at large scale, whether it be cat videos or snuff films or fishing attempts or requests for contributions from your favorite non-profit organization, is a crime, escalating to a felony with repetition. But _no_ authority may make any qualitative or ethical judgement on any content. It is the _act_ of large scale pushing that is the crime, regardless of what is pushed.
I think that preserves freedom of speech. I think freedom of speech means you can say whatever you want, and that anybody who _wants_ to listen can hear you. But _not_ that you can force your speech on millions of people who have never asked for it, and are nowhere near you.
The question, of course, is whether consumers, as voters, will support that. I doubt it. But it might be worth a try.
Thanks for your work and inspiration. Using your narrative to build a new scenario:
"The Coherence of Thursdays
I’m Albert, and it’s 7:00 am.
My phone, which has been charging in the kitchen (never in the bedroom—that’s my "Sleep Zone"), gently illuminates its screen. There's no avalanche of red badges or panic alerts. Instead, my "Attention Fiduciary" welcomes me.
"Good morning, Albert. You have a carpentry order ready for confirmation. Clara has basketball practice today at 5. You slept 7 hours and 45 minutes. Here is your news summary."
I open the news. The first thing I see is not a scandal. It’s an article about how the farmers in my region and a group of environmentalists have reached an "unlikely consensus" on water usage, thanks to a new mediation system. The algorithm shows me this first—the "bridge ranking," as they call it. It makes me start the day feeling that things can be fixed, not that everything is on fire.
I glance at the problem feed, and beneath an article about the drought, "Solutions Journalism" has already linked me to three projects that are working in other parts of the world. I don't feel the old helplessness; I feel like we are working on it.
Clara, my 12-year-old daughter, comes down for breakfast.
"Dad, can I go to the park with Sara after practice?" "Sure. Do you have your history assignment?" "Yes, we finished it yesterday at the library."
We talk while we eat. There is no phone on the table. In fact, Clara doesn't even have a phone in the old sense. She has a communication device that is locked down by the "Age-Appropriate Design Code." No infinite feeds, no autoplay. It's a tool.
I drop her off at school. I remember how my older nephews used to talk about their high school hallways: a sea of silent, bowed heads. Here, as Clara walks in, the playground is a chaos of laughter and shouting. Schools are "Phone-Free Zones," and the change has been astonishing. Attention spans are back.
I head to my carpentry workshop. For the next four hours, my phone is just a work tool. At 10:00 am, like clockwork every day, it suggests: "Albert, you are entering your 'Concentration Mode.' I will protect your attention until lunchtime. Do you accept?" I accept.
The digital silence is wonderful.
During lunch, I check my messages. I see one from "The Gathering" (El Encuentro), the app that replaced the old swiping industrial complex.
It’s Thursday. And Thursday is event day.
A few months ago, I decided it was time to stop being alone. The old apps gave me panic: the idea of judging people like trading cards and then falling into that void of texting that never led anywhere... But this is different.
I matched with a woman named Sofía. She’s an architect. We exchanged a few messages, and the app's AI—whose job is to get us off the app—suggested an event.
"The Gathering" is legally mandated (thanks to that famous "re-humanification" lawsuit) to invest its profits in organizing real-world events.
So tonight, at the community center, there is a free local cooking class. Sofía and I both said yes. The app has also invited four other matched pairs from the area. It’s real. There’s no pressure, no "game." We are going to cook, laugh, and see each other's faces. We are going to be human.
I remember how I used to feel. That constant hum of anxiety, that sense of being always connected but terribly lonely, that polarization I felt even inside myself.
Now, as I sand a piece of oak, I feel... coherent. I feel like my attention belongs to me. I feel like my daughter is growing up safely. And tonight, I’m going to meet someone.
Technology didn't disappear. We simply tamed it. We made it human, and it helped us become human again."
![[ Center for Humane Technology ]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!uhgK!,w_120,h_120,c_fill,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5f9f5ef8-865a-4eb3-b23e-c8dfdc8401d2_518x518.png)
Humans are tribal animals, who cooperate within their tribe and compete with others, up to and including killing. That's how evolution works.
We began with the same mechanisms of forming tribes as other tribal animals, such as physical appearance, geographic proximity, territorial posession, and genetic kinship.
But as we evolved cultural evolution, and that itself evolved, the size of tribes has gotten bigger, and new mechanisms to form tribes have evolved. Among them are civilizations, stratification, religions, nations, and most recently social media. Some of these may have other benefits for some humans within a tribe. But primarily, they facilitate tribe formation and expansion, and cooperative action against other tribes.
When the tribes are large, and the cooperative action against other tribes is large and highly organized, we call it war. When the action is more ad hoc, when it seems to lack much cooperation or any significant organization, we call it a mob.
Humans, like other tribal animals, have always formed mobs and attacked members of other tribes, preferably when they appear to be defenseless. That lights us up with endorphins. Sometimes we capture goods and trophies. It satisfies our instincts, and the cultural imperatives we have evolved.
Social media is the perfect amplifier of that, perhaps the best we have ever invented. It enables a human to join a mob, and attack others whether they are other mobs, or individuals who just happen to be in sight, with little immediate risk of retaliation. What's not to like?
Good capture
I'm afraid your hope is a pipe dream, as I suspect you well know, because the consumers, not the producers, are the problem.
Nobody is forced to soak in social media: they do it because they like it. And the producers produce what they produce because they have learned that the consumers will consume it, because apparently, they like it. And somehow, the producers make huge money from that, so they do it more and more. And the consumers just consume it more and more.
I do have one suggestion: get rid of all "like" buttons, and everything resembling them. So that people are allowed to write whatever they want, but it will never be "pushed" to millions by an algorithm. Instead, consumers must explicitly "pull", by explicitly telling their algos what they specifically want. If you explicitly tell your algo, "Please send me lots of violent hate, and lots of stuff about people I hate", it will still do that. But _until_ you tell it that, it will not.
And pushing _anything_ intentionally at large scale, whether it be cat videos or snuff films or fishing attempts or requests for contributions from your favorite non-profit organization, is a crime, escalating to a felony with repetition. But _no_ authority may make any qualitative or ethical judgement on any content. It is the _act_ of large scale pushing that is the crime, regardless of what is pushed.
I think that preserves freedom of speech. I think freedom of speech means you can say whatever you want, and that anybody who _wants_ to listen can hear you. But _not_ that you can force your speech on millions of people who have never asked for it, and are nowhere near you.
The question, of course, is whether consumers, as voters, will support that. I doubt it. But it might be worth a try.
Thanks for your work and inspiration. Using your narrative to build a new scenario:
"The Coherence of Thursdays
I’m Albert, and it’s 7:00 am.
My phone, which has been charging in the kitchen (never in the bedroom—that’s my "Sleep Zone"), gently illuminates its screen. There's no avalanche of red badges or panic alerts. Instead, my "Attention Fiduciary" welcomes me.
"Good morning, Albert. You have a carpentry order ready for confirmation. Clara has basketball practice today at 5. You slept 7 hours and 45 minutes. Here is your news summary."
I open the news. The first thing I see is not a scandal. It’s an article about how the farmers in my region and a group of environmentalists have reached an "unlikely consensus" on water usage, thanks to a new mediation system. The algorithm shows me this first—the "bridge ranking," as they call it. It makes me start the day feeling that things can be fixed, not that everything is on fire.
I glance at the problem feed, and beneath an article about the drought, "Solutions Journalism" has already linked me to three projects that are working in other parts of the world. I don't feel the old helplessness; I feel like we are working on it.
Clara, my 12-year-old daughter, comes down for breakfast.
"Dad, can I go to the park with Sara after practice?" "Sure. Do you have your history assignment?" "Yes, we finished it yesterday at the library."
We talk while we eat. There is no phone on the table. In fact, Clara doesn't even have a phone in the old sense. She has a communication device that is locked down by the "Age-Appropriate Design Code." No infinite feeds, no autoplay. It's a tool.
I drop her off at school. I remember how my older nephews used to talk about their high school hallways: a sea of silent, bowed heads. Here, as Clara walks in, the playground is a chaos of laughter and shouting. Schools are "Phone-Free Zones," and the change has been astonishing. Attention spans are back.
I head to my carpentry workshop. For the next four hours, my phone is just a work tool. At 10:00 am, like clockwork every day, it suggests: "Albert, you are entering your 'Concentration Mode.' I will protect your attention until lunchtime. Do you accept?" I accept.
The digital silence is wonderful.
During lunch, I check my messages. I see one from "The Gathering" (El Encuentro), the app that replaced the old swiping industrial complex.
It’s Thursday. And Thursday is event day.
A few months ago, I decided it was time to stop being alone. The old apps gave me panic: the idea of judging people like trading cards and then falling into that void of texting that never led anywhere... But this is different.
I matched with a woman named Sofía. She’s an architect. We exchanged a few messages, and the app's AI—whose job is to get us off the app—suggested an event.
"The Gathering" is legally mandated (thanks to that famous "re-humanification" lawsuit) to invest its profits in organizing real-world events.
So tonight, at the community center, there is a free local cooking class. Sofía and I both said yes. The app has also invited four other matched pairs from the area. It’s real. There’s no pressure, no "game." We are going to cook, laugh, and see each other's faces. We are going to be human.
I remember how I used to feel. That constant hum of anxiety, that sense of being always connected but terribly lonely, that polarization I felt even inside myself.
Now, as I sand a piece of oak, I feel... coherent. I feel like my attention belongs to me. I feel like my daughter is growing up safely. And tonight, I’m going to meet someone.
Technology didn't disappear. We simply tamed it. We made it human, and it helped us become human again."
“ Trillions of dollars of lost social capital” great imagination exercise
Would have been pretty cool imo.