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Slate Technology

S1E9: A Little Less Conversation

Slate Technology

Slate

Society & Culture, Technology, History

4.6636 Ratings

🗓️ 31 October 2018

⏱️ 30 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Some people thought the laying of the transatlantic cable might bring world peace, because connecting humans could only lead to better understanding and empathy. That wasn’t the outcome, and recent utopian ideas about communication (Facebook might bring us together and make us all friends!) have also met with a darker reality (Facebook might polarize us and spread false information!). Should we be scared of technology that promises to connect the world? Guests include: Robin Dunbar, inventor of Dunbar’s Number; Nancy Baym, Microsoft researcher.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

In 2016, I went to a Facebook event F8, which is their big developer conference in San Francisco.

0:09.2

We stand for connecting every person, for a global community, for bringing people together,

0:16.3

for giving all people a voice, for a free flow of ideas and culture across nations.

0:22.7

I saw Mark Zuckerberg sort of make the case for his view of how Facebook was making the world a better place.

0:28.7

And he was just generally really into the idea that connecting people together would fix really deep-seated problems in the world.

0:34.8

It was all incredibly utopian.

0:36.9

Connectivity will give everyone access to all of the opportunities of the internet.

0:42.3

And he was talking about his great plans and how they were going to expand connectivity and connect

0:46.3

more people and more communities and how bad it was that some people, guess who, wanted to build

0:51.3

walls when in fact we should be building bridges, and it was all

0:54.3

really laid on with a trowl. We can actually give more people a voice, and instead of dividing

1:00.9

people, we can help bring people together. We do it one connection at a time, one innovation at a time. When I listen to Mark Zuckerberg here, he sounds really

1:14.9

naive to me because I look at my Facebook page and it's just pictures of people's babies

1:19.5

and people whinging about politics. And the idea that somehow like a screen full of people

1:24.9

showing pictures of their babies and are winging about politics is going to

1:27.7

solve humanity's problems. And the idea that like an engineering solution is somehow going to

1:32.9

create emotional regulation among people, I don't understand that. I mean, it just seems

1:37.9

crazy and completely goo-go-eyed to even think that. Yeah, I know what you mean. It's the engineering

1:43.4

fallacy, I think,

1:44.5

that kind of connecting people up

1:46.0

will resolve these conflicts

1:47.5

because their conflicts must stem

...

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