{"id":7831,"date":"2017-04-21T10:19:58","date_gmt":"2017-04-21T14:19:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=7831"},"modified":"2017-04-21T13:06:09","modified_gmt":"2017-04-21T17:06:09","slug":"a-smaller-nastier-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=7831","title":{"rendered":"A smaller, nastier world"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have an\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bostonglobe.com\/ideas\/2017\/04\/21\/how-technology-created-global-village-and-put-each-other-throats\/pu7MyoAkdyVComb9aKyu6K\/story.html\">essay<\/a> in the <em>Boston Globe<\/em>&#8216;s Ideas section\u00a0that takes a hard look\u00a0at the popular notion\u00a0that communication\u00a0networks make the world a better place.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a taste:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>If our\u00a0assumption that communications technology brings people together were true, we should today be seeing a planetary outbreak of peace, love, and understanding. Thanks to the Internet and cellular networks, humanity is more connected than ever. Of the world\u2019s 7 billion people, 6 billion have access to a mobile phone. Nearly 2 billion are on Facebook, more than a billion upload and download YouTube videos, and billions more converse through messaging apps like WhatsApp and WeChat. With smartphone in hand, everyone becomes a media hub, transmitting and receiving ceaselessly.<\/p>\n<p>Yet we live in a fractious time, defined not by concord but by conflict. Xenophobia is on the rise. Political and social fissures are widening. From the White House down, public discourse is characterized by vitriol and insult. We probably shouldn\u2019t be surprised.<\/p>\n<p>For years now, psychological and sociological studies have been casting doubt on the idea that communication dissolves differences. The research suggests that the opposite is true: free-flowing information makes personal and cultural differences more salient, turning people against one another instead of bringing them together. \u201cFamiliarity breeds contempt\u201d is one of the gloomiest of proverbs. It is also, the evidence says, one of the truest.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bostonglobe.com\/ideas\/2017\/04\/21\/how-technology-created-global-village-and-put-each-other-throats\/pu7MyoAkdyVComb9aKyu6K\/story.html\">Read on<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have an\u00a0essay in the Boston Globe&#8216;s Ideas section\u00a0that takes a hard look\u00a0at the popular notion\u00a0that communication\u00a0networks make the world a better place. Here&#8217;s a taste: If our\u00a0assumption that communications technology brings people together were true, we should today be seeing a planetary outbreak of peace, love, and understanding. Thanks to the Internet and cellular [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7831"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7841,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7831\/revisions\/7841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}