That’s the title of an article by Adrienne LaFrance, executive editor of The Atlantic, published earlier this year. LaFrance notes that the rules and cultural norms of the internet are decided by a select few people. The world they have created in recent decades is one of reckless social engineering.
She writes:
Our children are not data sets waiting to be quantified, tracked, and sold. Our intellectual output is not a mere training manual for the AI that will be used to mimic and plagiarize us. Our lives are meant not to be optimized through a screen but to be lived–in all of our messy tree-climbing, night-swimming, adventuresome glory. We are all better versions of ourselves when we are not tweeting or clicking “Like” or scrolling, scrolling, scrolling.
She notes that we have agency. We can decide. She concludes:
Every day we vote with our attention; it is precious, and desperately wanted by those who will use it against us for their own profit and political goals. Don’t let them.
I love what she says, but I think it is about twenty years too late.
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