Nick Carr, author of The Shallows, reviews Siva Vaidhyanathan’s Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy and Jaron Lanier’s Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now. I haven’t read either, but given the way my thinking has been going of late, I’ll probably be reading one or both soon. He writes:
Social media’s problems stem not just from Internet companies’ business strategies but from the technologies the companies use and venerate. By turning all types of information into the digits of binary code, computer networks encourage the consolidation of once-diverse media into data empires of unprecedented scope and power. And the very design of smartphones and apps, research shows, saps us of the patience and attentiveness we need to evaluate the meaning and worth of the information pulsing through our screens.
Read the rest in the Washington Post.