Ryan Dussault

Professor Emerson

English 110 H-6

10 October 2017

Ignorance, Hate, and Manipulation: What Technology is doing to us

A year ago, President Donald Trump beat Hilary Clinton in a close race for whom would become the president of the United States. During the race, there was constant hate thrown back and forth between candidates in both the primary, and the election. Like no other election, people, whom were competing for debatably the most important position in the country, were acting like children. “Little Marco”, “Lyin’ Ted Cruz”, “Crooked Hilary”, and many more degrading terms were thrown about, and not just by Trump. The tremendous majority of the candidates acted immaturely, but in the end, the most vicious seem to win. He said these things, media put them out on the internet, and people started to get behind it. Media sources fueled the fire with “Fake News”, each making the opposing side seem horrible. The hate carried down to the public: taking one side, and hating the other. Democrats and republicans now seem to hate each other more than ever. It is also harder than ever now to tell what information is real, and what is fake. It seems as though we, the United States, are moving towards a society full of ignorance, manipulation, and hate, all because of technology.

Technology creates a distraction that takes our attention out of the present. This causes us to miss vital information that we need, and as a result we are becoming ignorant to our surroundings, and are becoming less educated on topics that require attention to understand. Sam Anderson is an author and a critic who writes about the impacts that technology has on people. He describes how technologies constant demand of our attention overburdens the brain, and makes it mistake prone (Anderson). As he says, “the overloaded brain shifts its processing from the hippocampus (responsible for memory) to the striatum (responsible for rote tasks), making it hard to learn a task or even recall what you’ve been doing once you’re done.” (Anderson). Whether it be social media, the television, or e-mail that draws your attention away from whatever else you are doing, the brain is not going to be able to do both things. It is so often that people try to do one task, while at the same time doing another on their phones. Divided attention like this makes it nearly impossible for us to remember what we were doing, as the part of the brain responsible for memory is replaced when we become distracted. Under these circumstances, we are not able to learn, and thus are becoming less intelligent and ignorant to our surrounding. The effects of constantly having a divided attention from technology is no joke. Research has found that, “People who frequently check their e-mail have tested as less intelligent than people who are actually high on marijuana.” (Anderson). This seems surreal, but it has been shown through verified research. Technology is killing our society’s intelligence.

Beyond dividing our attention, technology is making us ignorant to the truth because of the information that is available. The internet and social media allow anyone to put out whatever information that they want. Uneducated people can post something, and millions of people can see it. Take Wikipedia for example; anyone, qualified or not, can post whatever they please, and people will believe it. The media is also a protagonist of distributing false information. Angie Drobnic Holan is the editor of Politifact and author of “2016 Lie of the Year: Fake News.” She is one of the “good guys” in this era of vast misinformation caused by technology. The media putting our false information has become so prevalent, that Trump’s use of the term “Fake News” to describe the media gained him immense support from the public. Unfortunately, he, the media, his opponent, and many other political factors are all guilty of spreading fake news. This problem is described by Holan when she asks, “Fake news is the boldest sign of a post-truth society. When we can’t agree on basic facts — or even that there are such things as facts — how do we talk to each other?” Fake news, and the tremendous amount of misinformation is so prevalent because of the ability for anyone to post whatever they want, and for media sources to say or cover anything that they want that our society cannot differentiate all of their shenanigans from the truth.

Also, our society is seemingly dividing into a polarized nation full of hate; this is, again, because of technology. Fake news is also one of the major components in making our nation polarized. As Holan says, “Fake news swims in the same electronic currents as everyday exaggerations, hard-charging opinion and political hyperbole. That makes it seem normal, even when it’s just crazy, made-up stories that develop under the radar before blowing up into viral memes.” The repetition of the exaggerations, hard-charging opinions and political hyperbole are seen by everyone on social media, television, and the radio. After constant repetition of these strong opinions that people are presented with, they either take one side or the other. For example, consider the Trump and Hilary presidential race. There were very few people on either side who didn’t hate the other. This is because technology is allowing both sides to constantly spew garbage about the other, and people believe it. They end up taking one side, and the constant bashing of the other side exacerbates the disagreement into a hatred. Technology is polarizing our nation, and creating a society who hates each other.

Another way technology is making us a nation of hate, is because of the constant distraction of technology is making it so we are more likely to be hateful. One cannot multitask. When technology demands for our divided attention, our attention is actually shifting back and forth. This is changing our brains to have a shorter attention span, so that we are able to shift back and forth more efficiently. One cannot focus on any one thing for more than a few seconds before getting bored and moving on, as a result of technol. This is where the hate comes in. Bill Wasik, senior editor at Wired magazine conducted experiments, known as mob experiments, where he studied boredom, and later wrote about it. In his writing, he cited research conducted by Richard Farmer and Norman Sundberg from University of Oregon who found that, “The boredom-prone, we have discovered, display higher rates of procrastination, narcissism, poor work performance, and “solitary sexual behaviors.” Narcissism being the important part, as it is defined as “erotic gratification derived from admiration of one’s own physical or mental attributes, being a normal condition at the infantile level of personality development.” Narcissistic people, which boredom, and thus technology, causes makes people think that they are perfect in every sense. People like this are much more likely to bully and to hate others. So beyond polarizing our nation because of fake news, technology is also making us a bunch of narcissistic jerks due to the boredom that it creates.

On top of everything else, technology also gives people easy opportunity to manipulate others. The ability for anyone to put out whatever information that they want, and to reach a broad audience of viewers can easily be taken advantage of, and it happens all of the time. As Holan says, “Ignoring the facts has long been a staple of political speech. Every day, politicians overstate some statistic, distort their opponents’ positions, or simply tell out-and-out whoppers. Surrogates and pundits spread the spin.” Now that these politicians and surrogates are able to use media to get their “fake news” out to the public, they can imbed their views into the public by putting out biased media. Maybe it’s just me, but I think this ability to constantly feed biased information to people so that they think one way closely resembles brainwashing.

Bill Wasik used the internet to get people to do what he wanted, which very well shows the power of manipulation through technology. His mob project was designed to study boredom, by sending out an email to see what he could get people to do. Here is a direct quote from what he wrote about the project: “I could use email to gather an audience for a show, yes, but the point of the show would be no show at all.” Wasik was sending this email out simply to see whether he could get these bored people to go to a gathering with no purpose. They were under their free-will, but he was still able to get them to do what he wanted simply because of how bored they were. This was the whole idea behind his experiment, and while Wasik was not using the internet to manipulate people into doing anything wrong, his ability to get people to go out with no reason other than because they got an email telling them to do so seems awfully concerning.

Technology is creating an environment in the United States where our society is becoming less intelligent, ignorant to their surroundings, hateful, polarized in their beliefs, and vulnerable to manipulation. Created to grant easy access to information with the press of a button, the ability to communicate across the globe, and for endless opportunity, how is it that technology is creating such catastrophe for our society? The answer is that technology itself is not the problem; the people are the problem. People are using technology irresponsibly for social entertainment, and constantly relying on it which is killing their attention span, and thus making them bored. People are putting out misinformation and fake news that is misinforms the general public. People, like politicians, members of ISIS, and other terrible people are manipulating others into believing there fallacious propaganda. Technology is an extremely valuable tool, but similar to other valuable tools like cars, guns, and prescription drugs, bad people are going to misuse it.

S

Works Cited

Anderson, Sam. “In Defense of Distraction.” New York Magazine, 17 May 2009, pp. 1–12, nymag.com/news/features/56793#print.

Holan, Angie Drobnic. “PolitiFact’s 2016 Lie of the Year: Fake News.” PolitiFact, PolitiFact, 13      Dec. 2016, 5:30 p.m., www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/dec/13/2016-lie-    year-fake-news/.

Wasik, Bill. “My Crowd Experiment: The Mob Project.” Emerging: Contemporary Readins for Writers. 3rd ed. Vol. 1. N.p.: Publisher for Composition, Buisness and Technical Writing, Developmental Writing: Leasa Burton, 2010. 372-86. Print.