Jaron Lanier, You Are Not A Gadget: “Digital Neoteny”
The phase of life we call “childhood” was greatly expanded in connection with the rise of literacy, because it takes time to learn to read. Illiterate children went to work in the fields as often as they were able, while those who learned to read spent time in an artificial, protected space called the classroom, an extended womb. It has even been claimed that the widespread acceptance of childhood as a familiar phase of human life only occurred in conjunction with the spread of the printing press.
….With affluence comes extended childhood. It is a common observation that children enter the world of sexuality sooner than they used to, but that is only one side of the coin. Their sexuality also remains childlike for a longer period than it used to. The twenties are the new teens, and people in their thirties are still dating, not having settled on a mate or made a decision about whether to have children or not.
….Children want attention. Therefore, young adults, in their newly extended childhood, can now perceive themselves to be finally getting enough attention, through social networks and blogs. Lately, the design of online technology has moved from answering this desire to addressing an even earlier developmental stage.
Separation anxiety is assuaged by constant connection. Young people announce every detail of their lives on services like Twitter not to show off, but to avoid the closed door at bedtime, the empty room, the screaming vacuum of an isolated mind.
….It’s worth repeating obvious truths when huge swarms of people are somehow able to remain oblivious. That is why I feel the need to point out the most obvious overall aspect of digital culture: it is comprised of wave after wave of juvenilia.
Some of the greatest speculative investments in human history continue to converge on silly Silicon Valley schemes that seem to have been named by Dr. Seuss. On any given day, one might hear of hundreds of millions of dollars flowing to a startup company named Ublibudly or MeTickly. These are names I just made up, but they would make great venture capital bait if they existed….One finds rooms full of MIT PhD engineers not seeking cancer cures or sources of safe drinking water for the developing world, but schemes to send little digital pictures of teddy bears and dragons between adult members of social networks. At the end of the road of the pursuit of technological sophistication appears to lie a playhouse in which humankind regresses to nursery school.
(Excerpted and edited from Lanier, Jaron, You Are Not A Gadget. New York: Vintage Books, 2010)