Please choose one of the following questions and construct a clear, cohesive, focused response. Use your own words, and when you are quoting from the reading, be sure to use quotation marks to show you are quoting.
Your response can be written in one or more paragraphs. Keep in mind, each paragraph should contain only one idea.
How Evil Is Tech?
David Brooks (The New York Times, November 20, 2017)
(1) Not long ago, tech was the coolest industry. Everybody wanted to work at
Google, Facebook and Apple. But over the past year the mood has shifted. Some now
believe tech is like the tobacco industry corporations that make billions of dollars
peddling a destructive addiction. Some believe it is like the N.F.L. something millions
of people love, but which everybody knows leaves a trail of human wreckage in its wake.
Surely the people in tech who generally want to make the world a better place dont
want to go down this road. It will be interesting to see if they can take the actions necessary
to prevent their companies from becoming social pariahs.
(2) There are three main critiques1 of big tech. The first is that it is destroying the
young. Social media promises an end to loneliness but actually produces an increase in
solitude2 and an intense awareness of social exclusion3. Texting and other technologies
give you more control over your social interactions but also lead to thinner interactions
and less real engagement with the world.
(3) As Jean Twenge has demonstrated in book and essay, since the spread of the
smartphone, teens are much less likely to hang out with friends, they are less likely to
date, they are less likely to work. Eighth graders who spend 10 or more hours a week on
social media are 56 percent more likely to say they are unhappy than those who spend
less time. Eighth graders who are heavy users of social media increase their risk of
depression by 27 percent. Teens who spend three or more hours a day on electronic
devices are 35 percent more likely to have a risk factor for suicide, like making a plan for
how to do it. Girls, especially hard hit, have experienced a 50 percent rise in depressive
symptoms.
(4) The second critique of the tech industry is that it is causing this addiction on
purpose, to make money. Tech companies understand what causes dopamine4 surges in
the brain and they lace their products with hijacking5 techniques that lure us in and
create compulsion6 loops. Snapchat has Snapstreak, which rewards friends who snap
each other every single day, thus encouraging addictive behavior. News feeds are
structured as bottomless bowls so that one page view leads down to another and another
and so on forever. Most social media sites create irregularly timed rewards; you have to
check your device compulsively because you never know when a burst of social
affirmation7 from a Facebook like may come.
(5) The third critique is that Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook are near
monopolies8 that use their market power to invade the private lives of their users and impose unfair conditions on content creators and smaller competitors. The political
assault on this front is gaining steam. The left is attacking tech companies because they
are mammoth9 corporations; the right is attacking them because they are culturally
progressive. Tech will have few defenders on the national scene.
(6) Obviously, the smart play would be for the tech industry to get out in front and
clean up its own pollution. There are activists like Tristan Harris of Time Well Spent, who
is trying to move the tech world in the right directions. There are even some good
engineering responses. I use an app called Moment to track and control my phone usage.
The big breakthrough will come when tech executives clearly acknowledge the central
truth: Their technologies are extremely useful for the tasks and pleasures that require
shallower forms of consciousness, but they often crowd out and destroy the deeper forms
of consciousness people need to thrive.
(7) Online is a place for human contact but not intimacy. Online is a place for
information but not reflection.10 It gives you the first stereotypical thought about a person
or a situation, but its hard to carve out time and space for the third, 15th and 43rd
thought. Online is a place for exploration but discourages cohesion.11 It grabs control of
your attention and scatters it across a vast range of diverting things. But we are happiest
when we have brought our lives to a point, when we have focused attention and will on
one thing, wholeheartedly with all our might.
(8) Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote that we take a break from the
distractions of the world not as a rest to give us more strength to dive back in, but as the climax of living. The seventh day is a palace in time which we build. It is made of soul,
joy and reticence,12 he said. By cutting off work and technology we enter a different state
of consciousness, a different dimension of time and a different atmosphere, a mine where
the spirits precious metal can be found.
(9) Imagine if instead of claiming to offer us the best things in life, tech merely saw
itself as providing efficiency13 devices. Its innovations14 can save us time on lower-level
tasks so we can get offline and there experience the best things in life. Imagine if tech
pitched itself that way. That would be an amazing show of realism and, especially,
humility15, which these days is the ultimate and most disruptive technology.
Choose one of the following topics. Write a logically organized, well-developed, and carefully proofread response to the topic. In your response, explain Brookss point and quote from How Evil Is Tech? at least once.
Topic 1: In How Evil Is Tech? David Brooks writes, Online is a place for human contact but not intimacy. Online is a place for information but not reflection (3). Why does Brooks think online is a place for human contact and information instead of a place for intimacy and reflection? How does Brooks support his ideas? Why do you agree or disagree with him?
Remember to refer to Brookss article and to quote from it at least once. You may use examples from your own experiences and observations to support your position, but these examples should not become your entire essay.
Topic 2: In How Evil Is Tech? David Brooks discusses three critiques of technology. One critique is that it is destroying young people. He states, Social media promises an end to loneliness but actually produces an increase in solitude (1). What are your ideas about social media ending loneliness but increasing solitude? Discuss the reasons you agree or disagree with Brookss opinion.
Remember to explain the critique and to quote from Brookss article at least once. You may use examples from your own experiences and observations to support your position, but these examples should not become your entire response.
August 9th, 2020 
