disdain. Handing your infant an iPad is on par with microdosing him. Just look at the way his lil’ eyes go googly. An optimist might imagine that constant tech exposure will produce armies of cyborg STEMbots eager to conquer outer space. That may be true in China, but a disheartening 2018 Harris Poll found that in the US and the UK, far more youngsters wanted to be YouTube stars than astronauts. The Machine isn’t fostering genius. It’s creating self-obsessed droids. Even though CDC data strongly suggests that young people have little to fear from the Demon Germ, the media are intentionally scaring them to death. You see the most susceptible kids walking around campus, out in the sun, wearing fashionable prophylactics on their faces and avoiding others like the plague. Many are opting to just stay home, where it’s “safe”, and stare into the screen. A younger me would barf at the prospect of being educated online, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world. At least I’d get to sleep in,
Call me a pessimist, but the technocratic Bright Future™ we’ve been sold appears to be as dumb as it is dystopian right? But if you also told me I’d be forced to attach the iPad equivalent of an RFID chip to my palm – a corporate device that allows the government to watch me watch online videos of pantless academics rambling into the camera – I’d have said, “Damn, dude. The world has already ended”.
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s we replace teachers with costeffective robots, we run the risk of creating robotic students who can’t engage reality. The up-and-coming generation can only become fully human if they’re pushed out into the scary world. For some, university life is a major step in that process. The virtue of flesh-and-
blood professors is the presence of actual, unpredictable humans for young people to emulate and argue against. The value of brick-andmortar universities is having an intensely physical space to orient the whole person to the wider cultural world. This centuries-old tradition shouldn’t be discarded lightly. For now, there are far more children caught in The Machine’s tentacles than are left to run free. At the very least, that ratio should be reversed. If we’re gonna expose a vast population of youngsters to electromagnetic rays that alter their neural circuitry, it would be wise to maintain a larger unexposed control group, just in case. Call me a pessimist, but the technocratic Bright Future™ we’ve been sold appears to be as dumb as it is dystopian. Kids don’t learn anything worth a damn if they don’t get their hands dirty, palms chipped or not. CT Joe Allen writes about race, robots, and religion. These days, he’s based out of a survivalist bunker on wheels. His website is www.joebot.xyz.
The new book from Greg Palast, the New York Times bestselling author of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy & Armed Madhouse
How Trump Stole 2020 The Hunt for America’s Vanished Voters Buy it from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or get a signed copy with a donation to support our work at www.gregpalast.com ColdType | October 2020 | www.coldtype.net
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