Lots of people say or write: “universal dumbing-down, office drones, social networks all day, talk shows, people have forgotten how to count and how to talk, they watch all that TNT stuff…” (TNT being a Russian entertainment TV channel).
I think this is like the hackneyed “The world isn’t what it used to be! Now back then, there were young people! People used to be smarter!” and similar the-rivers-used-to-be-deeper-and-the-mountains-higher talk.
I think those same dumbed-down/mobile-phoned/internetted people who, in many people’s opinion, “used to be smarter” do research in the time left over from their simple affairs, study neurophysiology, build robots, develop software and so on. (Well, maybe not quite the same people, but plenty of others at the same time.)
The phrase “the world isn’t what it used to be” opens up a very typical misconception, sadly.
The world is changing and standing still at the same time. How so?
On the one hand, masses brainwashed by the media and politicians; on the other, rapid technological development that our used-to-be-smart ancestors never dreamed of.
What? Technological development isn’t everything? Right, it isn’t! There’s also an economy driven by technology, and the freedom of communication and self-expression that the internet gives (and that our “masters”, the governments, haven’t quite taken away yet)… Today’s not-so-rich people are real rich folk compared with the aristocrats of the past (if you measure by the goods available to them)… Then again, technology alone would have been enough.
Something like that.
An interesting article on social trends in modern society on slon.ru, “There will be less and less of the human in us”, which, among other things, inspired this post.