The Atlantic: The world is full of theories of everything. The smartphone theory of everything argues that our personal devices are responsible for the rise of political polarization, anxiety, depression, and conspiracy theories—not to mention the decline of attention spans, intelligence, happiness, and general comity.
4 comments:
My phone is by far my least favorite thing that I own, yet I spend so much time on it every freaking day. The smartphone theory is one I fully subscribe to. Housing theory of everything.. I don’t know that not having enough homes is necessarily the issue. There are a lot of empty houses, in fact. People just can’t afford them. The orality theory… I was under the impression that this wasn’t a theory. I’m actually decently sure it’s a fact. Written language developed independently all over the world in many different cultures. We are the only species on the planet that uses it. It gave us a way to keep records, keep history, and create art, and as the author points out, it gives us a way to do that independently. Obviously it’s one of the most important developments in human history. I personally believe that this is a silly theory, because all it boils down to is “humans inventing written language was super important!” Which isn’t a theory. That’s a fact.
I love that the subtitle and last sentence are the exact same because I was really expecting some kind of explanation at all and that actually made me laugh out loud to circle back around to exactly what we started with… this was a 10/10 introductory paragraph but someone must have forgotten the part where we learn what this theory is about at all because “changing the way we think” is so broad. That could mean actually anything. Now you might be thinking, Payton- what is this, “Orality Theory of Everything,” that you are discussing? And to that I say, I still don’t know. Like… I agree? Yes we are thinking differently and we are losing certain literary skills and gaining others and? What is the theory here- that there is change? Because that’s not a theory, just objective truth that things are changing, I was really expecting something profound. (Am I bashing too hard? Sorry Atlantic…)
So I think this article is so interesting because it relates to very different points in time to feel very similar. I do also think that the rise in technology, specifically the internet has really become a new tipping point in how we as a society function. Something that really stood out to me about the Orality Theory is how it is considered to have completely changed how memory works within our society. I think that phones and social media do a very similar thing. It almost feels like we're going back to a time that predates language, one more memory and information is more fluid. not because we can't remember it but because there is so much that it is impossible to have a single agreed upon opinion. This article also makes me wonder what we can learn about how society responded after the creation of written language and see if there are things we can learn from.
This is my first time hearing about so many theories at the same time. I find it super interesting to learn about people’s interpretations of certain social phenomena and analyze them into a theory. However, most of these theories sound like nonsense. They are somehow too extreme or too biased in perspective, which I don’t believe captures a lot of the essence of social phenomena accurately. The orality theory, which should be the main focus of this article, as introduced by the title, is not well-explained. Still, I think it is an interesting theory when oral style recording and communication gradually shift to written language, and people can develop more concise ideas based on written words. I think the age of literacy is super important to human history, since it was the period when people condensed their thoughts and really thought hard to record them for future generations to build on. I truly believe that leaving people their own chance to reflect on their thoughts and note things down in written language is an essential part of human growth and development, but we still need oral style communication to keep people connected, and let ideas out of people’s minds when needed. Apart from condensing our own thoughts, reaching out and expressing ourselves to the world is the other complementary part of human connection that we must also build.
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