21 Lessons for the 21st Century(30)
Online versus offline
In recent years Facebook has had astonishing success, and it currently has more than 2 billion active users online. Yet in order to implement its new vision it will have to bridge the chasm between online and offline. A community may begin as an online gathering, but in order to truly flourish it will have to strike roots in the offline world too. If one day some dictator bars Facebook from his country, or completely pulls the plug on the Internet, will the communities evaporate, or will they regroup and fight back? Will they be able to organise a demonstration without online communication?
Zuckerberg explained in his February 2017 manifesto that online communities help foster offline ones. This is sometimes true. Yet in many cases online comes at the expense of offline, and there is a fundamental difference between the two. Physical communities have a depth that virtual communities cannot match, at least not in the near future. If I lie sick at home in Israel, my online friends from California can talk to me, but they cannot bring me soup or a cup of tea.
Humans have bodies. During the last century technology has been distancing us from our bodies. We have been losing our ability to pay attention to what we smell and taste. Instead we are absorbed in our smartphones and computers. We are more interested in what is happening in cyberspace than in what is happening down the street. It is easier than ever to talk to my cousin in Switzerland, but it is harder to talk to my husband over breakfast, because he constantly looks at his smartphone instead of at me.7
In the past, humans could not afford such carelessness. Ancient foragers were always alert and attentive. Wandering in the forest in search of mushrooms, they watched the ground for any telltale bulge. They listened to the slightest movement in the grass to learn whether a snake might be lurking there. When they found an edible mushroom, they ate it with the utmost attention to distinguish it from its poisonous cousins. Members of today’s affluent societies don’t need such keen awareness. We can wander between the supermarket aisles while texting messages, and we can buy any of a thousand dishes, all supervised by the health authorities. But whatever we choose, we might end up eating it in haste in front of a screen, checking emails or watching television, while hardly paying attention to the actual taste.
Zuckerberg says that Facebook is committed ‘to continue improving our tools to give you the power to share your experience’ with others.8 Yet what people might really need are the tools to connect to their own experiences. In the name of ‘sharing experiences’, people are encouraged to understand what happens to them in terms of how others see it. If something exciting happens, the gut instinct of Facebook users is to pull out their smartphones, take a picture, post it online, and wait for the ‘likes’. In the process they barely notice what they themselves feel. Indeed, what they feel is increasingly determined by the online reactions.
People estranged from their bodies, senses and physical environment are likely to feel alienated and disoriented. Pundits often blame such feelings of alienation on the decline of religious and national bonds, but losing touch with your body is probably more important. Humans lived for millions of years without religions and without nations – they can probably live happily without them in the twenty-first century, too. Yet they cannot live happily if they are disconnected from their bodies. If you don’t feel at home in your body, you will never feel at home in the world.
Up till now, Facebook’s own business model encouraged people to spend more and more time online even if that meant having less time and energy to devote to offline activities. Can it adopt a new model that encourages people to go online only when it is really necessary, and to devote more attention to their physical environment and to their own bodies and senses? What would the shareholders think about this model? (A blueprint of such an alternative model has been suggested recently by Tristan Harris, an ex-Googler and tech-philosopher who came up with a new metric of ‘time well spent’.9)
The limitations of online relationships also undermine Zuckerberg’s solution to social polarisation. He rightly points out that just connecting people and exposing them to different opinions will not bridge social divides because ‘showing people an article from the opposite perspective, actually deepens polarisation by framing other perspectives as foreign’. Instead, Zuckerberg suggests that ‘the best solutions for improving discourse may come from getting to know each other as whole people instead of just opinions – something Facebook may be uniquely suited to do. If we connect with people about what we have in common – sports teams, TV shows, interests – it is easier to have dialogue about what we disagree on.’10
Yet it is extremely difficult to know each other as ‘whole’ people. It takes a lot of time, and it demands direct physical interaction. As noted earlier, the average Homo sapiens is probably incapable of intimately knowing more than 150 individuals. Ideally, building communities should not be a zero-sum game. Humans can feel loyal to different groups at the same time. Unfortunately, intimate relations probably are a zero-sum game. Beyond a certain point, the time and energy you spend on getting to know your online friends from Iran or Nigeria will come at the expense of your ability to know your next-door neighbours.
Facebook’s crucial test will come when an engineer invents a new tool that causes people to spend less time buying stuff online and more time in meaningful offline activities with friends. Will Facebook adopt or suppress such a tool? Will Facebook take a true leap of faith, and privilege social concerns over financial interests? If it does so – and manages to avoid bankruptcy – that will be a momentous transformation.