The Erasive Age

Nicholas Carr touching on why it’s good business to erase “IRL”:

We want the speech of distant people to arrive in our mailbox, to issue forth from our radio and TV, to hang on the walls of a museum, to appear on the screen of our phone. Take away such freedom of movement, return us to the original communication system of mouth and ear, and you take away knowledge, culture, entertainment, pretty much the entirety of modernity.

Erasure is good for business. The more that media has erased the world, the more dependent society has become on the systems and services of media companies and the more profits those companies have earned.

Conclusion:

The more we draw on AI to shape our perception and understanding of the world, to structure our thoughts and words, to express ourselves, the more complicit we become in erasing culture, the past, others, ourselves.