The Social Media Upheaval Quotes

“In his insightful essay In The Beginning was the Command Line, Neal Stephenson wrote that, “The ability to think rationally is pretty rare, even in prestigious universities. We’re in the TV age now, and people think by linking pictures in their brains.” That was 1999.”
― Glenn Harlan Reynolds, The Social Media Upheaval

“Engagement is not meant to serve any particular purpose other than its own enhancement, and yet the result is an unnatural global amplification of the ‘easy’ emotions, which happen to be the negative ones…. Remember, with old-fashioned advertising you could measure whether a product did better after an ad was run, but now companies are measuring whether individuals changed their behaviors, and the feeds for each person are constantly tweaked to get individual behavior to change…. The scheme I am describing amplifies negative emotions more than positive ones, so it’s more efficient at harming society than at improving it.”
― Glenn Harlan Reynolds, The Social Media Upheaval